Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor.
On the island
Eight records
There Are Bad Times Just Around the CornerFavourite
Well, I think it's quite appropriate uh with me on a desert island because um I'm not good at roughing it and um I'm going to be rather nervous when I get to this island and I think I'll need a good laugh.
La Fille mal gardée: Clog Dance
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by John Lanchbury
Because it was the very first ballet I ever saw. I came very late to an appreciation of ballet and I now know a lot of the people in the world of ballet and I think it's something that I perhaps would have liked to have done.
The Way of the World (Excerpt)
Dame Edith Evans and Sir John Gielgud
Well, um since we've uh got to the stage of my going to the Old Bick, I'd I'd like to hear a scene from The Way of the World with uh Sir John Gielgood and Damien Thans, both wonderful actors, and I'd love to have them on my island.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18)
She's recorded a sonnet on Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? and I'd love to be sitting under a palm tree. with a banana in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other, listening to this.
Um and a very lovely song, and it's a very strange treatment of the song, and a very moving treatment of the song.
Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66
Just because I like Chopin and I think it would be lovely lying on the beach listening to this.
Der Opernball: Im chambre séparée
Singing Im chambre separé, the voice just comes out of the top of her head and it's wonderful.
My last record is my very, very favorite male singer, I think he's the greatest. popular singer in the world, and is Charles Asnaval.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:36Could you endure loneliness?
Yes, I think I could. I could. Um I quite like being on my own. But always with the knowledge that at the end of a telephone or a five minute walk round the corner there's somebody and a friend.
Presenter asks
3:12What were you best at at school?
I think um academic work rather than sport. I uh I was hopeless on the football pitch. Um I quite liked uh tennis and swimming. I had unfortunate that I had rheumatic fever when I was um young and uh it sort of held me back sports-wise a great deal, so my time was spent really with my books.
Presenter asks
4:17Had you already ambitions as a result of that [playing Hamlet at school] to be an actor?
I had ambitions before that to be an actor. I think it sounds a terrible cliché to say it, but I I really do think it was something I was born with. I'd never contemplated ever doing anything else. I have no talent in any other direction at all.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The luxury
I'm not good at roughing it. So I think I would like a king-sized water bed. which I could perhaps use as a raft.
Why did you ask for a year off from the National [Theatre]?
Well really, I suppose, because um I'd never been outside the secure bosom of a permanent company and I I really wanted to see what uh life was like on the other side of the fence. ... In a sense, after spending a long time in one company like that, you began to feel that it was the centre of the acting universe, which of course it wasn't. And you did tend I can see now that one tended to lose a deal of bravery, a deal of daring, of courage, because it was secure.
Presenter asks
16:02How did you approach the part [of Claudius in I, Claudius]?
Oh, I think I'd have to say obliquely. Um physically it was very, very heavy for me, because one of the most difficult things was the fact that we did it in sequence. So the very first thing I had to do was to portray old Claudius looking back on his past ... So I had to create that old man right at the very beginning, before I'd been through the process of young Claudius, middle-aged Claudius.
Presenter asks
21:38Would you try to escape [from the island]?
No. Not unless I was frightened. I d I don't know what might be on the island. And if there was something on the island that um was very dangerous and very frightening, yes, I would try to leave. I was a very strong swimmer when I was young.
“I think it sounds a terrible cliché to say it, but I I really do think it was something I was born with. I'd never contemplated ever doing anything else. I have no talent in any other direction at all.”
“I'm not saying security is bad for an actor. I don't think it is at all. But I just needed to get out and um try to prove myself in a a harder world. Out of the subsidized theatre, into the hurlier burley of of the commercial theatre. Yes, it was for me a leap into the dark. It was like really leaving the womb.”
“My gardening tends to um be sort of putting the flowers in and watching them die. My things aren't very green.”