Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
An actor epitomising refined English elegance, he rose to fame as Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited and won an Oscar for Reversal of Fortune.
On the island
Eight records
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
And it reminds me of the times when on my way to becoming an actor I used to busk in Leicester Square to the cinema queues, and everybody was singing through their noses and trying to sound like this.
The Cast of Oh, What a Lovely War
I think one of the moments when I realized the power of theatre was when I was at the Olvik in the Little Theatre, and we did Oh, What a Lovely War. We used to finish up, lined up along front of the stage, dressed as Pierrots, and sing straight to the audience. And whenever we sang this particular song, I would watch in hundreds of faces tears slowly pouring down faces, and I thought, there is power in theatre.
Is from that show, from Godspell, a soft shoe shuffle duet. Called all for the best with David.
And really it reminds me of the birth of my first son, which has to be one of the most magical times in my life. and one of the most magical occurrences.
Theme from CalFavourite
A sound which I found incredibly evocative blasted out of the stage speakers into my ears as the sound man was checking his equipment. And I said to him afterwards, I said, What on earth was that? ... and it's now one of my favourite pieces of music.
Well, I would love to hear one of the strongest themes from the mission. Which Enrico Morricone. Wrote so well. It's always wonderful when you look at a piece of work and then you hear what the composer has put on top of it...
And uh we stayed there and I went on to direct uh a rock video for Carly of another track. And that was my first step into direction, which is all thanks to her trust. So I'd liked very much to hear her track but Manemshaw.
It has to be my wife, Sinead Cusack. I think she would be pleased that she is the last thing in my head before I go to sleep at night. And she is only to be found on one recording. From an R S C Panto called the Swandan Gloves.
One Step at a TimeFavourite
Because it's something I love doing, is dancing. But because I'm known and because I I'm sort of older than than you should be when you dance. I I rarely dance in public, but on my island I will be on my own, and listening to Clifton Chenier I will dance.
this is a song, the Beatles song she's singing which I think says an awful lot about how we deal with all the things that are wrong. We just. Let what comes come, let it be.
Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
it's something when you have success, you have to remember what comes to you through the success and how it will be different without that success. And this is what this song's about.
I just think everybody should listen to Madeleine Peru. I think she's a fantastic singer and Careless Love is one of the songs I used to sing when I was a busker.
I was just amazed by her voice and and particularly by this song, a song called I Want You. And Maybe on my desert island I can focus that towards an approaching ship.
Bob Dylan has always been a great part of my life and um I came across a song about five years ago that I never knew he'd written, and I learned to play it on the piano.
the man who made the windows in the castle, Chris, I remember him sitting in the bar one night and playing this song. And I said, where's that song from? And he said, it's by a guy called John Martin.
Leonard Cohen I think is one of the greatest Poets. And this is a song, it's a poem really. It starts as a poem and then it goes into a song. And I think it's a very wonderfully rousing poem
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31What kind of a background do you come from?
My father was a chartered accountant. He worked for Saunders Row down the Isle of Wight. And, I suppose, a good, solid, middle class background. We lived, in fact, in Saint Helens. and had sailing dinghies that we use and horses that we row. I went away as my elder brother and elder sister did to boarding school at seven. which I've always regretted slightly because it I think tends to fragment the family a bit.
Presenter asks
1:39Did you want to be an actor from the very beginning?
No, I wanted to be a vet. ... I wanted to continue the lifestyle I knew and liked, and I thought that if I was a vet I could have maybe a city practice and a country practice. and therefore get the best of both worlds, live in the country, work with animals, which I have always enjoyed being with. Unfortunately, when I got to school I failed badly all my science exams, and so this soon became an impossibility.
Presenter asks
11:44How certain were you that Charles Ryder [in Brideshead Revisited] was the part for you?
Well, I knew he interested me, and I knew that brideshood was going to be made well. ... I felt there was a a strange Englishman inside Charles that I'd like to explore. ... I think I was probably educated to be him. Really? A man of inheld emotion, a man who sailed through the world on creamy English charm, as Evelyn Waugh says, which gets you by but actually ain't enough, and a man who ends up at the end of the story with nothing, because he's given nothing of himself.
The keepsakes
The book
Clifford W. Ashley
I'm quite good at doing things, but one of the things I don't know enough about is rope work. And if I can take a little bit of rope with me, or maybe some gets washed up, if I take the Ashley Book of Knots, then. That will help me bind together whatever driftwood, branches, whatever, into something which will not fall apart while I'm a hundred yards from land.
The luxury
a large box of packets of Rizla licorice papers
I think probably it has to be a large box of packets of Rizla licorice papers, because I shall be able to grow something on the island which I will be able to dry and smoke. But to wrap it and to give it that really smooth taste, I think my Rizla licorice papers would be necessary.
Presenter asks
15:58Was there a difference between American success and an English success?
Well, it's much Bigger. I mean, they're a country that is founded on success, on succeeding. They're aristocrats or they're successful people, they're rich people. So they embrace it and lift you shoulder high. in a way that can, as a sort of modest, casual Englishman, seem rather embarrassing.
Presenter asks
23:06What brought you back [to Stratford]?
When I was on Broadway having all this wonderful triumph. I kept smelling the avon, which actually doesn't smell very good at this time of year, and I and I thought That's where I like to be, because I think that will get my feet back on the ground. and will put me on a stage where a lot of better actors have stood and actually make me measure up a bit. And I don't think that an English actor who wants to get better Can turn his back on Shakespeare, who has to be the hardest playwright.
Presenter asks
2:00Did you actually tout for the job [of Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited]?
George Howard, who who who owned Castle Howard, was a friend of Sinaire and mine. And he came to see a play I was doing in Greenwich, and he said to me before the show, when we were talking, Have you read Bright's Head? and I said, I haven't. He said, Well, read it'cause Granada are going to do it. They're using my house. And I read it. and fell in love with Charles, I thought fantastic role, and then I wrote to them and said. Would you consider me?
Presenter asks
2:46What do you mean when you say [Charles Ryder was the Englishman you were educated to be]?
I've always believed that public school w at the time I went was designed to create people who would cope in the colonies, keeping their emotions to themselves, hanging on to their wives, behaving well and keeping everything buttoned down. Of course nothing in that is useful as far as being an actor's concern.
Presenter asks
9:38Your parents divorced when you were at school. That must have been quite a shock, therefore?
It was. … I suppose, although they did it very well, and strangely enough, I think the week or the two weeks before they did. My dog was run over and I remember Huge emotional crisis about that, and very little when my parents. So it's very interesting how um different things get you in different ways.
Presenter asks
10:15Did your father react as the stereotype might when you said you wanted to be an actor?
He was wonderful. I'm the second son, and so by the time I went to him on a walk on Hampstead Heath, I remember, and I said, I think I want to. Try working in the theatre and he said, Well, he said, I wouldn't recommend it, it doesn't look a very secure profession. He said, but look, if you don't try it. And I don't support you. You'll you'll never know, you'll always regret it, and you'll always resent me for not helping you. So, see if you can get a job.
Presenter asks
13:50How much research did you do to be able to play [the Jesuit priest in The Mission]?
I got to know a wonderful American Jesuit piece called Daniel Berrigan, one of the Berrigan brothers, and he came out with us and we went into retreat together. And he described me as a leaky balloon that he was trying to fill full of the air of faith. But I would sit and I remember one scene, it was a tough scene, and I remember I fasted the day before because it clears the mind wonderfully, and I remember praying before the scene.
Presenter asks
24:54Do you regret ever making [Lolita], or ever talking about the analysis of what went on in it?
No, I I don't regret making it because I think it's a wonderful film. I think it's a classic book. And I had originally and I I said to the the the makers, I said, Listen, I'm not going to do any publicity on this movie because the film fit speaks for itself and I don't want to get myself into a corner. And then there was such a sort of puritanical outcry against it that I got cross and I thought I'm going to bat for that movie.
“And looking back, it was a wonderful antidote to a privileged education. Because, I mean, there in Packham, there was life.”
“Well, there's no one else who will take care of your career except for yourself. And therefore, if you know what you want to do with your career, and you look at other people's careers and see where they made the right choices, perhaps where they made the wrong choices. It seems to me one has to be very clear sighted in one's career management.”
“I dislike the soldier. I feel like a plumber at heart anyway. Especially when I sit in the in the stores and watch a great actor, I I think I am a plumber, or maybe an electrician, but certainly not an actor. So in a way I have the same prejudice. I think I'm probably a charlatan.”
“I've always believed that public school w at the time I went was designed to create people who would cope in the colonies, keeping their emotions to themselves, hanging on to their wives, behaving well and keeping everything buttoned down. Of course nothing in that is useful as far as being an actor's concern.”
“I knew I was dirtier inside than that, I was messier, and I wanted to explore that area.”
“what you're doing in those scenes is showing physically the nakedness which hopefully in other stories you show emotional nakedness. You're trying to allow the audience in and say, That's right, I feel that and you felt that, haven't you? And it's a sort of sharing of humanity. I mean, that's when drama works at its best, I think.”
“I wanted something which terrified me and which really absorbed me, which is what filming used to do.”