A rising voice refusing to be silenced

burgeoning of her controversial career

WITTGENSTEIN. What we know about him could be written on the back of a

postage stamp, we decide, Anne Marie Timoney and I. For me, ignorance is

bliss, but surely, I say to Timoney, in her case a spot of mugging up is

required. She is, after all, his putative daughter, in Dic Edwards's new

play which opened at the Citizens' Theatre this week.

No, no, insists the Glasgow-born actress, there was no need to get too

far into the whys and wherefores of Wittgenstein because her character,

a bored, pregnant 40-year-old housewife, also knows nothing. ''All she

knows is that her father was a philosopher. Or was he? And is that

giving away too much plot?'' Timoney turns nervously to actor/ director

Daniel Illsley, who has come along to lend ''moral support'' because she

has ''never ever done this sort of thing before''.

Personally, unlike thesps, I do not care to perform an interview in

front of an audience, but Timoney does seem to be genuinely

apprehensive, answering questions warily, so perhaps I'm being

uncharitable in thinking that an audience of one is not enough for any

actor. Once she relaxes, we are soon engrossed in conversation and

Illsley announces at the end of our talk that he was, so to speak, de

trop. All Timoney's nerves seem to vanish quickly anyway as she launches

into an explanation of how Alma, her character in this play, ends up

refuting Wittgenstein's philosophy. ''Whereof one cannot speak one must

remain silent? Crap!''

Anne Marie Timoney has been anything but silent for the past decade.

Today she is in the major league of Scottish actors, a rising voice who

is making herself heard. A pale, fragile-seeming thirtysomething blonde,

her vulnerable appearance is belied by the powerful, emotional strength

and truth of her acting. She is the steel magnolia of Scotland's

theatre, with a nice line in dramatic dementia.

This year alone, we have seen her playing everything onstage from the

over-ambitious journalist in Wise Guise's terrific Hughie On The Wires,

Donal O'Kelly's play about CIA dirty tricks in El Salvador, to Moors

murderer Myra Hyndley in Fassbinder's Preparadise Sorry Now, a Mayfest

Citz production, in which the four actors waded round a set that was

knee-deep in Polaroids and prophylactics, and which was so distasteful

to some people that they would cross the road rather than speak to

Timoney while she was appearing in it.

''What nonsense!'' she explodes. ''The really annoying thing was some

of the people who walked out of the show left because they were angry

about the swearing in the play. They had come to see a play about two

people who abused and murdered children and they complained because

there was swearing in it! That I could not deal with at all. Fine, the

content of the play was very disturbing and if you can't take it, you

can't take it. But to complain about a few sweary words in a play about

the Moors murders is just beyond belief!''

Timoney's mother was more forthright in her complaints. ''When,'' she

asked her daughter, ''are you going to play somebody nice?'' For

instance, look at the Timoney rogues' gallery of characters. One nasty

piece of work seems to have followed hard on the heels of another. There

was Clara Petacci, Mussolini's mistress in Summit Conference, the

dreaded Nurse Ratchett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the Ugly

Sister in Goldoni's The Housekeeper at the Citz, and a murderously

deranged prostitute in Taggart with a facial scar rivalled only by

Marlene Dietrich's in Witness For The Prosecution. (She also, by the

way, once played the divine Dietrich herself in Falling in Love Again at

the RSAMD.)

''I know, I know,'' repeats Timoney, ''I get a lot of seriously weird

roles; I think it's my face. But they are such good parts, roles you can

act straight from the gut. The best. I remember at drama school, where I

was the oldest woman in my year, I got to play all these menopausal

women and nothing else, so I begged and I begged to play the good fairy

in the panto. 'Please, it's going to be my only chance to be young in

this college!' I said. Well, I've never been so bored in all my life.

It's all very well playing the heroine, but that panto put me off

playing goodies for the rest of my life.''

EDUCATED at St Ninian's School, Kirkintilloch, where other alumni were

actors Peter Capaldi, Maureen Carr, and Billy Differ of the King's

Theatre in Glasgow, Timoney warns that you should not run away with the

idea that it was an artistic school. ''It was anything but, I can assure

you. It drove us to drama.'' On leaving school, she knew she wanted to

act but had no idea how to set about it, so she became a hairdresser,

''which I was dreadful at, although I was quite good at the tinting and

perming but I found I was allergic to that, so I left''.

There followed 27 jobs. ''At least I think it's 27, I stopped counting

there. But after hairdressing I became a receptionist, I went to Jersey

and worked as a potato picker and a silver service waitress. I was also

a nanny in Saudi Arabia. God! Then I came back and worked in various

bars and restaurants around Glasgow.'' Finally, she befriended the actor

Sandy Welch and he encouraged her to try for drama school.

''I failed at the first attempt. I had never been in a theatre in my

life, but Sandy helped me with my audition speeches. In fact, I was

onstage before I actually saw a play. The first play I ever saw was here

at the Citz, that brilliant Philip Prowse 1983 production of a play with

the same title as one of the Wombles. You know, yes, that's it, Orinoko.

Anyway, I was 24 by the time I made into the RSAMD.

''And that was no bad thing. I do believe you have to have lived a bit

before you study acting. I would look round at these 18 and 19-year-old

kids at the RSAMD and they just didn't understand what it was all about.

I'm so glad I left it until I had done some other things. It means that

instinctively you know what you can ditch and what you can keep in

emotional terms.''

Next week, Timoney is scheduled to find another sort of fame when she

debuts as the housekeeper of the new laird in Scottish TV's Take The

High Road.

So it's a touch of the Mrs Danvers now, is it? She roars with

laughter. ''All I can tell you is, yeah, she is a bit of a bitch and

I've just received the next batch of scripts which takes us into the

spring and she turns into a harridan. The new laird, James Coombes, is

drop-dead gorgeous and there are hints of a previous affair between him

and my character. But anyway, he turns up in Glendarroch and is nice

enough, although a bit London, and then he starts turfing people out of

their homes. (Pause for dramatic effect.) And I help. I truly am the

handmaiden of the devil.''

At the moment, in terms of soap acting, she says she is on a learning

curve. ''I can't get used to filming some bits a fortnight ahead and

doing nine episodes in one week, which are not running concurrently

anyway. It's a nightmare to get your head around. But I'm not

complaining. I think I've been really lucky. In career terms, you could

not have wished for a year like the one I've had. And I haven't had to

do any of that nostaligic couthy jock crap about Glasgow because I've

been invited to work at the Citz. I'm so lucky.'' The moral supporter,

Illsley (remember him?), pipes up at this point. ''It's got nothing to

do with luck; it's sheer talent.'' And do you know something? He's dead

right.

Nowadays, Timoney shares her life with Andy Wilde, ''who used to be an

actor''. An actor who brought a whiff of cordite and the smell of danger

to the stage, so why did he pack it in? ''Oh, he wasn't one of the loved

ones. He just couldn't make it into the rotten cess-pit of the RSC and

the National Theatre and that was the sort of recognition he deserved, I

think, but the good news is he's coming back to the Citz to play Don

Juan. Me? I'm not interested in fame, I'm just happy to play great

character roles like Alma in Wittgenstein's Daughter. It's such good fun

and games! All those words and loads of movement!''

Philosophy and physicality. Now there's a heady mix, acknowledges

Timoney, as she goes off to rehearse rattling a few skeletons and giving

birth over Wittgenstein's grave. A sort of thinking man's strumpet.

* Wittgenstein's Daughter by Dic Edwards is in the Stalls Studio at

the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow, until October 2.