Actor Ilona Rodgers is a bona fide national treasure. Soon to celebrate her 83rd birthday, the British-born star’s credits include Dr Who, The Billy T James Show and Gloss. These days, you’re more likely to find Ilona wearing gumboots and working on the 9.7-hectare property she shares with husband David at the foothills of the Southern Alps.
My father’s plane went down over the south of France in August 1945. The village was called Villeneuve-lès-Béziers and God bless the villagers because they named a street for him. So instead of a Rue de Victor Hugo, they have a Rue du Lieutenant Rodney Maurice Rodgers.
I was one of many who lost a parent, but that’s war for you. My mother was a widow, which is how she came to study hotel management in Switzerland. There, she met my stepfather, who was so good to me. He’d been an interrogator in the Nuremburg Trials and on de-mob day, he put on his civvy suit and flew to Lausanne, where he also trained in hotels. I was three when my mother enrolled me in L’École des Enfants, a school in the mountains that rehabilitated Dutch children born in Japanese prisoner of war camps.
We returned to England for my parents’ wedding at St James, a magnificent Cristopher Wren church in Piccadilly. Bomb blasts had badly damaged it and just the aisle, the altar and one side of the church remained. Someone has beautifully restored it now, but back then there were gaping holes in the roof. As their bridesmaid, I became quite drunk under the table, sipping everyone’s dregs.
After they married, they sent me to live with my grandmother Elsie. I was a terrible child – pretty and precocious, I didn’t speak English properly. When I took the Pullman train to Harrogate with Elsie, halfway there she had to smack my bottom because I was being so naughty.
My parents were sent to a beautiful Welsh town called Llangollen when I was five. They were restoring a hotel to its former glory – England was so broken after the war, with everyone scrambling to get back to life – but I was still running amuck, so my mother found a boarding school where the headmistress allowed Mum to pay what she could afford. I’d travel there by train in the guards’ van, with my teddy bear and school trunk, but the school often forgot to pick me up from the station. Going to boarding school from the age of three, you definitely come out tough.
Avid churchgoers, my parents were always seeking, and they read widely and thought deeply. They even became vegetarian and in the ’50s, they opened a famous health food shop and restaurant in Reading. Our middle-class relatives all thought they’d gone a bit mad talking about trees, lentils and religion. In a way, we were persona non grata, but my parents were on a journey.
I completed my schooling at Elmhurst Ballet School in Surrey. It was high Anglican, very dramatic and we had a great priest who taught us comparative religions. Everything from Judaism to Buddhism. Years later, I visited Father John and I said, “Hey, FJ, I became a Baha’i thanks to you showing us how all those major religions were essentially the same.”
Baha’i is a faith, not a religion. We believe that all the world’s religions emanate from the same genderless creative source. You can call it God, but they are known by many other names and every major religion stems from it. Socially progressive, Baha’i has no hierarchy and it’s inclusive rather than divisive. We see the world as one country and mankind its citizens.
We could do a whole article on the impact of denim jeans. People would stare at you in the street if you wore a pair. I was walking past a coffee shop in Bristol when I was studying there at The Old Vic Theatre School, and the girl I was with was wearing jeans. We saw three little old ladies twittering away, absolutely horrified that my friend was wearing trousers. But England was revolutionised in the ’60s and I’m so glad I was there to see that change.
Television was so new when I started, all in black and white. My first job was playing a nurse in a soap called Emergency Ward 10. But none of us had trained for television and it was all live to air. Standing in the wings at Elstree Studios, when the music came on, we’d start acting with 40 million people watching – and of course things went wrong. One play I did at Thames Television, we were doing the promo. I had to walk through a door and the whole thing came away in my hand.
I landed a play called Son of Oblomov with Spike Milligan, where I played Joan Greenwood’s maid. Spike wanted to do serious drama, so we directed and rehearsed like a classic Chekhovian play. The Russian Embassy came to opening night at the Lyric Hammersmith, but it was a total flop. Security escorted the Embassy staff out in tears. But we were determined to finish the run and when we realised people weren’t there to see Spike be serious, he started ad-libbing all over the place and we became the most successful flop ever to move to the West End. But Joan was a classical actress and she couldn’t take not knowing would happen next, so I took her part. For two years, I dodged around as Spike ad-libbed. That play was a turning point for my career.
My parents were running a hotel in New Caledonia when my mother needed to come to New Zealand for cancer treatment. I came over to support my stepfather, brother and sister. Even though people had warned me there’d be no television work, I joined The Mercury Theatre and worked with people like Ian Mune and Elizabeth Hawthorne.
We were living in Mairangi Bay while Mum was having treatment, when friends of my parents came to collect their son who’d been teaching skiing in Austria. There was David, looking every inch the dashing ski instructor. I said, ‘Hello you’, then it was goodbye because I was touring King Lear to the Bay of Islands. But David’s parents had a farm up north and one night he turned up in Whangārei. Lovely George Henare, who was playing Lear, said, “There’s a Stage Door Johnny outside for you with a bunch of flowers.” David and I married nine weeks later and I wasn’t even pregnant!
The secret to our marriage is friendship. We are polar opposites in many ways, which creates the need for lots of consultation. We’ve always been great friends regardless. David is also very particular about things, whereas I’m more laissez faire, more into emotions and empathising with people. Yet somehow we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last November and next month we’ll go to Vietnam to celebrate.
I saw a documentary called If A Tree Falls and it made a big impact on me, as did the Australian bush fires. They were burning when we cycled the Otago Rail Trail. The sky here turned red, which made us think about our contribution to the universe and our grandchildren’s future. So we sold up in Warkworth and bought this place near Arthur’s Pass. It’s a straw- bale house on 24 acres and in five years, we’ve planted over 8000 trees.
To celebrate my 80th, my son Mischa came over from Australia with his twins Hugo and Blake, which sounds like a Sydney department store. My brother also brought his family, including seven grandchildren, and we created a whānau forest. Everyone had a tree and a stick with their name on it. Each child now has their own tree which will be there long after we’re gone.
I have the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by my bed and I understand how people have thought it’s been the end of the world since time began. I’m also a product of the Second World War, so I remember what Paris and London looked like after they’d been bombed, yet we’re still here. I can also see Mt Oxford from my garden. When I think how long it’s been there, it gives me confidence that mankind can turn this thing around if people work together, because we owe it to the young to have a vision for their future.
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