Billie Whitelaw makes protective women unsettling without making their authority hard to believe. We value her directness and physical commitment, though The Krays shows how even her persuasive acting can be asked to explain too much.
Fi1m perspective
The brothers' devotion to Violet in The Krays (1990) looks ordinary while they are with her. Billie Whitelaw gives their mother such credible authority that the family scenes are more unsettling than much of the violence. We were disturbed by how natural she made that attachment feel, because it made the twins' behaviour outside the family harder to take. She never has to compete with the men's violence to hold our attention. Peter Medak's film gives her a relationship that remains convincing even when its explanations do not.
Early television parts often cast her as working-class women, before a film breakthrough as Lottie Bubbles in Charlie Bubbles (1968). Her collaboration with Samuel Beckett began in 1963 and lasted 25 years. The physically demanding stage work, including Not I (1973), sits alongside a screen career in which protective women became a particular strength. In The Omen (1976), her Mrs Baylock made the nanny a figure of fear.
The limitation in The Krays is how much the script asks Violet to explain. Once the family loyalties are clear, Martin Walsh's editing does too little to stop the film repeating them, and the twins begin to seem simpler rather than better understood. Whitelaw keeps the domestic scenes worth watching, but she cannot make devotion to a mother account for everything a violent man does. We would not mistake the film's dependence on her for proof that its psychology works.
Her final film role was the comic part of Joyce Cooper in Hot Fuzz (2007), a reminder that the frightening women were not all she could play. There is enough in The Krays alone to make us willing to sit through an uneven film for her. Start there for her scenes with the Kemp brothers, and allow for a crime drama that takes longer than it should to make its point.
Biography
Billie Whitelaw was an English actress. Born in Coventry, she appeared in numerous stage, television and film roles from the 1950s onwards. She had a long professional association with playwright Samuel Beckett, performing in several of his works including Play (1964), Not I (1973) and Footfalls (1976).
On screen she played Mrs Baylock in The Omen (1976) and Violet Kray in The Krays (1990). Other film credits include Frenzy (1972), Maurice (1987), Quills (2000) and Hot Fuzz (2007). She received BAFTA awards for supporting roles and was appointed CBE in 1991.
