The gorgeous Josie Lawrence

I haven't seen many interviews with lovely Josie over the years - this is a good one from the Telegraph

Josie Lawrence: why quantum physics holds no fears for me

Josie Lawrence talks to Dominic Cavendish about combining comedy and acting - and starring in Tom Stoppard's 'Hapgood'

It feels curiously apt, a neat happenstance, that Josie Lawrence should have landed the lead in a revival of Tom Stoppard's Hapgood next month at the Birmingham Rep.
For Hapgood, which collides the science of quantum mechanics with the shenanigans of high-level espionage, is one of those dazzling Stoppardian examinations of human nature that revels in, and relies upon, a welter of dualisms and doppelgangers.
As one of the characters explains to our heroine - who runs an all-male British intelligence organisation - as they mull over how a Russian spy is managing to run rings around them: "An electron can be here or there at the same moment.
It can go from here to there without going in between; it can pass through two doors at the same time." They're talking about double-agents, but isn't Lawrence, in her own way, like a miraculous electron - apparently leading a double life?
Consider the evidence. The same Josie Lawrence who is appearing before Birmingham Rep audiences in a high-calibre intellectual thriller by one of our finest playwrights has also found time to nip down to London's Comedy Store during rehearsals to take part in the uproarious rounds of improvisation for which the club - and she - is renowned.
On the one hand, she's the Queen of British improv who became a household name thanks to Whose Line is It Anyway?, the much-loved TV show that took the art mainstream in 1988. And yet she's also a well-regarded, serious actress with a strong list of credits on TV and an even stronger theatrical CV.
Her distinctive ability to combine feistiness with vulnerability has produced a much-admired Kate in The Taming of the Shrew at the RSC, an awarded Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in Manchester, and a memorable Anna in The King and I during its recent West End run.
Meeting Lawrence as someone who grew up on the frivolous delights of Whose Line, I'm torn between quizzing her about her favourite Shakespearean moment and getting her to recall her improv highlights - her favourite request apparently being asked to concoct a Twenties-style "flapper" song about a strobe-lit goldfish.
In person, she looks exactly as she does at the Comedy Store, wearing black leggings with matching smock. Her eyes bright and her hair fabulous, she seems younger than her 48 years.
She bristles slightly at my opening suggestion, though, that few in her profession enjoy such parallel claims to credibility. "There are quite a few of us around who can balance comedy with the serious stuff, aren't there?
I mean what about Julie Walters? She does that brilliantly. And Judi Dench. You wouldn't say of her, 'Oh yes, she does that sitcom.'
"I've always considered myself to be an actress," she says, relaxing, her words unwinding in the warm bath of her West Midlands accent. Hailing, like Lenny Henry, from nearby Dudley, her appearance at the Rep - the third time for her - isn't a sideline; it's what she aspired to do as a kid.
"I used to come here when I was 16, doing amateur dramatics in Oldbury. And I would think, 'I want to work here. I've got to work here.'"
It has taken her a while to have, as she puts it, the best of both worlds. Right now, thanks to a surge of interest in Whose Line, prompted by the release of compilation DVDs, the arrival of YouTube and repeats on cable channels, those japes of yesteryear are finding a new audience.
She likes to watch the re-runs ("If only to see the outrageously horrible fashions"), but, even so, remaining so identified with the show can have its drawbacks.
"A friend of mine was in a meeting about a project, and the executive producers said, 'We can't see Josie for the part - she's not an actress.' And that's after years and years of acting! I suppose they remember Whose Line. I'm not complaining, though. You're always remembered for the thing that first made a mark, aren't you?"
She finds that being able to head down to the Comedy Store during rehearsals acts as a great safety valve - and she'll strive to pop back during the run. "It's so nice to work on Stoppard all week and then go to the Store.
"I did it when I was at the RSC, and I especially did it when I was in Bryony Lavery's Frozen at the National because that was such a heavy play - child murder on Saturday night, improv on Sunday."
By the same token, if the rest of the cast missed their cues, does she reckon she could improvise on the subject of quantum physics? She smiles: "Yes, I do. If I was left alone on stage I could wing it and make loads of things up." And she starts waxing lyrical about the space between a nucleus and an electron.
"They reckon that, if you got rid of all that space, you could fit the entire human race into a sugar cube in your hand. It blows your mind, doesn't it?" I don't know whether or not that's true, but she has me lapping it up.
Is it going to be a battle to sell the play itself? When it opened in 1988 with another much-loved actress, Felicity Kendal, playing Hapgood, it was judged too clever by half. ("The play is both enjoyable and tedious," the Telegraph complained.)
Stoppard himself was rumoured to have muttered, "I don't know how to write plays any more."
This revival uses the amended - clearer - version he wrote for the New York run several years later.
"When I first read it, I did go, 'What?'" Lawrence admits. "But, as soon as I finished it, I started at the beginning again. And, once you get stuck into the plot, it becomes completely intriguing. It makes sense.
"What I love about it is that, in the middle of all the espionage and the theory of doubles, there are these pockets of real humanity. Hapgood isn't just the boss of all these men; she's a mother.
She's a bit of everything - a control freak who yearns to let it all hang out. She is witty and vulnerable. I hope that will come across. It's not being clever-clever. If people think that, they're missing out."
She was rather taken with Sir Tom, who has just paid a flying visit. "What a nice bloke. What a humble bloke. We did all this genning up about the name Hapgood which can mean half-good, or a duality. In rehearsal, he said, 'Actually it was nothing to do with that. I just liked the name.'"
Lawrence is single these days, "but please put down that I have a rich and fulfilling private life," she says, with a twinkle. After more than 21 years in the improv hot seat, she likens the Comedy Store Players to her family, and at the same time regards the theatre as home. Rather like trying to map out the path of an electron, her future career moves will be unpredictable.
"I like challenges. You can get slammed down because of it, but I'm getting too old to care. I'm going to carry on taking risks until I'm 92."