Marianne Faithfull once said, 'I am a Fabulous Beast, and as such, I should only be glimpsed very rarely, through the forest, running away for dear life.' How wise she was. If I were ever asked to interview her again, I would turn into a Fabulous Beast myself and hightail it to the forest. I first glimpsed Her Fabulousness ages ago at a restaurant in Notting Hill, 192, where she was sitting all alone at lunchtime reading the papers. 192 is a very sociable sort of table-hopping restaurant, so I thought there was something faintly sad about her solitude. But then a man joined her - it might even have been my future nemesis, François - and she simply handed him a slice of newspaper and carried on reading right through lunch. It was so devastatingly drop-dead cool that all the chattering at the other tables somehow died - we farmyard animals knew we were in the presence of a Fabulous Beast.
So when I heard she was coming to London (she lives in Dublin) to publicise the film Intimacy, I jumped at the chance to interview her. It all seemed quite straightforward: she would go to David Bailey's studio at 12.30pm to have her photo taken - she likes David Bailey, they 'go back a long way', to the 60s - and I would pick her up at 4pm and interview her till 6pm when a car would take her to the airport for her flight back to Dublin. My only worry (ha ha, in retrospect) was where I could take her between 4pm and 6pm, because I thought as a reformed junkie she wouldn't fancy a wine bar. Silly old me.
At 1pm, the publicist phones to say Marianne has not yet arrived at Bailey's - she was still in bed when they rang at 12.45pm - so everything has been put back an hour. Fine, or fine-ish. I arrive at Bailey's studio eager-beaver at 5pm, and walk into an atmosphere you could cut with a knife. Marianne, trussed like a chicken in Vivienne Westwood with her boobs hanging out, ignores me, Bailey likewise; half a dozen assorted stylists, hairdressers, make-up people stand around looking tense. The PR is friendly but apologetic - she says the photographs will take at least another hour and I should push off and have coffee. A Frenchman who looks like Woody Allen but without his suavity and charm introduces himself as François Ravard, Marianne's manager. I wait for some apology or explanation of why they are running two hours late - it never comes. Finally I say, 'You're running late?' 'Ah yes,' he says with a shrug. 'You know how it eez - it eez always the same.' Really? 'But don't worry,' he adds, 'we have dinner later.' Thanks a million, mon frère - I was supposed to be having dinner with friends. I push off to make calls cancelling my evening.
When I return to Bailey's, the atmosphere is even worse. No sign of Marianne - she has gone off to change - Bailey looks like thunder. Various sotto voce conversations are going on around me and I hear the ominous phrase from Bailey 'as long as it takes'. Time for my tantrum, I feel. Choosing my spot carefully, I stamp my feet like a flamenco dancer and address the studio at large. 'There is no point in taking photographs,' I warble, 'unless there is an article to stick them in. And there is no article unless I get my interview now.' The hair and make-up people stare blankly - so uncool! - but Bailey's assistant and the PR seem to get the point and agree that they will shoot one more pose and finish at 6.15pm. This news is relayed to Bailey with much fierce muttering and hostile staring at me. I decide to go outside and do some deep breathing.
When I get back, Bailey is at the camera; Marianne, in a black mac and fishnet tights, is sprawling with her legs wide apart, her black satin crotch glinting between her scrawny 55-year-old thighs, doing sex kitten moues at the camera. Oh please, stop! I want to cry - this is sadism, this is misogyny, this is cruelty to grandmothers. I wonder if Bailey actually hates her - I wonder if this is her punishment for turning up late. I hear the agent and the Frenchman muttering behind me - 'They won't use this, they can't.' So why is Bailey shooting it then?
Suddenly, the session is over, and we - Marianne, the Frenchman, the PR and me - emerge into the street where a chauffeur-driven limousine has been waiting all this time. It is now 6.45pm and Faithfull has still barely said hello. The PR says we can eat at the Italian restaurant at the end of the street. Marianne says she can't possibly walk, so we pile into the limousine to drive 50 yards to the corner. It is a sweet, friendly, family-run Italian restaurant that has no idea what hell awaits them. No sooner have we been ushered into a private room downstairs than Marianne is muttering, 'What do you have to do to get a drink around here?' Order it, seems the obvious answer, but that's too simple - François has to order it for her. Unfortunately - my huge mistake - I have let him and the PR eat downstairs with us, albeit at a separate table, and even more unfortunately I have placed Marianne against the wall, where she can see François over my shoulder. I could smack myself: what's the use of serving all these years in the interviewing trenches if you still make such elementary mistakes?
Suddenly, Marianne is shouting at François: 'Get it together!' and he is shouting back: 'What do you want , Marianne?' 'I don't know . What have they got ?' she counters, drumming her feet under the table and moaning: 'I. Can. Hardly. Bear. It.' François keeps asking whether she wants wine or a cocktail. I'm thinking rat poison. Eventually she tells François a bottle of rosé. The waiter brings it with commendable speed and starts pouring two glasses. She snatches mine away - 'We don't need that. Where's the ice bucket?' The waiter goes away and comes back with an ice bucket. 'I'll have the veal escalope,' she tells him. He waits politely for my order. 'Veal! Vitello!' she snaps - she can't understand why he is still hanging around when he should be off escaloping veal. 'I'll have the same,' I say wearily.
I'm already fed up with her and we haven't even started. But at this point - a tad late, in my view - she suddenly flicks the switch marked Charm and bathes me in its glow. 'Cheers!' she says. 'Sorry I yelled. A slight crise there. It's been a long day.' (Really? She was still in bed at one, it is now seven, hardly a full shift at the coalface.) But anyway, she is - finally - apologetic. And I in turn put on my thrilled-to-meet-you face and tell her that I deeply enjoyed her autobiography Faithfull (1994), which I did. It is a truly amazing story - a pop star at 17, a mother at 18, Mick Jagger's girlfriend at 19, reigning over Cheyne Walk - and yet by her thirties she was a heroin addict living on the street in Soho. Even if she didn't write a word of it (David Dalton was co-author), she deserves some credit just for living it. For a while she basks in my compliments and then switches off the charm and snaps, 'But I'm not going to talk about the book, I want to talk about the film.' Huh? Too late I realise my mistake with the placement - obviously there has been some signal from François.
So then she launches into her spiel about Intimacy - how she saw Patrice Chéreau, the director, in a Paris restaurant and rushed over to tell him she loved his film La Reine Margot and to ask: Can I be in your next film? He said yes, and started writing a part for her that night. It is quite a small part, as a loopy bag lady, but Chéreau evidently convinced her it's the pivot of the film. Did she mind having to look so unglamorous? 'I did and I didn't. The first time I saw it, it was a shock. But I would jump off a cliff for Patrice. I don't know why, but I really fell in love with him and I want to work with him again. He's one of the reasons I'm doing this interview. I want the film to be a success - I want Patrice to go on making films in English so I can work with him again.'
Actually, I would have thought that Patrice Chéreau's career could survive without the services of a ratty old rock chick. But let that go - she is very good in the film, however briefly. She has always had the potential to be a good actress, but four years ago she told the Radio Times, 'I was never an actress. That's a waste of my time.' So is she an actress or isn't she? 'Well, you know I love acting, but I haven't ever made it my priority. Maybe that was a mistake. But I couldn't help it. Music really is my life. And nearly every film I've been on has been crap, except Hamlet [with Nicol Williamson], which is brilliant. And I've ended up very fond of La Motocyclette [Girl on a Motorcycle] although it was a horrible experience to make. But honestly, the rest of the filmwork I've done has been ghastly. So I used to feel, till now, that I hadn't had the opportunity to be in really good films with really good directors. Because I could have been a really good actress - and I still could.'
Yet, judging from her book, she had endless opportunities to be a good actress, but invariably blew them away by turning up to work drugged to the eyeballs or not turning up at all. It might have been an obscure desire to punish her mother who had huge ambitions for her little princess. But also she was hell-bent on becoming a junkie from the moment she read The Naked Lunch - she wanted to be a junkie more than she wanted to succeed as an actress or to marry Mick Jagger. Jagger was surprisingly patient for a long time - he took the rap for her in the notorious drugs bust at Redlands when he claimed her pills were his. (Incidentally, she says about the drugs bust that, yes, she was naked under a fur rug - but it was a very large fur rug - and no, there was no Mars bar involved. But she hasn't eaten one since.)
She split with Jagger in 1970 and became a full-time heroin addict, living in squats and on the street. But she was lucky in that friends got her on an NHS drugs programme, which meant she could get her daily fix on prescription from the chemist. She had one of the highest dosages going - 25 jacks of heroin a day. It left her with poor circulation which is still evident in her angry red, mottled arms.
It is a mystery what she lived on in the 70s - she says it's a mystery to her, too. 'I don't know how I survived. There was a time after the 60s, when I was - I call it depressed - where there was absolutely no income. But I managed somehow. My parents didn't have any money. I didn't sell my body. I don't know how I managed. Flying through life on charm, I suppose. But I never took unemployment, welfare, ever. I have a thing about it.' Scratch an old hippie, find a Thatcherite, as Julie Burchill always says. Faithfull was far too hoity-toity to do anything as common as signing on. She always made sure people knew her schoolteacher mother was a baroness (Austro-Hungarian, natch). There is a theory that Jagger only embarked on his social mountaineering to impress Faithfull, because she sneered at him for being middle class - of course he totally gazumped her within months. Anyway, she 'lived on her wits' and according to Chris Blackwell of Island was very good at touching people such as doormen for the odd fiver or tenner.
What drove her to drugs? 'I don't know that anything drove me. I didn't even like it that much either; I just think it was like a good anaesthetic.' But she says in her book that she always had an attraction to the 'Dionysian' life. 'And I still do!' she grins. 'I'm always going to be drawn to that sort of fantasy. Though nowadays I don't do anything about it.' Does she still take drugs? 'Occasionally. I'm not going to go into it. Obviously no heroin. And I don't at all trust all these new drugs; they're not a good idea. But you know I'm a very decadent person, I really am. Whether I'm on drugs or not, it doesn't change anything. I can see why I liked them, and I can't sort of put that down. It's just if you want to do anything else in your life, it doesn't really go.'
She had one failed detox in England in the early 80s, and then went to Hazelden, the Minnesota clinic, in 1985 and cleaned up. She stayed completely clean, and went to NA meetings for five-and-a-half years. She also moved to Ireland, to the remote and beautiful Shell Cottage on a country estate in County Wicklow, and lived very quietly, alone. She had friends three miles down the road, but she couldn't walk that far and couldn't drive. 'It felt very lonely, and I was there nine years, and it's a long time to be all on your own. But I'm very glad I did and it was really great for my spiritual life.'
But four years ago she moved in to Dublin. The papers reported that she was chucked out of Shell Cottage after a rowdy birthday party caused £5,000 worth of damage. She says not so. 'I gave it up because I was lonely. It did have rats . And I'd lived there just long enough. It was self-protection, and there was a moment when it was over. I know the landlord didn't really like me. But you know, a lot of people don't really like me. I'm not everybody's cup of tea!'
I like her for saying that. Unfortunately, liking someone, with me, always provokes a disastrous urge to give good advice, and out it pops. Surely, I tell her, she shouldn't be drinking, surely Hazelden taught her that sobriety was the only salvation? 'I'm not going into all that,' she snaps. And somehow she must have signalled an SOS because suddenly the PR is beside us, telling Marianne, 'I'm really sorry to interrupt, but I do think we need to lead it slightly more to Intimacy . I know you've got lots to say about the film.' François simultaneously explodes behind me, 'I knew it! I knew this would happen! It's always the same - this is going to be the last time, Marianne.' 'Why don't you join us, François?' I say, thinking I'd rather have him in sight than shouting over my shoulder, but Marianne says quickly, 'Oh, you don't want that!'
Heroically, like a good Girl Guide, she pulls herself together and starts yakking about Intimacy until everyone has calmed down. We both rave about the sex scenes between Kerry Fox and Mark Rylance - she says they remind her of Lucian Freud paintings - she says they're almost like seeing sex for the first time. And, she adds, the orgy scene is brilliant. 'Though of course I've never been to an orgy.' Oh come, Marianne! 'In my mind. I've never actually physically been to an orgy. But it does fascinate me - how do you show decadence onscreen? And I'm sure that it's not about chandeliers and opulent surroundings, it's exactly like in Intimacy. True decadence is an empty room with one bare lightbulb.' In the book, she confesses that sex was always her Primal Anxiety. Every 60s male fantasised about going to bed with the Girl on a Motorcycle - but she suffered terrible stage fright before the act and would do almost anything to put it off. She once spent days hanging around Bob Dylan, seeing off the other groupies, until he finally made his move and then she told him, 'No - I'm pregnant.' Was it performance anxiety? Did she think she was a lousy lay? 'No. I am sexy, we all are - but people saw me as some kind of illusion and I always had a problem with that. But it doesn't really come up any more because, you know, I have a lover and I don't have to worry about it.'
'Who is it?'
'I'm not telling you. I just thought I should explain that when I say I'm not worried about it any more, that doesn't mean I don't have sex any more. It's just not an issue in the sense that one isn't having to take one's clothes off and go to bed with strangers.' Is this a long-term relationship? 'Yes. A deeply committed and serious relationship. But private.' Might they marry? 'I'm not the marrying kind.'
'It is a man, is it?' I blurt, suddenly remembering that her book includes several scenes with women. 'Yes. I'm not gay. I would never rule it out, but it's obviously not my thing - although very nice and perfectly sexy and so on. And anyway I've moved on from that, because I'm in love.'
No amount of questioning from me will yield any more, and she segues smoothly into talking about her life in Dublin. 'I take care of myself. I go swimming. I read a lot. I see my friends. I talk on the phone. I watch telly. I go to bed quite early.' She is scared to live in London because 'it's too on' and she thinks she would be pestered by paparazzi. But she sometimes dreams of having a second home in London so she could see more of her son and grandchildren. She had her only child, Nicholas, when she was just 18, and lost custody of him when she became a junkie. But they are on good terms again now. 'I'm really glad I had Nicholas - though I never ever meant to have children. But I had this sort of force that guided me and I knew that if I didn't have Nicholas I'd never have a child - and I never would have, either. But I could see myself going out with my beautiful grown-up son. And I did that last night - we went to see Beck at the Brixton Academy and it was wonderful. I never quite saw the grandchildren!'
Over coffee, I ask her about François. ' Darling François!' she exclaims, 'I'm sorry he's a bit grumpy - he's had so much of it. He's been my manager for seven years.' Just for acting, or for music as well? 'The whole thing. The whole treatment.' She says this almost with a wink and suddenly - how can I have been so slow? - bells ring, scales fall from eyes, and I squeal, aghast, 'Is he The Man?' She says she won't talk about it, but the answer is all too obviously Yes. Good God. 'Well, I find him very difficult,' I tell her. 'Yes,' she says, 'but that's partly his job.'
François has obviously been earwigging again, because he suddenly looms over me and shouts, 'Are you talking of me? I hate this fucking tabloid paper. Sex and drugs and all that. I just allowed this interview for Patrice, because Marianne loves Patrice. If I could put it back, I will.' Marianne hisses at the PR, 'You let him get drunk, you fool.' François, meanwhile, grabs the bill from the waiter and plonks it in front of me. 'Oh,' says Marianne sarcastically, 'is this on The Observer - that dreadful tabloid newspaper? Sorry, Lynn.' François shouts at her, 'Don't be sorry, Marianne. Don't apologise. You will see the piece, it will just be sex and drugs, always the same shit. Trust me, for seven years I am telling you the truth.' The PR intervenes brightly, 'I think everything's OK' only to get a blistering from Marianne: 'Well, no. Everything is not OK. I mean, I'm cool, but François is not pleased. Don't let's go into denial - it's not a river in Egypt.'
So then François snarls some more insults at me and I pay the bill and flounce out. The poor chauffeur is still waiting outside and for a moment I think, 'Tee hee, I could take the limo home and leave them to grub around for a taxi.' But then I think how furious François would be and how he'd take it out on Marianne, and decide I don't really want to punish her quite that much. Though remembering her performance with the waiter I'm fairly torn. I don't for a minute believe in their nice cop-nasty cop routine. If François is bad, she's bad too - in fact, maybe worse: she chose him, after all.
Oh, she is exasperating! She is so likeable in some ways but also such a pain. The question that was spinning round my head the whole time was: Who does she think she is? She is a singer with one good album (Broken English) to her credit, an actress with one or two good films. Really, her main claim to fame is that she was Mick Jagger's girlfriend in the 60s, but of course she would never admit that. She thinks she's a great artist who has yet to unleash her full genius on the world. Maybe one day she will, and then I will beg to interview her again on bended knee. Till then, back to the forest, you tiresome old Fabulous Beast.
· Intimacy opens nationwide on 27 July.