NMP Live meets actor, author and director Simon Callow. In our exclusive, we discuss connecting with an audience, his start in the theatre and of course, that famous Scottish dancing scene.
Watch the interview or read the full transcript below.
In conversation with Simon Callow
I was working in a bookshop moving around these thousands of copies of Mills & Boon romances, for ladies in the suburbs. And I was going to the theatre, a lot, all the West End theatres and so on, but my favourite theatre was The National Theatre, The Old Vic.
Laurence Olivier was running it, Maggie Smith was in the company, Mike Gambon, Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud- it was just a miraculous place. So, I just suddenly thought how wonderful it would be to work in a place like this. Everybody seemed to be involved in it, not just the actors but the front-of-house staff, the people selling coffee, the people in the box office and so on.
So, I wrote Laurence Olivier a 3 foolscap page letter, closely typed, in which I explained to him what a wonderful theatre he was running, and I think I might’ve ended it with a phrase like ‘it makes one proud to be British’ or something. And by return of post came back a postcard from him saying: “If you like it so much why don’t you come and work here? We have a job in the box office.”
So, I went to work in the box office at The Old Vic, and immediately my whole life just stood on its head because I met actors, I’d never met an actor in my life before. I worked backstage, I sneaked into the back of rehearsals and I thought ‘my god this is a wonderful, wonderful job!’. To do this job, it wasn’t anything to do with the glamour, it was the fact that people were sitting around on stage trying to figure out how to make this play work and I thought that’s a great way to spend your life.
So, I thought, ‘what shall I do, shall I go to drama school, and I thought I’m too old for that’ - I was already 19. Then I thought maybe I’ll go to amateur theatre, but that was obviously a bad idea, because I knew I would’ve picked up all kinds of bad tricks. Then I thought, there are a lot of actors who go to university, and learn how to act there, Ian McKellen and people like that, I’d heard about it.
So I went to the Queens University in Belfast and the moment I got there I joined the Drama Society, and, when they discovered that I worked in the box office of The National Theatre for Laurence Olivier they gave me the leading part in the play immediately, I’d never acted before in my life!
So, I did it, and it was one of the great turning points in my life because I stood on stage and I knew that I was crap, absolute total crap! So if I was going to make a go of it I had to go and find out how to do it.
Throughout your life who has inspired you the most?
I suppose it is true to say that Laurence Olivier was a great inspiration to me. Not only was he a sublime actor, extraordinary actor. It’s impossible to describe to people what he was actually like on stage because when you see him on film it’s larger than life and it’s quite impressive. But you can’t imagine what it was like to see him actually there on the stage. He was like a panther, a panther with a very good sense of humour, because he was a brilliant comedian as well, and it was electrifying.
He was a leader, he led the British theatre, and he certainly created the National Theatre, and he directed those movies, and was an incredibly powerful figure. We, all of us, anybody who was born during his time and came to the business in his time, had a relationship to Laurence.
Some people hated his acting, but everybody knew that he was a person of huge stature and that was fantastic. And so, I have been inspired by a lot of his values, his love of the company, his love of excitement in the theatre – something we all, well I anyway, love very much.
So, he has been a bit of a guiding light, not in my acting, my acting is nothing like Laurence Olivier’s, alas.
What attracted you to Four Weddings and a Funeral and did you predict its success?
Well, it speaks for itself really, doesn’t it? You can imagine if you read that character why you would want to play him. Yes - it had success written all over it. I knew, absolutely knew, that it would be a huge success in England, and in America.
What was surprising was that it was a success, for example, the week it opened in Paris I happened to be there and there were queues around the block and there were no stars in it. We forget, because they became stars subsequently, Kristin Scott Thomas and Hugh Grant and so on were absolutely unknown. People just smelt success on that movie.
A bit later I did a film in Tahiti; they were queueing around the block in Tahiti. I directed a show in Tokyo; queueing around the block in Tokyo. Now that’s an unusual film - that has that kind of appeal and attraction. I couldn’t have predicted that, but you certainly knew if it wasn’t a big success, we would’ve really loused it up big time. It would’ve been our fault because it was a great script. Mike Newell is a wonderful director so there was no way that was going to happen.
The character was very attractive to me for all kinds of reasons: he was a gay man who was not a stereotype at all; he was in this very loving relationship with a character that John Hannah played called Matthew, and, it was at the time of AIDs. The great thing was that he died, not of AIDs but of Scottish dancing! I’ve always thought that the film should be described as a Government Health Warning against the perils of Scottish dancing. I nearly died doing the Scottish dancing I can tell you!
Can you recall your first experience in front of a live audience?
Funnily enough, I remember particularly one year at Christmas, reading the Nativity story. My mother told me afterwards, but I knew whilst it was happening. We were sitting, eight of us kids were reading, and we were on a platform, with parents and other kids at the front, and the kids were reading (not well at all it has to be said) and I was like Boris Johnson. I couldn’t keep myself still for a second - my hair was all over the place, knowing that they weren’t very good.
Shocking behaviour but I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to make life hard for them, I just couldn’t keep myself together. Then it came to me to read, and I had this starring passage about the little baby in the manger and all the rest of it, and I read it and the whole audience just fell silent, and listened, and I felt this strange power, and it was a wonderful thing, and I always think of acting as storytelling.
How do you move beyond the script to really connect with your audience?
I think, in my case anyway, it may not be so for everybody, but in my case, it is the idea of telling stories, you think “boy have I got a great story for you tonight.” You always try to make sure that people get it, without being heavy-handed about it or laying it on with a trowel. Each little piece of the story adds something, and you’ve got to make sure it lands properly, so that’s what you’re thinking of all the time.
You’ve got to get the audience up to speed, because, after all, an audience comes into the theatre or comes to a dinner like this having had a hard day at work, having been on the tube or in a car or however they’ve come here, it’s been stressful. They’ve been thinking about ten hundred other things; they probably left the house in a rush or the office in a rush or something like that, had a quick drink at the bar, a couple of peanuts, checked their mobile phone ten times, and then finally, even as the curtain is going up they’re putting their phone in their bag, if you’re lucky as it’s not very often nowadays that they do, and thinking “what is this, what play are we going to see, darling? Which one was it we booked for?”, as the curtain goes up!
So, you’ve got to reclaim them in that moment, you’ve got to draw them in. If they miss the first five minutes of the play because they’re not really with it, they’re going to find it hard. It’s like a joke, you have to hear the first line and follow it all the way through otherwise you’re sunk. So, part of what is called stagecraft is exactly that, to just draw people’s concentration in. It can be done in a musical by huge energy, although I’m not such a believer in that, it can be done by waking people up, or, you can become quiet, so people say “what is he saying? Oh that’s interesting.” So, you start to get people moving forwards in their seats like this, that’s the trick.
As the German writer Brecht always used to say, he wanted people on the edge of their seats like that, he wanted his audiences to be like people at a boxing match, rather than just sitting back and letting it wash over you.
Do you have any funny memories from your time in the theatre?
People always think that things go wrong in the theatre, but they don’t, very often!
In rep things used to go wrong because nobody had any time, and, certainly, when I was doing A Christmas Carol in Lincoln, and I was playing Mr. Fezziwig and Bob Cratchit in different scenes. There came the big scene of Fezziwig’s ball and everyone’s singing ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman’ and dashing around doing these Victorian dances, and Mrs. Fezziwig and I were being particularly jolly that afternoon, and suddenly we fell through the floor, we fell sixteen foot through the floor!
When we realised that we weren’t actually dead, which was a relief, we looked up and we saw twelve actors peering down into this hole in horror. Somebody said to the stage manager to bring the curtain in but the stage manager was also completely bereft and did nothing. Eventually, one smart guy said, “well then Mr. Fezziwig, down in the wine cellar again I see?”, bless him.
So, we decided we’ve got to get out of here somehow, there were metal rungs on the side, and so we got up and our heads appeared out of this hole. What the children in the Theatre Royal in Lincoln thought was going on I have no idea, they probably thought it was always like this! But of course, in falling through I’d lost my wig and my glasses, and so to all intents and purposes the person who fell into the hole was Mr. Fezziwig, and the person who came out was Bob Cratchit!
So eventually we got out and carried on dancing. And then Taya, the woman who was playing my wife, Taya and I just lay down in the wings and laughed in that painful laughter way, it’s not really funny but you’re just rigid with laughter, oh god it was agony!
If you're interested in booking Simon Callow you can enquire online, email us or pick up the phone and speak to one of our booking agents. For further information about Simon view his profile or browse other after-dinner speakers and awards hosts.
Tags:
