Mark Strong

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the actor Mark Strong. His career took off after a breakthrough role in the landmark BBC series Our Friends in the North, first broadcast twenty five years ago.

Presenter0:56

Since then, he's appeared in more than 60 films as well as acclaimed stage and T V productions, revealing his immense creative agility. You've perhaps tried and failed to forget what he does to George Clooney's fingernails in Siriana. He gave equally memorable performances in other thrillers like Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy and Zero Dark Thirty. He's at home in the sci-fi, fantasy and comic book worlds of Stardust, Kickass and Shazam, not to mention slick action series Kingsman and 2009's Sherlock Holmes. In 2014, he returned to the London stage in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, winning the Olivier Award for Best Actor, and the New York critics were equally impressed when the show transferred to Broadway. He credits a childhood spent in state boarding schools from the age of just six with teaching him to take on roles as a way to survive. These days, audiences love him because he's so good, especially when he's being bad. He says, I love the baddies. More important though, is making the baddies somehow weirdly understood.

Presenter1:58

Mark Strong, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Mark Strong2:01

Oh, thank you for having me.

Presenter2:02

You use the word transformation a lot, and you love that kind of aspect of what you do, the make believe of it, you know, dressing up and inhabiting an entirely different world. What is that desire to transform yourself about, do you think?

Mark Strong2:15

There's something about the inhabiting of somebody else's persona of getting into their soul, wearing their shoes, you know, just being somebody else. I just weirdly find it fascinating. I suppose it's probably because growing up I didn't really have a sort of traditional family structure around me, siblings and all of that. So I realized I use characters maybe to just.

Presenter2:32

Yeah.

Mark Strong2:37

work out how to behave, you know, who to be.

Presenter2:40

Yes, trying on different personalities for size.

Mark Strong2:43

Yeah.

Presenter2:43

So Mark, you're currently filming the second series of your television show, Temple. It's about an underground surgeon who patches up villains while trying to find a cure for his sick wife. What sort of preparation did you have to do for that role?

Mark Strong2:57

Well, I went to St Thomas's and watched a surgeon performing some sort of terrible procedure on somebody's lung, which I wondered whether I'd be able to not faint, basically. How did you get on? Found it really fascinating. He was watching it on a screen, and he had the instruments through two holes in the person's chest, and he was basically manipulating everything inside the body while watching a screen. And he found a sort of particularly gruesome-looking piece of the lung, cut it with a particular instrument that seemed to cauterize it at the same time, and then sort of pulled it out through the hole. And the person he was assisting came over and sort of showed it to me. He went, here, look at that. It's like a bit of old boot leather. Wow. And that was a bit of a stunning moment. But it made me realise that surgery.

Presenter3:05

I wondered

Speaker 13:35

Yeah.

Mark Strong3:39

Often when we see it portrayed, it's done with classical music playing in the background, everyone's in control. But actually, they were all having a chat, whatever they they were going to do on the weekend. But they said obviously, if there's a problem, we all know exactly what we're doing.

Presenter3:53

You're sharing your tracks with us today. I know you're very passionate about music. How did you go about narrowing down your discs to the eight that you're going to share with us?

Mark Strong4:01

I thought that I would want to take the tunes that I just keep coming back to in my life. If I'm around with people and I just want to sort of put a tune on that I want to dance around the kitchen to, these are the ones I think that I just keep coming back to. And they're all sort of from a particular period in my life when I think

Mark Strong4:20

Punk happened sort of late seventies, it made me realize that music could give you your sense of self.

Presenter4:27

We better dive in and get the kitchen dancing started. What are we going to hear first and and why have we chosen this?

Mark Strong4:32

Spanish Stroll by Mink Deville. And the reason I've chosen it will become self-evident. It's such a great tune, it's so cool. I just heard this when I was a kid and just thought, who is this guy? Who is this band? What is this music?

Speaker 34:48

Uh

Presenter4:48

Uh

Speaker 34:48

Hey, Mr. Jim!

Presenter4:51

Uh

Speaker 34:51

I can see the shape you're in.

Speaker 34:56

Finger on your eyebrow

Speaker 34:59

And left hand on your hip.

Speaker 35:03

Thinking that you're such a lady killer

Presenter5:08

You're so slick.

Presenter5:10

Well alright.

Presenter5:17

Spanish Stroll by Mink Deville. Mark Strong, in 2014, you returned to the stage, playing Eddie Carboni, the Italian-American dock worker, in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. Now, much earlier in your career, you had appeared in Death of a Salesman at the National Theatre, and I think you met Arthur Miller then. Is that right?

Mark Strong5:37

Yeah, we were doing the play and the director at the time said did we want to go and meet him over in Salzburg? He was chairing some sort of artistic conference that was going on. Do you remember the film Sound of Music?

Presenter5:49

Yeah, of course.

Mark Strong5:49

Do you remember Christopher Plummer's house, that big house? Yes. In that house. What? Yes, there was some sort of gathering of people from all over the world who have something to do with theatre.

Presenter5:51

Yes.

Presenter5:58

A salon of sorts.

Mark Strong5:59

Yeah, yeah. It was a kind of how theatre works in society and he was chairing it and so we got on a plane, we went over, just a few of us, and we basically helped them out with their lectures and what they were talking to each other about in Christopher Plummer's house and in one small room we'd drag Arthur Miller away and do the play with him and he would sit and read it with us and listen to us read it with him and it was unbelievable.

Presenter6:26

What did you take from what he said?

Mark Strong6:28

I absorbed his ease with us. There was no panic. He wasn't fretting about his play. He just was enjoying the fact that we were all in this creative endeavour together.

Presenter6:39

Your performance in A View from the Bridge won the kind of reviews that every actor dreams of in London and New York. I wonder how it felt as a British actor playing the role of a Brooklyn Docker on Broadway?

Mark Strong6:50

I was terrified initially because I thought

Mark Strong6:54

You know, we're taking an American play not only to the States, but to New York. And a lot of the lines in the play about No Strand Avenue, which is a road there, or Times Square, even, they were literally just a stone's throw from where we were performing. So I knew that we would have an audience full of people who knew exactly what we were talking about. But I have to say, there's an incredibly kind aspect to the New York theatre community. They're very inclusive. They all come and see your show.

Mark Strong7:21

They'll invite you out for dinner and the audiences are really non judgmental. You know, the amazing people that came backstage, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, Sigourney Weaver, I mean everybody who was there at the time would come and see the show, and they were incredibly kind.

Presenter7:36

It's been an incredibly challenging time for theatre in particular and live events industry across the board. Is it something that you miss? Is it something that you worry about?

Mark Strong7:46

Extremely worried. I mean it's a it's a really desperate time for theatre. At this moment I've no idea when people will be able to get back into a room and watch a play. I was about to do Oedipus with Helen Mirren in the West End and we've had to postpone that. And the earliest we can even think of starting to rehearse is is spring.

Presenter7:57

Hmm.

Mark Strong8:03

2022.

Presenter8:05

It's time for your next disc to day, Mark. Second up. What have we got?

Mark Strong8:08

My second disc is Are You Lonesome Tonight by the amazing Elvis Presley, who I used to hear a lot because my mum played him a lot when I was a kid. But what I love about this particular track is that he is his exuberance comes across. He kind of starts giggling and loses it, which is something that happens on stage quite a lot as well. And it's that giggle I just find really infectious, and I wanted to take it with me to the island because it just makes me happy every time I hear it.

Speaker 18:43

I won't crack it.

Speaker 18:50

The world's a stage and each must play apart.

Speaker 18:59

I tried.

Speaker 19:05

Oh god.

Presenter9:14

The famous laughing version of Are You Lonesome Tonight by Elvis Presley, recorded live in Las Vegas in nineteen sixty nine, Ark Strong. So uh that one bringing back memories of your mum, Danielle. She was from Austria, but you were born here in Islington, in London. What had brought her to the UK?

Mark Strong9:34

I think the 60s was happening in the UK and she was a girl in Vienna and at 18 I think she decided she wanted to come and just check London out because it was the centre of the universe at that time. And she'd been in convent school and been running away a lot, didn't want to be there and just got on a train and came over to London and got a job as an au pair and reinvented herself.

Presenter10:01

And then you came along. You were born Marco Giuseppe Salasoglia. Your dad was Italian. Do you know much about that side of the family history?

Mark Strong10:09

No, not really. I mean he he left when I was a baby, so I didn't really have an awful lot to do with him. I'm not sure where he is now, and uh

Mark Strong10:18

The thing perhaps that we have in common is that neither of us seem to have needed each other particularly, which is sad on one hand, but on the other what it managed to do was uh make me incredibly independent.

Speaker 110:23

Which

Mark Strong10:28

I think having no authoritarian figure or figure that you had to feel you

Mark Strong10:35

Had to please or look up to meant I had to make it up myself.

Presenter10:39

So I'm guessing money must have been quite tight. The late sixties wasn't the easiest time to be a single parent.

Mark Strong10:45

No, I remember we lived in a one room in Stoke, Newington, and bless her, my mum hung a washing line across the room and put a blanket over it so that we had two rooms. That was the idea. And she was working two jobs. She worked in the rag trade in a factory in Islington and then would come home and have to work in a bar in the evenings. So I spent a lot of time with neighbours and just being taken care of and the kind of community spirit of Islington around that time was really strong.

Speaker 110:58

Hmm.

Speaker 111:04

Mm.

Presenter11:15

And what do you remember about your mum at that time? You know, as you say, she was young and she'd come to London looking for the fun and culture that was kind of here. Sh she was working in the rag trade, but I know she was a pretty snappy dresser as well.

Mark Strong11:27

Yeah. I remember her beehive. That's the thing. She had this incredible hairdo, and she used to make her own clothes as well, these really thin, sort of pencil thin skirts and matching jackets and heels, and always looked immaculate.

Presenter11:41

She worked her way up, I think, in the rag trade and was a rep at one point.

Mark Strong11:45

Well, she'd travel around different shops with swatches of material and I'd go with her sometimes and she'd just take orders from people, you know, try and sell them what the factory was making. It was a company called Paul Separates, run by an incredible family called the Stoloman family, who I'm still very good friends with. It was Sidney Stoloman who she worked for who was largely responsible for getting me my education and getting me the opportunities that I've had.

Presenter11:58

Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:10

Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:13

He got you a place in a state boarding school.

Mark Strong12:16

It used to be an orphanage, I think, and then it became the Asylum for Fatherless Children, I think it was called. It was set up by a philanthropist, and by the time I got there, it was called Readham School, and its policy was that it would take kids from one parent families.

Presenter12:31

I mean, that must have been bewildering.

Mark Strong12:33

There's a photograph that my mother has of me looking very teary on the day that she left me in my uniform and said, Okay, this is where you're going to be now for a bit. But I love the fact that I was with other kids my age, because obviously being an only child, I didn't have anyone to play with.

Presenter12:38

Hmm.

Presenter12:48

Hmm.

Mark Strong12:49

and suddenly I was in the middle of a bunch of people who were all my mates.

Presenter12:52

We'll find out a little bit more about what happened next in a moment. Before we get there, Mark, it's time for your third disc today. Tell us about this one.

Mark Strong13:00

This is David Bowie, who, when I was a kid and coming of age, was my idol. I just thought creatively, musically.

Mark Strong13:12

In terms of fashion, he was somebody that opened my eyes to the possibility of creating your own persona, if you like. And this track is Heroes, but it's the German version.

Mark Strong13:23

called Helden and obviously I speak German so it has an extra resonance for me.

Speaker 113:30

Lovely nuts today.

Speaker 113:38

Kitchens Einerscher.

Speaker 113:43

Doctor Man Dessie's gun

Speaker 113:47

The Imma Hunting Bar

Speaker 113:52

This isn't that heaven.

Speaker 113:56

New Island Town.

Speaker 313:57

Uh

Presenter14:02

Helden by David Bowie. Now, Mark Strong, as you said, you're the person to assess that vocal performance because you were fluent in German before you learned English, I think.

Mark Strong14:12

Pretty much. I spoke a German word before I did an English word, yeah. Oh, did you? Yeah, his accent, it's pretty damn good. What was your first word then, do you know?

Presenter14:15

Oh, did you

Presenter14:19

Yeah.

Mark Strong14:19

It was Auto, which is car.

Mark Strong14:23

Because my mum had come over so young to London, when the holidays happened and stuff, she would take me back home to see my grandmother and I'd stay with her and she lived in a beautiful village called or town called Schladming, which is now a ski resort. But back then it was just a kind of ramshackle rural community and I had the most idyllic time just running around in fields and

Speaker 114:29

Yeah.

Presenter14:29

Yeah.

Mark Strong14:46

Learning to ski, because at the top of her road was a sort of an old ski lift with single seats that would take you up the mountain, and part of it was to go up there and walk in the summer, but you could also go up there if it was snowing. So I just used to literally put some skis on my shoulder, walk the seventy five yards up the hill to the lift, and then I'd be up there skiing all day.

Presenter15:04

It must have been quite a change from Islington and Stoke Newington.

Mark Strong15:07

It was.

Mark Strong15:09

As I grew up a bit, I think being back in the UK was where I wanted to be. And in fact, when my mum then went back to Germany when I was um eleven, because England was going through a difficult time, she could earn more money back there, she asked me whether I wanted to stay here or go there, so I I stayed here.

Presenter15:25

And that is quite a decision to make at eleven years old.

Mark Strong15:29

It's a very difficult decision to be asked, Zwake, yeah.

Presenter15:32

Yeah.

Mark Strong15:33

I didn't know anybody in Germany, that was the thing. There was only my grandmother over there, and she was in Austria. And my mum was going back to

Mark Strong15:40

Dusseldorf to go and work in a shop. And you have to remember the 70s, at that time, it was the three-day week, there was rubbish piling up in the streets, there were power cuts. You know, frequently the lights would go out, you'd all have to scrabble around for candles. Yet, Germany was having an economic miracle. She could literally earn three times as much working over there than here.

Mark Strong16:00

I just realized she had to go and do that, but I didn't feel that there was anything over there for me. I didn't know anything about Germany at that time.

Mark Strong16:08

Having said that, I stayed here and stayed in boarding school over here, but I used to go home in the holidays. So Christmas, Summer and Easter, I'd go and visit her.

Speaker 116:13

Yeah.

Presenter16:13

So

Mark Strong16:16

And that's where I kind of learned a bit about Germany.

Presenter16:20

It's time for disc number four.

Mark Strong16:21

Well, the fourth track is By the Clash, a seminal band and one that had an incredibly kind of uh a big influence on my life because when punk arrived it was okay, what the hell is this? This can be for me, not for the adult generation, and um this is something that I can own.

Mark Strong16:40

And the reason I've chosen Police and Thieves is because there was a fascinating synergy between reggae and punk at that time. I think they were both kind of protest music.

Mark Strong16:51

There was the sense that punks and guys that liked reggae could be on the same side.

Mark Strong16:58

Police empty ease in the street.

Mark Strong17:03

Oh yeah.

Mark Strong17:05

Scaring the nation with them.

Mark Strong17:08

Gun them emulation.

Mark Strong17:11

Male Speaker 1.

Speaker 117:12

Stanthe

Mark Strong17:13

Uh

Speaker 117:13

He's in the street

Speaker 117:15

Oh yeah.

Speaker 117:17

Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition.

Presenter17:28

The Clash covering Junior Mervyn's Police and Thieves. So Mark Strong, your teenage years were spent at another state boarding school in Norfolk. Not exactly a crucible of punk, but the genre, the music, the culture found its way to you there. How did it happen?

Mark Strong17:39

The culture

Mark Strong17:42

Yeah.

Mark Strong17:43

I used to listen to John Peel every night. Um, ten o'clock, I think he came on. He had a show for a couple of hours, and I used to have a little radio that I would uh go to sleep with on my pillow and listen to

Mark Strong17:54

everything that he was playing.

Presenter17:56

Punk was all about DIY. Anybody could do it. How did you go from being a fan to wanting to get up on stage and start a band?

Mark Strong18:03

I think it was Sounds, had a full page given over to three chords.

Mark Strong18:10

drawn onto the page, and underneath it said, Here's three chords, now go out and form a band.

Mark Strong18:14

And I took it literally. So the guys in my dorm, we all got together and I said, you go and buy a guitar, you go and buy a snare drum and a hi-hat, you go and get yourself a bass. And we just basically got the instruments. And at school, I was in charge of the electronics, the amp and the speakers. So I could find a little room, set up the amp and speakers, we could plug in and make a noise.

Presenter18:35

Now, I know that illustration that you're talking about. It's by Tony Moon. It's called Three Chords. This is a chord, this is a chord, this is a chord, now form a band. I've got it up in my house. I mean, you know, started many a group.

Mark Strong18:44

Stop.

Presenter18:46

And so it was that you found yourself on stage at Ashthorpe Village Hall, am I right?

Mark Strong18:50

Ashwalthorpe Village Hall, yes. Good God, that was a seminar concert. I think there were more of us on stage than there were in the audience. But we threw ourselves around and had a good time. I think one of us left our exercise book behind with some of the lyrics to some of the songs. And I think there was a complaint from somebody who found the book to the school that what was this terrible filth that was happening in Ashwalthorpe Village Hall.

Presenter19:19

So you were obviously doing punk right, to some extent.

Mark Strong19:21

Yeah, we were making a noise and just kind of stupid lyrics, you know, but somebody managed to get offended, so we were really proud.

Presenter19:21

Uh

Presenter19:27

All of that then, interestingly, proceeded at you leaving school and going to study law in Germany. Not the obvious path for an aspiring punk hero. What made you decide to do that?

Mark Strong19:39

I think I was conforming around about that time. I didn't really know.

Mark Strong19:45

where I was headed, what to do. I spoke German, so there was talk of me going to university to study German.

Mark Strong19:51

I wasn't really enamoured of that. I couldn't really get the teachers off my back at school, so the only thing I could think of was we discovered, my mother and I, that you could enter Munich University if you lived there.

Mark Strong20:01

And the A levels that I had were

Mark Strong20:03

Enough to get me in there. So I just sort of randomly chose law because I thought it would be a great thing to do. I thought it was grown up and

Mark Strong20:12

And it would stand me in good stead. But I think I realized in retrospect I just wanted to act being a lawyer. You know, I saw myself in a sort of with a briefcase in a in a BMW with a raincoat saving people or whatever.

Speaker 120:17

No, I saw

Mark Strong20:23

And it was just fiendishly difficult, and not for me.

Presenter20:27

By chance, though, you did have some next-door neighbours who inspired your next move. You were studying law. What were they doing?

Mark Strong20:36

They were doing, and only the Germans can call it this, a Theater Wissenschaft, which literally means theatre science. But they were playing truss games and.

Speaker 120:43

Yeah.

Mark Strong20:46

I just wondered what the hell they were doing. They seemed to be having a hell of a lot more fun than I was. A light bulb went off in my head. So I I came back to the UK to go and do a an English and drama degree.

Presenter20:57

So once you'd started studying drama at university and later at the Bristol Old Vic, how confident were you that you were on the right path, that you'd started to kind of find your way?

Mark Strong21:08

I knew that acting and theatre were something that

Mark Strong21:12

I didn't have to work to be interested in it. It just was fascinating to me. In fact, when I was at drama school,

Mark Strong21:20

And we were leaving.

Mark Strong21:23

A chap rang me up from the Worcester Swan Theatre before I'd left and said, Look, I'm doing a season here. Do you want to come and be part of that season?

Mark Strong21:32

And he said to me, You don't have to say yes because you'll have other offers. And I didn't even consider the other offers or think about it. I just went, Yes, yes, I'm coming. I just knew that I wanted to get going in that world. And I went to Worcester and did nine plays in nine months, which is like another year at drama school. And I loved every second of it.

Presenter21:51

It's time for your next track, Mark Strong, disc number five. What are we going to hear and why are you taking it with you today?

Mark Strong21:57

Disc V is just a catchy tune. I remember just thinking not only is an incredibly clever version of Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones, but it is unique and inventive.

Mark Strong22:13

And it it gets me going every time. It's my Devo.

Presenter22:16

I can't get no

Presenter22:18

Setters back, John

Speaker 322:21

Uh

Presenter22:21

Come here! Damn me no!

Speaker 122:22

Uh

Speaker 122:24

Let us back John

Speaker 122:26

And I drop

Speaker 122:27

In a truck, in the truck, I try, I can't get no

Speaker 122:34

Okay, get those!

Speaker 122:36

When I'm riding in my car and a man comes on the radio, he's telling me more and more about some useless information.

Presenter22:47

Devo covering the stones with satisfaction. Mark Strong, I noticed that there's there's a bit of a kind of running theme in your music of alternate versions, unusual covers. Everything's slightly at an angle today, which I find fascinating.

Mark Strong22:59

And then the first one is a very good.

Mark Strong23:01

I think it's because I like

Mark Strong23:04

Not doing the obvious. Just maybe in acting and in taste, not choosing the thing that everyone else likes or doing the thing that everyone else is doing. What's the other thing? You know, when you've played anger over 30 years, you've got to work out different ways to do it. You know what I mean? Otherwise, you're just doing the same thing every time. So I like something that's a little left field, if possible.

Presenter23:06

Do.

Presenter23:23

If possible. How easily do you take to being part of a a company or a an on-set family?

Mark Strong23:29

I love it, because in the absence of family as a kid and doing cod psychology on myself, probably being part of a theater group or being on a film set with a group of people is like it's like family. In that time you are incredibly close.

Mark Strong23:43

You see each other at their best and their worst. You wake up with them, you say good night to them, and it's an all day, every day. I mean, I've just come off Temple II ninety six shooting days, and you get very close with people.

Mark Strong23:56

So I love that family element. What I also love, ironically, is the fact that you say goodbye.

Mark Strong24:02

And you have to say goodbye, so you get to have another family somewhere down the line. And I'm sure that also comes from my

Mark Strong24:10

my upbringing, that, you know, I was in one school and then another school and then I was at my mum's house and I and I just moved on from place to place. And in life, I think I've always just I've moved on forward and acting gives me the opportunity to do that.

Presenter24:22

It's time for your sixth disc now. What have you chosen for us?

Mark Strong24:26

Disc Six is a nod to my clubbing period, and uh it's a tune that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. It's You've Got the Love by Candy Staten, but it's DJ Aaron's bootleg mix, which has a phenomenal bass line.

Presenter24:48

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air.

Presenter24:53

I know I can count on you.

Presenter24:56

Sometimes I feel like sin or I just don't care. But you've got the love I need to see me through.

Presenter25:05

Sometimes it seems the boy is just too rough.

Presenter25:09

Things go wrong no matter what I do.

Presenter25:13

Now and then I feel like life is just too

Speaker 325:16

Uh

Presenter25:17

You've got the love, the source featuring Candy Stat and Erin's bootleg mix. So, Mark Strong, your career got a massive boost when you were cast in the BBC One Drama series by Peter Flannery, Our Friends in the North. Your co-stars were quite the roll call, and it was a huge break for all of you: Daniel Craig, Christopher Eccleston, Gina McKee, and you. The piece is 25 years old now, but still seen as a landmark in T V drama. Did you have any sense that it would go on to be so revered and important at the time?

Mark Strong25:48

No, none whatsoever. I didn't realise that at all. I remember Daniel and I walking through the streets of Newcastle going, do you think this is going to be any good? Because we just didn't realise. And I'd been in the theatre doing plays and to do a long shoot like that, I think it was nearly a year probably of shooting, and aging from sort of twenties up to 50s was no big deal for me because that's kind of what I'd been doing in the theatre.

Mark Strong26:14

So I I just did it thinking, Great, this is a good piece of writing, and they're great actors, and I just hoped it would do all right.

Presenter26:21

And it was a drama on a very broad canvas: housing policy, corruption in the North East, police corruption in London, the miners' strike.

Mark Strong26:29

But that's what made it so successful, I think. It was a political state of the nation piece that looked at our country from Harold Wilson through to Margaret Thatcher, but through the eyes of four fairly ordinary individuals who were growing up at the time. And that's its special

Mark Strong26:46

thing I think is that the the synergy of those two things.

Presenter26:50

It's time for disc number seven. What are we going to hear, Mark?

Mark Strong26:53

Right, disc 7 is just one that gets me leaping around the house, and there's something about that little bell in there that just, yeah, does it for me. This is.

Mark Strong27:03

Run DMC

Mark Strong27:04

Peter Piper.

Speaker 127:06

Little ball be cold lost a sheep

Presenter27:34

Peter Piper, Run DMC. So Mark Strong, you and your wife Liza have two teenage sons. I wonder how you approached being a dad, given that you had no role model of your own on that front.

Mark Strong27:47

It was and has been a revelation. I had no blueprint of how to behave. I had no inkling of how I would behave. I suppose what it's taught me more than anything is patience, because I have especially when I play football, I have a a tendency to kind of

Mark Strong28:07

The red mist can descend very quickly. You know, I can go down that path very quickly. And I think I've learned over the years that that doesn't have any value. And you basically, with boys,

Mark Strong28:17

You've just got to give them love because they're almost fully formed when they come out of the womb. I think you think you're changing them, you think you're doing things to them by teaching them whatever it is you're teaching them, but actually I think that they have their spirit in them already. So all you really need to do is just carry them through from being very, very young to adulthood.

Presenter28:37

Mark, over lockdown people have perhaps had more time than they would usually to spend with their families and of course it's been a very tricky time too. People are at a loose end, particularly in your industry. And I wondered if you'd learned anything about yourself during this COVID period when you couldn't work before your TV show was back up and running.

Mark Strong28:57

I've learned that family is incredibly important and actually the best thing you can do is be around because a lot of my working life has been going abroad to make films and luckily the kids were toddlers for a lot of that time and all you're really doing then is stopping them bumping into the furniture. They don't really miss you as long as they're having a good time. Whereas when they become teenagers I think they need to start asking you questions about life and they want to work stuff out. Even though they may be too embarrassed to do it, I'm aware that those issues will be coming up for them. Love, trust, hate, whatever they're experiencing. And the lockdown has kind of taught me that being around

Mark Strong29:34

is very useful for that. And it's kind of brought us all together in a way that probably wouldn't have happened had there not been any pandemic. I would have probably been abroad filming and everything would have been fine.

Mark Strong29:49

But there's just been an extra level of sort of family togetherness that I've absolutely loved.

Presenter29:54

It's almost time to cast you away, Mark. How do you think you'll manage on the island? Are you practical?

Mark Strong29:59

Not in a DIY sense, no. But I am good at problem solving and problems, so I think I would be quite practical. Yeah, if I had to build a shelter or something like that, I'd probably get on with it and be all right.

Presenter30:07

Like that.

Speaker 130:07

Uh

Mark Strong30:10

I wouldn't mind being on the island on my own. I'm quite good with my own company, born again of my childhood, and um I'd be happy with that, although I would want to get off at some point.

Presenter30:22

Well, before we cast you away, we've got one more disc to go, of course. Number eight, what are we going to hear and why have you chosen it today?

Mark Strong30:28

This tune is just amazing. Punk is one of the few types of music you can listen to and dance to. You know, punk for all that I love it, it's sometimes difficult to listen to. Classical music you can't really dance to.

Mark Strong30:40

Not all of it, anyway, but this is a tune that I love to listen to and dance to. I think it's extraordinary. Again, it's another cover.

Mark Strong30:49

It's Whole Lotta Love the Led Zeppelin track, done by Eichentina Turner.

Speaker 130:55

Oh, that's a wanna hold up.

Mark Strong30:58

Run a hole out of the line.

Mark Strong31:01

This is your outlook.

Mark Strong31:04

I need a lot of

Speaker 331:14

Baby, I've been buried.

Speaker 331:17

Ah

Mark Strong31:17

Oh, this good time, baby. I've been yearning.

Mark Strong31:23

Oh yeah.

Presenter31:25

Whole Lot of Love as performed by Ike and Tina Turner.

Presenter31:29

It's time to cast you away, Mark. I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. I'm assuming the Shakespeare will be especially welcome. But you can have a book of your own choice, too. What would you like?

Mark Strong31:37

Yeah.

Mark Strong31:40

I thought long and hard about this. It's difficult to find a book that you've read that you want to keep reading, um, although people obviously will have chosen books like that. But I wanted a book of street photography or a book of cities photographs taken of cities. I think Magnum do a a street photography book, just to basically remind me

Presenter31:52

Oh f

Mark Strong31:59

Of home. I just want images from back home that weren't sun sea sand and coconut palms.

Presenter32:06

It's yours. You can also have a luxury item.

Presenter32:09

Know what you like?

Mark Strong32:10

I'm being a bit clever with this. My luxury item is a wind-up radio.

Presenter32:16

Wolf

Mark Strong32:16

I'm a big radio fan. I mean I listen to Radio 6 all the time, 5 Life for Sport, Radio 4 for News. I mean big radio fan and I have it on all the time in the house so I wouldn't really be able to survive without a radio. But this particular radio has got to be chrome plated or stainless steel so that I can use it to attract a ship's attention by flashing the sun at them when it's time to leave the island.

Presenter32:39

Well, now let me think. Now, there is precedent, believe it or not, for the taking of a radio, a wind-up radio. We can't have anything that has to plug in or anything that can transmit. It's receive-only, and as you say, it would have to be wind-up. So, on the basis that it's been taken before, I'm going to allow it. Oh, thank you very much.

Mark Strong32:49

Yeah.

Mark Strong32:52

Mm-hmm.

Mark Strong32:56

Oh, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Presenter32:57

It's yours.

Mark Strong32:58

Woo-hoo.

Presenter32:59

And if you had to save just one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today, which would you rush to grab from the waves?

Mark Strong33:07

I think it would have to be Helden, the Bowie track, just because it's epic, it reminds me so much of a particular time of my life, it has that germline element, and and he was such um an incredible influence on my life in terms of how to be

Mark Strong33:27

And they're your own individual.

Presenter33:30

Mark Strong, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Mark Strong33:33

Thank you.

Presenter33:47

Hey there, I really hope you enjoyed that interview with the actor Mark Strong. We've cast away many actors to our island, including Brian Cox, Dame Helen Mirren, and George Clooney. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be Dame Louise Casey, Baroness of Blackstock.

Presenter34:08

I do hope they'll join us.

Speaker 334:24

Hello, Greg Jenner here. Series 3 of Radio 4's top comedy history podcast, You're Dead to Me, is now in full swing. That's when you find yourself in the pocket of Big Asclepius.

Speaker 334:34

We like to learn and laugh about the past by pairing up a top historian with a top comedian. That is hangry at a new level, isn't it? So far in this series, we've met the Irish pirate queen Gronia O'Malley, explored the strange world of ancient Greek and Roman medicine, and discovered the dramatic family life of the Borgias. All I know about the Borgias is from Assassin's Creed 2. So make sure you've subscribed to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds.