Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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Greta Scacchi: ‘I was always being invited to play a male fantasy’

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The actor on 80s stardom, growing Tuscan veg in Sussex and why theatre remains her sacred space

Greta Scacchi, 63, is an Emmy award-winning actor. Born in Milan, Italy, she spent her childhood in England and two years of her teens in Australia, where she began working in theatre. Her films include White Mischief, The Player and Emma, and she can currently be seen in the TV series Bodies and recent film Run Rabbit Run (with Succession’s Sarah Snook), both on Netflix. Scacchi is about to play Mrs Hardcastle in a 1930s-style update of Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer at the Orange Tree theatre, Richmond.

She Stoops to Conquer’s Mrs Hardcastle is one of theatre’s best-known older female characters – flamboyant, mercenary, funny and vulnerable. What drew you to her?
I remembered the play from my first year at drama school when I was 18. You wouldn’t have thought of it to look at me then but I loved playing the ridiculous character parts. Mrs Hardcastle was one I’d always wanted to do, so it’s incredible that it’s finally happened, now I suit the age and the size of the woman. I’m getting to a place where it’s great to embrace different kinds of characters which are not what people expect of me.

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