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“It feels safer when you’re running along on the outside and you’re not at the front,” says actor turned writer- director Dolly Wells, talking about succeeding in her career later in life. “I think I was pretty lazy after university, and when the whistle blew, I was still faffing about, tying my shoes. Even once I started acting, it was hard to get jobs and have children at the same time. My career didn’t take off, and I didn’t exactly encourage it,” she says in her rapid-fire British speech. Wells’ career is now firmly in public view with her HBO series, Doll & Em, and a widely praised supporting role in the highly acclaimed film Can You Ever Forgive Me? And at 47, rather than putting on the brakes, she is entering the next stratosphere, having just written and directed her first film, Good Posture.
Wells married Mischa Richter, an American photographer, at age 28 and at 30, had her first baby, Elsie, followed by Ezra a couple of years later. “I hadn’t come to grips with my career at that age. It was so lovely being a mother and having a child,” she says. “But I do remember thinking those times when they were asleep were so important and I should try to get something constructive done — but mostly I just made banana bread and watched bad TV.” It wasn’t until actor Emily Mortimer, a childhood friend, found a book she felt they should adapt that Wells started writing. “Emily gave me focus. We both had little babies at the time, and we would sit in a café at Queen’s Park in London for hours, just writing. There was so much joy in it for us that it set us up in terms of writing together later.” While Wells happily pottered around in the English acting scene, Mortimer took off for Hollywood and started to become very well-known. “She’s much more disciplined than I am — she’s very clever, and a very good actress. I was much lazier, unambitious.”
Wells says she was subconsciously trying to recreate the laid-back, artistic atmosphere she was raised in. Her father, John Wells, was a British satirist and writer who became popular in the U.K. for his caricature of Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Dennis. “I grew up in a climate of fun, openness and friendliness, and I thought, ‘Oh, acting’s something I want to do,’” says Wells. She also wanted to give her children the same kind of playful, fluid, slightly glamorous upbringing she’d had. “I even brought them to work sometimes. I had a role in Star Stories [a satirical series that took a comedic look at celebrities’ lives]. There was a scene in a church, and I put Elsie and Ezra in the back and told them to be really, really silent. I was so irresponsible,” she says, laughing.
