"It's about people who live on a farm," says Rita. "I play the mother of two daughters. It is a fantastic, many-layered story. My character is responsible for certain things happening, but I don't want to say too much, to give it away. She takes on different guises. I have certain powers. It is a wonderful role. I love playing her. You can tell when things are good. "We are making it in the country. Nature is waking up and now you can see the blossom and the leaves on the trees. It's lovely." Rita started her career as an assistant stage manager at Liverpool Playhouse when she was 16. While there, she answered Richardson's advertisement for "an ugly unknown" to play Jo in A Taste of Honey. To people of her generation, Rita will always be Jo. The part holds on to her, like a web woven in another age. But Rita doesn't mind. She's a philosopher. "It's nice to be associated with something," she says. "People said to me when it was successful, 'oh you are going to be sick and tired of hearing about it'. How could I be? For me it was an amazing opportunity. Without it, I probably wouldn't have been in film. It is very nice that people have seen it, liked it and are moved by it." Robert Stephens died in 1995, but all the other lead actors from a Taste of Honey are with us. "It is amazing to think that it is 45 years old," says Rita. "I speak to Paul Danquah, who lives in Morocco, and I speak to Dora Bryan. From time to time I get messages from Murray Melvin. "Sadly I don't see him that much. He's busy and just gets on with his life. He's quite private actually and he's a wonderful man and an extraordinary actor. The thing about him is that he's a very contained performer. He has dignity. What you see is what you get with that character. He plays it with such subtlety. "I started shooting the film on my 19th birthday. It did touch a lot of taboos, but when we were making it, we didn't feel that. "We just thought it was such a wonderful story. In some ways I think it is amazing how far we have come, but in some ways not so far." The setting was working-class, but Rita's own background was suburban. Her father, John Tushingham, owned a grocery shop in Hunts Cross and another in Garston. He also served for a while on Liverpool City Council as a Conservative, who believed that you should always help your fellow man. Rita's brothers, Ian and Peter, are old boys of the independent Liverpool College and Rita attended La Sagesse Convent in Aigburth. Although she never had a pronounced accent, Rita, like the great novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge, had her vowels pruned at the elocution lessons given by Nell Ackerley in her rooms above the Crane's music store in Hanover Street, Liverpool. "But you do go back to your accent if you are excited or angry about something," says Rita, who now lives in London. "My speech still has the rhythm of a Liverpool person. My city means so much to me, I am proud to be from it." She is a great role model for young women >> | 
