The foremost interpreter of her former husband, Harold Pinter’s, female characters. No one has ever said “Hmm,” like her. It sounds like something between a full stop, a pause, and a dismissal. One thinks of Merchant’s voice as it might have sounded reading certain sections of George W.S. Trow’s seminal 1978 profile of Ahmet Ertegun, the late co-founder of Atlantic Records, aloud, particularly in those sections Trow writes about Mica Ertegun, the co-founders wife:
Mica, whose accent allows for little in the way of reflection, showed her admirable sense of timing by punctuating the conversation with simple sentences delivered in a manner that implied authority, or indifference, or both. (Crucial to understanding Mica’s speech is the expression “Yah. It’s divine, no?” This expression can mean “Yes, it’s divine, I couldn’t agree more,” or “Yes, it’s divine, but why bring it up?” or “No, I don’t think it’s divine” or “I wish you would go away.” Mica uses it frequently, and in almost all circumstances it defies response and ends the conversation.
But now Harold Pinter is dead, and George W.S. Trow is dead, and Ahmet Ertegun is dead, and so is Vivien Merchant: after the dissolution of her marriage to Pinter, she drank herself to death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ftsnOO5lJI