Growing up in Africa made me feel part of life and nature. In Europe it’s as if humans are the only things alive on earth. When I was a child, I saw elephants in the Serengeti, knew the names of the snakes and lizards and what to do if I saw a jellyfish or a sea urchin. Africa is a remarkable place and once you’ve lived there you never forget it.
Paris is the ideal place to be a teenager. After I’d left school I lived there for a while. You can sit around in coffee bars feeling chic in your black polo neck, reading your Jean-Paul Sartre and puffing on your first Gauloises.
You can walk around London with a pink mohican and not faze anyone. I love that laissez-faire attitude. The city doesn’t deserve its reputation for being cold and unfriendly. I’ve had at least 16 London addresses from Brixton to Kensington, Kentish Town to Chalk Farm and I’ve always felt welcome.
Opera in Italy is like one big singalong. I experienced it for the first time in Milan and it was so relaxed. Everyone had a chat and ate their sandwiches through the boring parts and then leapt up and cheered when it got dramatic. I could get obsessed with opera if it was always like that.
Tourists pay an extortionate amount for pizza in Venice. I spent three months there when I was filming The Count of Monte Cristo and by the end of the shoot I was treated like a Venetian. Suddenly my meals were half the price they were when I had arrived a month earlier.
It’s amazing that a place like Los Angeles even exists. It’s built on a desert prone to floods, fires and earthquakes. We live there for six months of the year and I love that my kids can spend their days on the beach and in the sun. I find LA strange, artificial and fascinating all at the same time.
What man has made really takes my breath away. I fully appreciate the beauty of mountains and the sea but somewhere like St Peter’s in Rome fills me with awe. A Caravaggio will always inspire me more than a sunset any day.
Helen McCrory stars in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, out now. Interview by Emma Parfitt.
