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Castaway
1 appearance
Actor best known for leading television role in Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man and his acclaimed stage performance as Richard III, documented in his book Th
On the island
Eight records
Original Cast of Poppie Nongena
Well, Poppy Nongana, that's um it it it's a black South African musical that that came to London a few years ago, and I found the music uh particularly beautiful and moving.
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)
Lucia Popp, Brigitte Fassbender and Tom Krause
Well, as I said, I adore opera, though uh I never go to the opera. But this this is uh one of my favorite pieces, the trio from Cozy Fontutti by Mozart.
This is in fact the title track from Ry Kudu's music for the film Paris, Texas. Which uh is terribly associated with this present season up in Stratford. For no reason other than it's been played a lot, and whenever I hear it in the future I'll think back to this season which has been the happiest of the. Of the seasons that I've had there.
Verranno a te sull'aure (from Lucia di Lammermoor)Favourite
Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti
Well, this is uh an all-time favourite opera again, Donizetti's Lucci de Lamamo. Sung by Sutherland and Pavarotti, and uh I just think it's one of the most perfect pieces of. Of anything, really, this tune sung by these voices.
Introduction and Allegro for Strings
I was introduced to it by someone who's had a uh an enormous influence on my life, uh who who's an actor up in the present company, and he's been with the RC for the last few years, an actor called Jim Hooper. And um this is his favourite piece of music and has become one of
Well this is um the boy in the bubble from Paul Simon's album Graceland, which I think is just one of the most wonderful things to have happened in the music scene for since the Beatles really. It's just I mean I've been listening to it ever since it came out about a year ago and it just I just get such pleasure from it. I think it's wonderful as well that he did it in South Africa with with black South African musicians and that out of that the agony of that country is such. Joy and energy and life could come as a wonderful
Sanctus (from St. Cecilia Mass)
Miriam Carlin, who played my mother in that play. Suss that I loved uh classical music and and she used to buy me a tape every now and then and leave it down my dressing room... this is uh Gunner's uh sanctus from that.
Va, pensiero (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Nabucco)
Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera
Another opera favourite which is the slave chorus from Verdi's Nabuka.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07Do you like the prospect of loneliness [on a desert island]?
No, no, not at all. I'll be absolutely hopeless. I mean, uh you can't be brought up in South Africa as a white South African. and have any sense of how to look after yourself. So, um no, I I don't think I'll survive very long at all. No practical talents whatsoever.
Presenter asks
3:29Where did your parents come from?
Well, they were born in in South Africa, but all my grandparents came from uh Lithuania at the turn of the century. Fled persecution. They they were Jewish. I mean, I'm not practicing Jew anymore, but they were. And uh it's uh I always think it's a rather ironic trick that history played them really to have led them away from persecution in that part of the world and uh invited them to become the persecutors somewhere else. It's a sort of family guilt, I suppose, that I live with.
Presenter asks
4:39Is [the family's history] the reason why you're not now a practicing Jew?
I think so. I think that that had an effect. I I could never reconcile the fact that my family and a lot of the Jewish population in South Africa had fled persecution and yet could become part of apartheid and couldn't see that connection.
The keepsakes
The book
A blank sketchbook and journal
Well, I'm gonna cheat a bit on this'cause um I'm not actually a a great reader and uh throughout my life whenever There have been difficult times. I I've always been sustained by being able to create myself. So I'm going to ask for the thickest sketch book stroke journal you'll allow me to take along, and so it's going to be a book of blank pages which I shall fill during my stay there.
The luxury
Favourite pens, charcoal, and paints
Well, obviously that has to be uh an endless supply of my favourite pens and charcoal thing. Pains to use in this book.
Presenter asks
4:59What was the stimulus to give you the idea that you could be an actor?
There wasn't really was well, I suppose films... I was going to be an artist. I was always going to go to art school... And then it sort of somehow got changed to acting. I I was a very shy child and and acting when I started doing what was called elocution classes. In Cape Town, I found that actually it released me. It was very liberating for me. In a way the drawing and painting alone in my room was simply making my isolation more. Acting was was very good for me, and that's sort of I I went into it more for that reason.
Presenter asks
7:40How daunting was it when you first came to London?
Oh, absolutely. I'm terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. I can't begin to tell you... we went along for the audition [for Central], which we assumed was a sort of token vaccine to do. And I went in, and I was there for about ten minutes... and the registrar just put her head round the corner and said, Sorry, none of you to day... Luckily we were still in time to audition Ferrada, which I did. And they sent me a letter saying. Not only have you failed this audition, And not only do we not want you to try again, but we strongly recommend that you think of a different profession. So it it was a real baptism by fire.
Presenter asks
9:48What made you not think of another profession at that time?
I think I respond quite well to a challenge. I'd been very uncertain about being an actor until people told me that I couldn't be. Do you know, it's a sort of perversity in my nature... But it seems people started saying, Oh no, you're not good enough to be an actor. I became determined to be an actor.
“I'm actually tone deaf, which um is slightly crippling as an actor, but nevertheless I listen to music all the time. when I drive and when I paint and and when I write. I can't imagine life without it. It's uh enormously sustaining.”
“I think it's difficult for people to understand how seductive the life in South Africa is if you're white. You don't really think about the situation unless you're forced to”
“the profession is competitive enough without being in competition with yourself. You know, you you don't have to take that on board. I mean the important thing is to work out what you think of things rather than what people tell you things are. I think that's one of the hardest things about being an actor, is to work out your own opinions of things, of your work.”