I'd gone into that restaurant and sat down and the waitress had taken my order and everybody else had seen me with this what must have looked like this creature, this animal, sitting on the top of my head!
I've been a professional actor now for 38 years. A long time. And it's wonderful to earn your living doing something that you love. To think people actually give you money for it!
It was doing very well; it was doing particularly well outside of England. It was a very big seller for Carlton Television. But it was getting more and more expensive to do.
It's too hard a life for me. I could only do it - check out in that sense - if I checked out somewhere that was luxurious and within hailing distance of civilization.
I thought it was getting better and better, because the production values were increasing each time we did it.
They were totally supportive, always saw everything I did. One of the thrills of my life was when they went to the theater to see something that I wasn't in. It opened doors for them that otherwise would have been totally closed.
I truly don't know why it was ended, though. It was suddenly decided that that would be it. They never said particularly why, because they were cut off in their prime.
He was somebody who made me think, I suppose, about the contemplative life. I've always been a city fellow, but I've often had vague thoughts about 'checking out' and perhaps going into a monastery and just seeing what it was like.
I think my parents were happy that I'd gone to university and gotten a degree in history so they thought, 'Well if acting doesn't work for him, he can always become a history teacher or something.' Fortunately, the acting worked out.
Sir Larry could be very strict and a disciplinarian, too. He had many faces; he wore many hats. But, ultimately, he loved the theater and he loved actors.
I never lose that terror of 'this is my last job, I'll never work again.' You can never relax and rely on whatever reputation you've built.
We started filming in 1993 which was only four years after the fall of communism. The difference in Budapest over the last five years has been remarkable.
I've now been there, done that, and got the T-shirt. We just went to the registry office, signed a bit of paper and it was all over. We didn't have a bit party, but we had twenty-five friends to lunch. It was very quiet though, all over in a morning.
Every person who is offered a knighthood has the opportunity to say yes or no. You get a letter from the Prime Minister saying you've been recommended for a knighthood and there are two little boxes, one says yes, one says no.
It's as though you have crossed Niagara on a tightrope 250 times and, on the 251st crossing---vertigo. You are convinced you can't move across the stage without falling over. You go rigid from the knees down. You suddenly wonder, why am I doing this? I knew I'd got to get through a whole season, three spanking parts, and that if I ran away, I would never act on stage again. It was that knowledge that shocked me out of my illness. But I had a very bad time in the first weeks.
Knowing that we were doing good work and the stories were good. They were original and charming. They weren't particularly violent or sexy or any of that. They were just unique and that had a good feel to it.
Acting is painting, not photography, but painting is just as 'real' as photography. As an actor conscious that you are in a theatre, you still have to make it look as spontaneous as if you did not know that you are being watched by 1,000 pairs of eyes.
I had to think long and hard about what it would imply, what it would mean. Would it mean any alterations of one's lifestyle? Or, more than that, the way that people regarded you? The way they reacted to you if you had a Sir in front of your name?
I've been acting for 33 years. I've proved I can do it. So any performance now has got to be deeper and better than that, nothing to do with ego, bravura, look-at-me acting. That is an invitation to the audience to assess your ability, and it gets in the way. The object is to get past that and lose yourself in your belief in the person you are trying to create. To find something absolutely real. But I constantly hope to go further than I manage to do.
I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination.
Reputation is fine but you have to keep justifying it. In a sense, it makes it harder because people's expectations of you are higher. So, you have to fulfill those expectations. Or, try to exceed those expectations. But, it becomes more difficult as time goes on.
I shall miss all the people in it and the great fun we had doing it. I enjoyed playing the character very much. It was a very, very special character and a very special series. And the camaraderie of it all. I loved it.
I would like to be as fit as I've always been. I've been blessed with good health, I've been blessed with stamina. Particularly for those great classical roles, you need an Olympian stamina. I, fortunately, have that.
There's never been any game plan or thread through my career. It's just happened that I've ricocheted from one interesting character to another.
I think actors always retain one foot in the cradle. We're switched on to our youth, to our childhood. We have to be because we're in the business of transferring emotions to other people.
Actors, I don't think, ever really grow up. I'm hoping that that rejuvenating process applies to me, too. It has so far. I've been very lucky.
Ellis Peters's historical detail is very accurate and very minute, and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.
I think that each character has fascinated and interested me enough to want to play him.
You have to pretend to live in those clothes that they lived in, to live within the climate that they had then. You have to imagine with the help, obviously, of all the other technicians that are around - the writer, the director, the other actors.
I don't think he's permanently affected me except in the sense that I miss him. I miss being him. Or trying to be him. He is one of a gallery of characters that have had an impact on my career and therefore my life.
Ultimately it's a leap of faith and a leap of imagination to put yourself back in time into those conditions and situations and see how you would react.
Real-life people are often the hardest to play, people that you recreate who have actually lived, because you have to live up to people's knowledge of those characters.
It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets modern life provides for us, and realize that in those days, people were living very much on the edge - life was incredibly hard!
One of the last episodes was all about a flood. We were working in the rain till all hours, and it was muddy and it was cold and it was damp, and it was hours under the hoses. That was not pleasant. That was not pleasant.
What was so good about it was that the set that they originally built stayed there, and weathered over the five years. It got five summers and five winters of weather. It became more and more authentic as we worked in it, and they added bits to it.
I'm always conscious of the fact that I am part of a profession that is 80% permanently unemployed. So, to be working in any sense is to be privileged.
It was never physically dangerous except when I nearly fell off a horse, but it was physically arduous - especially when you were working late at night.
He was living in an age much more dangerous, more painful, much more on the edge than our own particular age.
Originally they wanted it to be bigger, but I pleaded and pleaded and pleaded to have the smallest tonsure that they could get away with. A tonsure that could still be seen, but, I worried about my social life!
You have to get through the Hamlet hoop as a young actor. Your classical qualifications are based on the quality of your Hamlet. And then, as an older actor, you have to get through the Lear hoop. And I'm approaching the Lear hoop.
My first course came and I put down my book, and I just happened to put up my hand to scratch my head and discovered that my toupee had been blown by the wind and was folded over backwards on the top of my head!
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