Catacombs Reference LibraryTV Times
Catacombs Reference LibraryTV Times, 1-7 August 1970, London edition, p2-4. Zienia Merton was appearing with Ian Hendry in the Playhouse film The High Game, shown on Monday 3 August 1970.
Zienia Merton talks to Dermod Hill
Zienia Merton counted the milestones of sis years in the acting business on her slender fingers.
She said: "I have been raped twice, once for the stage and once for the cinema. I have been violated, assaulted, had my throat cut, and been murdered in every variety of gruesome circumstance. I have been sinister and inscrutable, in fact, but anything vaguely resembling me."
One can't but sympathise with her conclusion "The British," said Burmese-born Zienia, "have some very peculiar ideas about Eastern women.
The parts open to them fall roughly into two categories, she told me. "The submissive concubine who is definitely not happy unless bowing backwards out of a tea house. And the waterfront tart with the heart of jade-most parts on offer are a variation of Suzie Wong."
Zienia, understandably, has developed the disagreeable feeling that she has strayed into somebody else's erotic daydream.
She realised that unless something was done, her career was liable to begin and end with the role of victim.
She explained: "In a play once, a spotlight was trained on the face of an actor playing a soldier. I had to mime what was going on in his mind as he looked at me. In other words, writhe about being physically vanquished. It was all very psychological.
"On the strength of my 'experience' I got a part in the film, The Adventurers, based on a Harold Robbins' novel. I am the one who is violated then stabbed to death at the beginning...
She continued: "I have encountered this strange attitude towards Eastern women even in private life. People give you the feeling that they expect you to be terribly submissive, a sort of shadowy, mute servant figure who ought to be kneeling in corners."
To really savour the absurdity, it is worth adding that Zienia is only, in fact, half Burmese. "My father is English as oak."
Zienia was educated in Europe in schools befitting refined, delicate daughters of gentlemen. "My father refused to send me to any school that played hockey. From the age of nine I was brought up variously in Portugal, France and England."
When she announced a leaning to the stage, Zienia was enrolled in a private boarding establishment in the country equipped to prepare well-heeled young ladies for the dramatic arts.
She eventually joined a Shakespearian Company for a season of Midsummer Night's Dream. It was an ominous debut. She spent six weeks playing a tree elf.
Thereafter, it was Suzie Wong all the way. Until at last Zienia took a pair of scissors and cut off most of her long black hair.
She lives now in an airy, bachelor girl flat in Victoria. She opened the door wearing white jumper and mini-skirt, her hair cut short in aggressive boyish style.
"Things have changed considerably since I altered my appearance a little. I can pass for French or Italian. I am getting a much broader range of roles. "I have been turned down for an Oriental part in a James Bond film on the grounds that I don't look Oriental enough. Although I must admit this surprised me. Usually, when they are making up a European actor for a mandarin part, they prefer to cast the genuine article so as to avoid too many comparisons.
"I am much happier. I always felt that the only exotic thing about me was my name. My sisters all have ordinary British ones. But during the war, my father worked in intelligence plotting Japanese troop movements. His department was code-named Z.
"After the war, when I was born, he decided to christen me with something he could remember it by."
Space: 1999 copyright ITV