‘Every family has silences’: Kathryn Hunter on despair, desire, dislodgeable limbs – and her acting genius

She has played King Lear, all three witches in Macbeth and an ape turned variety performer in Kafka’s Monkey. As she prepares for a new show, she discusses the soaring highs and deep lows of her extraordinary life

Kathryn Hunter pulls off her black beanie and sits down. She hates having to keep still: “It’s torture.” On aeroplanes, she is always in the aisle, bobbing up and down. She has an inner restlessness, an energy looking for the right outlet – one that even eight hours of rehearsing hasn’t quieted. With the beanie, a body warmer and a cup of builders’ tea, the acclaimed actor looks as if she is on a break at a construction site.

She is working on a stage adaptation of Eurotrash, Christian Kracht’s novel about a mother, played by Hunter, who is accompanied on the final trip of her life by her son, played by Ben Whishaw. As the pair come to terms with their dark past – and Europe’s – they must confront what Hunter describes as a “hinterland of silence”. In this case, it stems from the family’s Nazi ties, but Hunter believes “people will relate to it … in that every family has silences”. Working on the play has got her thinking about her own mother – and about the actor Marcello Magni, the co-founder of Complicité theatre and the love of Hunter’s life, who died in 2022 at 63.