The Sunday Times August 27, 2006
My hols: Simone Lahbib
Furious elephants and Hollywood royalty make a holiday, says Simone Lahbib
The actress Simone Lahbib, 41, was born and brought up in Scotland. She has appeared in numerous television productions, including Thief Takers and Taggart, and played Isobel in the BBC's Monarch of the Glen, but it is for her role as the prison governor Helen Stewart in the ITV series Bad Girls that she is best known. She lives in London with her husband, the actor Raffaello Degruttola, and their baby daughter, SkyeALTHOUGH RAISED in America, my husband calls himself Italian. His roots go deep, and we return at least once a year to his family’s part of Tuscany. We stay on a farm where everything brought to the table, from wine and olive oil to chicken and vegetables, has been produced out the back. My father is a master chef, so food has always been important to me — and the food there is unsurpassable. Tuscany is such a beautiful part of the world, and the Italians are so hospitable that I feel instantly relaxed and very at home.
We spend most of our days eating, sleeping and sightseeing, or shopping in Florence, but sometimes we’ll help out on the farm and spend a day or so grape-picking. My Italian is slowly improving and I find it utterly fascinating to hear people exchanging news and views while they work. It’s a wonderfully intimate way of observing local life.
My father is French, and most of our family holidays involved visiting relatives in Paris and the south of France. From quite a young age, I’d be put on a plane on my own and met by various aunts and cousins, or by my grandmother, who lives in Cannes. I still go there once or twice a year, and feel I know a side of it rarely seen by visitors.
My grandmother lives in the old town, at the top of a tiny cobbled street lined with restaurants. Although she’s now 84, she strides around with the vigour of a teenager, bringing food and flowers from the market and fish from the harbour. I love seafood, and Cannes has the most amazing fish restaurants.
One of the most extraordinary places I’ve visited is Tobago. It has palm-fringed white sand and a translucent turquoise sea, but what made it so special was being able to snorkel over vast coral reefs with incredible multicoloured tropical fish. We took a glass-bottomed boat to a plateau of land and coral in the middle of the sea known as the Nylon Pool — apparently, Princess Margaret thought it was as clear as her nylon stockings. It is only 3ft deep, so you can stand up while entirely surrounded by water, which feels very strange. Local folklore promises that swimming in its water will make you look five years younger. Obviously, I’ll be going back regularly.
One of my most rejuvenating experiences was at a Turkish bath in Istanbul, where you could pay for someone to wash you. My personal washer was this huge Egyptian mamma who soaped, loofahed and massaged away, all the time singing as if she didn’t have a care in the world. It made me feel like a child again, with this wonderful maternal figure looking after me, and was incredibly relaxing.
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to go to South Africa on a publicity tour for Bad Girls. Everywhere we went, there were huge numbers of fans wanting autographs, but the trip’s highlight was staying in the Sabi Sabi game reserve, which borders the Kruger National Park. We stayed in lodges with their own private pools and outside showers. I remember showering and looking out across a wonderfully exotic back garden to the bush.
One night, we were eating in the restaurant, which was also out in the open, and our guide suddenly told us to be still, as he’d heard an elephant approaching. He’d had a bit to drink and started taunting the animal, which became more and more rattled, and raised its ears as if to charge. We were stiff with apprehension, but in the end the guide just picked up a pebble and threw it at the elephant, which turned away. Our guide obviously knew what he was doing, but we weren’t so sure.
We’re planning to visit Los Angeles later this year. The last time we went, we stayed in a fabulous apartment in the Villa Carlotta, built by William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s. Everyone stayed there, from Marilyn Monroe to Montgomery Clift, as well as a lot of hopefuls who didn’t make it. It’s virtually as it was in its heyday, with furniture taken from Hollywood sets. You really feel as if you are Monroe or Garbo — or, in our case, Al Pacino and Brigitte Bardot.
# Simone Lahbib talked to Lizzie Enfield
