The unexpected journey from ‘daughter of’ to Queen of erotica
Walking into a sex shop can be a little unsettling. Gathering enough courage to put a forceful hand on the door that will open the portals to that forbidden place and walking in. What if someone watches you? What if the people in the store see right through to that prudish self you have buried deep down, the one that you have attempted to hide behind a rehearsed air of cool?
As the heart is racing, the bits of dauntlessness that have been amassing drop by drop finally deliver: Coco de Mer unveils itself. The inconspicuous little boutique reveals its inviting odour. A sweet smell of vanilla. Not the pungent odour of sweat interlocked with layers of dust that you were anticipating. Good. Soak in the moment and look around.
Layers of pink paint are running down from the ceiling, taking over the whole space, dancing around the laced frames of see-through lingerie. At the far end: a reading area encircling some strange contraption that lies somewhere between a saddle and a dentist chair. To the right: glass cases with feathers and bondage straps, followed by a wide collection of candles in the shape of the expected. Adding to the boudoir-like atmosphere is some retro music in the background.
So this is what expensive sex feels like: cosy. Confirming what is already known; the sovereign of this erotic empire is a woman. By the looks of it, she must be one of two things, a Madam figure from an old Hollywood flick, which is improbable, or a perfectly groomed, over-confident Dita Von Teese look-alike.
She is neither. Sam Roddick is two short stops away from 40. Her hair is unkempt and possibly unwashed. She must not be familiar with makeup or maybe she is and has decided to go cold turkey. (Her mother, after all, was the inventor of Body Shop.) Her breasts look like they are having a tea party with her belly and both her arms are stamped with tattoos. By the looks of it, she must be one of two things, a hippie or a sailor. As it turns out, she is a businesswoman and an activist.
After an initial mental battle with the misconceptions of what a sex-shop and its owner should look like, comes the next battle, the one where “daughters of” are simply stamped off as being rich kids in desperate need of attention.
“Sexual energy is what gave us life. It is the source of all creativity.” Yeah, ok.
Her eclectic appearance stands in sharp contrast to the little facts that are known about her: the high profile friends, the jet-setting lifestyle of her childhood years and her home. A house that most people would qualify as a little palace-an old Victorian mansion with 16 rooms.
Then the story slowly unfolds. Roddick was expelled from school at the age of 15.
“After that, I travelled to Brazil and wanted to get involved in rainforest protection. Six years later I had a nervous breakdown and decided to retrieve myself from the evils of the capitalist world. I then spent some time in Canada until I got pregnant.”
Equipped with an accent that indicates the favourable hand life dealt her, she swirls through the store explaining how her journey brought her where she is.
“Coco de Mer is a personal diary, without putting my own desires and own fears into it-it would only be half of what it is. My desire is not to make loads of money, although business depends on it, but to transform people through their pleasure into a better place, a place of kindness and respect and happiness. That is what I wish for myself.”
“The years I spent running around The Body Shop, the hours resentfully trailing after my mother, going across the world at the age of 12, all of that helped me in building my business.”
Roddick has no inhibitions talking about her past or her experiences. She is open and her storytelling at times feels like an avalanche of words. Given the missions she has set for herself, however, as a protestor and as her clients’ sexual midwife, those are qualities that will surely come in handy. She admits that the confidence is born out of painful experiences but also out of her personal victories. One of the things she is most proud of is the Journey, a project against sex trafficking that she innovated with Emma Thompson.
It is in that line that she sees her future. A life filled with opening people’s minds on sexual issues and activism as a whole. “I have had a lot of thank yous, where people have said that their life has changed by going into my shop. That makes me so happy. That is my purpose.”
The new Bette Davis, or the next forgotten name?
Young actress Catherine Steadman on having all her friends die by the time she was ten and on succeeding in the acting business.
Giving tips on how to make it in show business nowadays would probably include things like: dating Jude Law, starring in a reality show, getting breast augmentation or at the very least treating yourself to a sensual pair of lips Keira Knightley style. Making serious and tough character choices generally only comes after you have already secured some headlines and made a name for yourself. By Catherine Steadman’s standard however that’s the road worth travelling. Where it will lead still remains to be seen.
She is a short, average looking girl. In her twenties, she still wears the uniform of a young teenager: black leather jacket, black converse, a loose sweater and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her taste for the delicate is in the little golden bumblebee pendant she wears around her neck. Catherine is not the kind of girl that makes people turn around on the street when they walk by. In fact she will probably go unnoticed. Most TV viewers, however, are bound to have seen her as Vicky the Witches friend in the Orange commercial. The part gave her some real visibility, albeit in the shadow of the green witch, but it’s not what she enjoys talking about the most.
Last year she was part of the cast that won rave reviews for Polly Stenham’s multi award-winning debut play That Face. The story is about a dysfunctional parent-child relationship, very unlike what Catherine experienced growing up. Although her childhood can by no account be qualified as being usual. “My parents ran a nursery which was really intense. Most of my friends sort of died obviously. They were all 80 years old. They were the only people I hung out with. I was an only child. I had nobody to play with, so I would end up playing cards with an old person.”
In most children this could have left a potential bitter after taste about life but Steadman sees something positive in that experience. “I think it has made me more aware that we only have a certain amount of time. I am not negative about it. Death is really a time limit and I am aware of that. It gives me more of an incentive to live life and it annoys me when people don’t make the most out of a situation.”
Her childhood friendships must have marked her in some way though, as she is always looking for depth in every role she plays. Last year she was also cast as one of the leads in director Max Jacoby’s debut film about incestuous twins who are left alone in the world. Finding and playing challenging roles is what makes her tick and even though she hopes that she will never be contented she admits that it can be tough at times. “It’s always a struggle. What happens when you get a good script is that you think I really want to do this job. Then you go meet the director and you probably always think that it went terribly. Then when you do get the job, that day is amazing because you are excited about getting the job. Then pretty much the next day you think: ‘Not only do I have to do this, but I have to do it really really well or I’m never going to get another job ever again.’ Then pretty much until press night you are panicking. So it’s pretty stressful.”
All the stress must be paying off because beginning of next year she is going to play a lead in Arthur Schnitzler’s Sweet Nothings at the Young Vic. Catherine has also just finished filming the role of Joan Bulmer, the best friend and betrayer of Katherine Howard in the fourth and final season of The Tudors on BBC. She has her eyes set on other parts. “At the moment there are a couple of things that I really want to do. I quite like the idea of playing real people, people who have actually existed. There’s this script about Mary Shelley and I really want to play her. I want to play strong female characters. It’s hard to find scripts where the main character is a woman. Not just a woman who is trying to do something to a man or fighting for a man. You don’t usually get scripts where the main character is a woman, you do but then it’s a sexy and sassy main character.”
The little sister from Mansfield Park is well equipped for the intensity she is looking for with a pair of penetrating eyes that give a taste of serious to any conversation, bearing an interesting resemblance to the gaze of the only female actor she admires: Bette Davis. The list of intense character actors she follows is long: Daniel Day Lewis, Ed Norton, Johnny Depp, Philip Seymour Hoffmann…but it begs the question can a young girl who by her own description is shy and not dramatic carry her own in this business?
An hour in the life of…
Rumour has it Italians wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. The French are, well, divided. Some love it and some frown upon it as a question of principle. It’s American after all. As for the gringos, to them, it’s almost an upper middle class status symbol. If not that, then it is at the very least one of their most flourishing exports. In cities they have successfully conquered, there is one (or two) posted along every major street corner, as if no human being in their right mind could walk twenty meters without refuelling. Liberal America’s gift to the rest of the world, the green emblem with the mutant mermaid, a cup of coffee to go: Starbucks.
Walk into any one of them and the inviting décor is made up of friendly staff, (un) appetising food, wholesome music, sticky tables and couches for your lounging convenience. A home away from home, where people, who recycle and buy fairly traded coffee, come to feel cosy. That’s if they can overlook the fact that there are never, actually, any free couches, turn a blind eye to the lingering layer of dirt all around and ignore the unpleasant odour of stale milk.
In the course of any day it becomes the point of attraction for businessmen on their way to work, starved tourists looking for a familiar spot, and a stream of other visitors, young and old, who seem to have a lot of time on their hands.
9 am: Venti Cappuccino to go: City-type banker. Grey suit combined with an animal print tie matching the rehearsed air of confidence. The animal print is supposed to make up for the lack of personality. “Hey, look! I’m a dull banker but I have a tie with cute looking monkeys.” Grande sized cup paired with grande ambitions. Would small talk about the subject of bonuses be appropriate? Friday nights at Nobu, followed by Sketch. Sometimes, to show his “edge,” he ventures out to the east and hangs out at Love lounge. The ski trip is a must in the winter, while his facebook page contains a selection of his best sailing shots taken last summer.
9:30 am: Tall decaf soya latte to go: Young girl, early twenties, ready to take on life. Freshly washed hair. Pink lip-gloss. Given the thickness of her coat, the coffee must serve as a heating device. Apparently, she doesn’t want the cold to get in the way of her cuteness. Her cd collection includes every loungy compilation possible (Buddha Bar, Nikki Beach), her bookshelf has a coffee table book of portraits by Helmut Newton or Annie Leibowitz. She buys Wallpaper magazine and tries to keep up with the trends. Somewhere in her wardrobe there’s something by Marc Jacobs. She likes to brag about the weekend trip she took to Paris where she hung out in Saint Germain.
9:45 am: Chai tea, “no, not to go”. Turkish, student-type girl. “Oh, it’s your birthday? Want a cup cake with your tea?” (The American style customer-service only goes so far, as this was not going to be complementary.) Looks around for a free couch. Evidently, she thinks this is her office, because she takes out her computer and proceeds to Skype. Maybe she can’t afford an Internet connection at home. Privacy is obviously not an issue for her. Neither is being feminine. She looks like the cliché lesbian, not the hot L Word kind that would have any straight girl contemplate a trip inside the closet.
10 am: One mocha and a tall cappuccino join the Skyper. They could almost be twins. Both have curly hair and an alternative style. This could turn into a discussion about the future of the G8 and global warming. Then again, isn’t this very place one of the evils of globalisation? Ok, so possibly some sort of design students. “How many inches is yours?” Ooh, is it the eavesdropping jackpot? Oh, right the computer, how many inches is her computer. Maybe it’s an attempt to mentally calculate whether or not all three computers will manage to fit on one table. One table, three computers and three drinks. This could become interesting, but really it just becomes impossible. Enlightening and highly intellectual conversation follows: “He didn’t text me back. So, I texted him and asked: do you ever reply to messages? He still hasn’t responded. Do you think I should call him?”
10:10 am: One grande espresso and a bottle of water: Two Soprano-type men sit down. Starbucks seems so out of character. It must be that it’s too early to sit in a pub. “Investors give you a quote for £20,000 maybe £30,000 and it’s professional work…blablabla. I’m going to try and reschedule a meeting with them. It’s a great place to make money.” This is the one doing a seductive dance around the other. He clearly wants something. His eyes have the panicky twitch of someone who is close to a deal but hasn’t quite made it yet. He is ready and eager to close in, looking for his window of opportunity, while the other has the arrogant air of someone who knows he has the upper hand. The man with the eastern accent is enjoying the moment. “Let him beg me”, must be the melody that is stuck in his head. This scene could be cut and pasted in a strip joint. Or Walt Disney?
Clearly it’s time to go. Two cups of caffeine have exacerbated the right hemisphere. The Seattle coffee company is left with its nine remaining hours and infinite flux of people before the curtain falls. In case of withdrawal, there’s another one just down the street.