London Fresh Face Lydia Leonard on Channeling Jackie O. in Onassis
Age: 28
Hometown: Paris, where Leonard—born to an Irish mother and a Anglo-French father—lived until she was five. “But I’m very much English.”
Currently: Playing Jackie Kennedy Onassis in Martin Sherman’s Onassis, starring Robert Lindsay as the Greek shipping magnate who married John F. Kennedy’s widow.
Celebrity Central: Leonard was in the original London production of Peter Morgan’s acclaimed Frost/Nixon as David Frost’s girlfriend, a role played onscreen by Rebecca Hall. Now she has graduated to playing one of the few bona fide 20th-century legends. What did she think when she was offered this role? “I was flattered because Jackie was so charismatic—and intrigued because she’s such an icon.” Does Leonard think she resembles the First Lady of old? “No. My understudy [Rachael Barrington] looks exactly like her, which I find alarming.” Nor does the actress, standing 5’5” tall, have the height difference with co-star Lindsay that Jackie O. had with the diminutive Aristotle. “Robert’s taller than I am, actually.”
The Clothes Make the (Wo)man: It’s pretty well impossible to play such a defining figure in the history of style without looking stylish yourself—an aspect of her role Leonard is clearly enjoying. “[Costume designer] Katrina Lindsay wanted Jackie’s look in the play to be iconic, so every scene comes from a well-known picture reference,” she explains. “To start, she’s in a shoulder-less floor-length satin gown with gloves just below the elbow, a formal ‘White House’ look.” Once Mrs. Kennedy becomes Mrs. Onassis, Leonard’s wardrobe morphs into “khaki pants and a navy T-shirt and head scarf. And then, when the marriage was breaking up and Jackie was back in New York, Burberry Macs and sunglasses.” Leonard takes extra care to remain spotless during the show. “I have been known to throw water all down my front during the play, which is very un-Jackie-ish,” she says with a laugh. “I was too busy acting, throwing the glass around.”
Accent-uate: Leonard’s expert American accent has prompted surprise in some quarters, along with the realization that few people remember how Mrs. Onassis actually spoke. “I listened to what recordings I could,” she says. “Most of what exists is public address, which I don’t do in the play because I don’t think that’s what Jackie sounded like in private. Even she admitted she put on a voice, a sort of Marilyn [Monroe] sound that, dramatically, wouldn’t serve the play at all; you’d never be able to hear it at the back.” (Leonard has opted for what she refers to as a fuller, “more dynamic variation” on the Jackie sound.) Believe it or not, some audience members don’t realize that the woman they're seeing actually existed. “I’ve met more than one person in their early 20s who has never heard of Jackie Onassis, though most girls have because she exists as a fashion icon.”
House Proud: Oddly enough, Leonard has been inside the White House, “and I’m really glad I have, because that was one of Jackie’s great legacies, wasn’t it? Restoring the Americana to what had become a very institutional building.” Her visit was part of a group tour organized during the 2005 Kennedy Center run of the RSC’s production of Hecuba, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Leonard, who was featured in the ensemble, calls Redgrave (now on Broadway in Driving Miss Daisy) “luminous” and “quite otherworldly,” adding, “She’s a force of nature and was terribly kind to me.” The play’s international tour ended with a single performance at an amphitheater in Delphi with the Prime Minister of Greece in attendance: “It was absolutely magical.”
Career from Career to Career: With an accountant father and teacher mother, Leonard says that performing in no way runs in the family. Nonetheless, she recalls “always wanting to be an actress, in that way children do.” A 2003 graduate of the Bristol Old Vic stage school, she is savvy enough about her chosen profession to expect the unexpected. “What you think is going to be a big break or opportunity can sometimes turn into the opposite, and vice versa,” she says. “I certainly didn’t think Frost/Nixon was going to be the hit play of the year.” Onassis has had some sniffy reviews, but is holding its own commercially—not that Leonard has read the notices. “I deliberately didn’t, but people will tell you anyway, which is quite annoying,” she says with a laugh. “You then get paranoid if someone says nothing to you. That’s when it’s really awful.”