It is a big step to move to a new country at the age of 75. Yet that’s what Stockard Channing, the American actress best known for her roles in The West Wing and Grease, did at the end of 2019. She used to be based in Maine with her partner of 25 years, the cinematographer Dan Gillham. He died in 2014, however. And two years ago she decided she was ready for a fresh challenge. Quite how much of a challenge she didn’t fully realise.
“Living on my own here during the pandemic, I was sort of taking the ride with the rest of the country,” Channing says with the unhurried finesse familiar from her screen roles. We are talking in her lunch
