Anna Chancellor: I vetoed a kiss with Dominic Cooper

We meet in the late afternoon at a jazzy little bistro near the Old Vic. I hadn’t quite prepared myself for the sheer visual impact of Anna Chancellor. Imposingly tall and wearing a simple glamorous frock, she rises to greet me. The dispositions of her face — the dimpled chin, the high cheekbones and the smoky blue eyes — combine in an extraordinary synthesis of softness, elegance and power. It’s like looking at a beautifully designed weapon. She’s playing Amanda alongside Toby Stephens, as Elyot, in Jonathan Kent’s production of Private Lives at the Gielgud. The show originated in Chichester last autumn. ‘I’m thrilled it’s going into town. But I wouldn’t have been’ — and she plunges a made-up dagger into her throat — ‘if we hadn’t. I’d have felt very lucky to have had a go anyway.’

How do you keep it fresh? Play jokes on each other?

‘I don’t think we will, no,’ she says, evidently having considered it. ‘We arrive early at the theatre and play loads of music and dance a lot beforehand. You’ve got to take having fun seriously.’

What kind of dancing?

‘The Charleston to Iggy Pop. Toby tends not to. He doesn’t really like dancing. He’ll be doing his stretching by the side of the stage.’

How does she deal with the ‘high’ after a performance. ‘I hate the adrenalin. I feel like I’ve been touched by a wand,’ she says. ‘Acquire a smack habit,’ I counsel. ‘I wish I could. You can’t nowadays. It’s so yesterday, heroin. Sometimes I bicycle in on my electric bike. And I bicycle home again. Yeah, I know, electric, that’s cheating. I talk too loudly [back at home, she means]. I don’t drink, you see. So I talk too loudly.