Jenny Agutter

Pencil Portrait by Antonio Bosano.

Jenny Agutter Pencil Portrait
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last update 9/3/24

Perhaps more thought provoking than ever, Walkabout premiered at the Cannes film festival in 1971 but performed poorly at the local box office, drawing a mixed response from critics. Noted for its cinematography and interspersed with numerous images of Australian plant and animal life, along with its varied landscapes, the movie is now widely considered a cult classic.

Fresh from her success in “The Railway Children,” it marked Jenny Agutter’s cinematic move into adulthood, in addition to providing a stark reminder to many actresses of what distinguishes ‘appropriate nudity’ from ‘salicious tittilation.’

In the film, and under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist (John Meillon) takes his teenage daughter (Jenny Agutter) and 6-year-old son (Lucien John) into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aborigine boy (David Gulpilil) who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life. Suitably enhanced by a wonderful score from John Barry, Nicholas Roeg’s directorial masterpiece deservedly endures.

A subsequent move to Hollywood would follow, in addition to a string of box office hits. At one point, she could have descended into recreational drug use – cocaine in 70’s Tinseltown was the preferred ‘line of choice’ – but fate woud happily upset her self absorption.

“It was a very self-centred, selfish life,” she says today. “I had the blinkers on and I thought about scripts, film roles and locations. I know exactly what successful single actresses are going through. On the outside all seems well, with the money coming in and decent roles. The sun is shining in Los Angeles, there is real glamour and the living is easy when you’re in work. But insecurity niggles away. ‘Is this all there is? What is the point? How will I perform?’ I never turned to drugs or drink or one-night stands but there is always a danger.”

Then, at the age of 36 during a visit back home to an arts festival in Bath, Agutter met and fell in love with Swedish hotelier Johan Tham. He went out to visit her in Los Angeles, and hated the place. So after 17 years of Hollywood life, she moved back to Britain and they began a relationship. Pregnancy would quickly follow, the couple marrying hastily in August 1990 before having a son Jonathan on Christmas Day. Her life had changed completely in less than a year.

“It saved me,” the actress now insists. “I had got stuck in my ways, ran my life the way I wanted, took holidays when I wished and went where I wanted. I did have long relationships but they all ended.I was thinking: ‘Maybe I will just remain single.’ And, more worryingly: ‘What does the future hold?’ Then all this came at once with Johan. It came as a shock but it was the best thing that happened.” The marriage endures to this day.

Recommended listening

The Railway Children (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1970)

Perhaps Johnny Douglas’s most widely known work, “The Railway Children” original soundtrack is an evocative and consistently satisfying musical backdrop to this iconic childrens’ film. Director Lionel Jeffries was convinced he had his man whilst listening to Douglas’s score for the 1967 crime thriller Run like a thief,” which starred Keiron Moore, an actor who never quite fulfilled his potential.

If the underlying purpose of any soundtrack is to evoke mental images of key scenes in a film, whilst providing a wholly satisfying and independent listening experience, then Douglas succeeds here on both levels.

http://www.dulcimarecords.com/johnny-douglas-biography/

1 Overture
2 Roberta’s Theme
3 Mother’s Theme
4 The Robbers
5 More Than Ever Now Vocals [Sung By] – Vince Hill
6 The Paper Chase
7 A Kindly Old Gentleman
8 Perks Must Be About It
9 The Birthday Waltz
10 Finale

Recommended viewing

The Railway Children (1968) (1970) (2000)

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/may/06/how-we-made-railway-children

Agutter would come full circle over a thirty two year period playing the role of eldest daughter Roberta twice, before tackling the role of the mother in an ITV commissioned ninety minute drama.

The film was the ninth most successful British release at the box office in 1971. I caught the movie six months into its extensive run, and like millions was enchanted by the experience; a slice of Edwardian innocence transported to the idyllic Yorkshire countryside. The 1970 film, directed by the late Lionel Jeffries – a stalwart of British cinema and perhaps best remembered as the the dotty grandpa in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – was based on E Nesbit’s much-loved children’s novel.

Like Enid Blyton, Edith Nesbit was an indifferent mother yet would publish an idealised celebration of Victorian family life. Writing in The Guardian, Lyn Gardner provides insights into the author’s mind.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/mar/26/theatre.booksforchildrenandteenagers

The Snow Goose (1971)

Walkabout (1971)

Based on the 1959 novel of the same name, “Walkabout” follows two children, a 14-year-old girl (Jenny Agutter) and a six-year-old boy (the director’s son, Luc Roeg). The siblings must fend for themselves after they are stranded in the Australian outback, guided only by a young Aboriginal man played by David Gulpilil.

First appearing on terrestrial channels in the late 70’s and invariably in the late night slot, I loved the movie, the purity of the indiginous sounds of the australian outback acting as a beautiful counterpoint to John Barry’s majestic soundtrack score.

It all begins in inauspicious circumstances, a white teenage girl and her younger brother living with their parents in a modest high rise apartment in Sydney. Driving the children from school to the outback, ostensibly for a picnic, their father interrupts the food preparation, drawing a gun and begins firing at them. The boy believes it to be a game, but the daughter realises her father is attempting to murder them, and flees with her brother, seeking shelter behind rocks. She watches as her father sets their car on fire and shoots himself in the head. The girl conceals the suicide from her brother, retrieves some of the picnic food, and leads him away from the scene, attempting to walk home through the desert.

Finding refuge at an oasis, they encounter an aboriginal boy who saves them. Transitioning into manhood and banished from his tribe for six months to fend for himself, he has already acquired the secrets of survival, which the film reveals in scenes of stark, unforced beauty. We see the aborigine spearing wild creatures, and finding water in the dry pool with the use of a hollow reed. He treats the child’s sunburn with a natural salve as the viewer loses all sense of time.

Ultimately, the children belong back in their natural habitat but there can be no place in it for the aboriginal boy; a reality he faces up to with tragic consequences.

In the final moments of the movie, director Nicholas Roeg allows us the opportunity to reflect on modern life. Some unspecified period of time has passed, and the daughter is now evidently a married adult. She prepares a meal at the kitchen counter, just as her mother does at the beginning of the film. Her career focused husband talks endlessly about office politics yet his wife’s eyes remain unfocused. She looks off into the distance, and we see that she remembers a particularly happy time during her wilderness adventure, bathing under a waterfall and playing with her younger brother and their guide through the bush. The images are powerful, and there is a sense of longing within her once again for the natural world.

Logan's Run (1976)

The Eagle has landed (1976)

And The Beat Goes On (BBC Tv Series) 1996

Call the Midwife (BBC Tv Series) 2013-

Surfing

Jenny Agutter's official Website

http://www.jennyagutter.net/