Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor famed for theatrical magic and multiple Olivier and Tony awards; recently acclaimed as Thomas Cromwell in BBC's 'Wolf Hall'.
On the island
Eight records
You can really hear the kind of life of the body that we all lead. And then the saxophone is this marvellous soul.
Tis I that have warned you (from King Arthur)
My beloved sister Susanna singing, playing Cupid in King Arthur.
Charles Ives and Kronos Quartet
Charles Ives is the father of modern music... this should be the American anthem.
I really adore Bob Dylan's songs and I also love Nina Simone's singing.
This one will keep me dancing for a while on the islands.
Music from the film Days and Nights
Claire wrote this music after our daughter Natasha died. It was a very remarkable thing for her to do.
Arthur McBride and the Sergeant
This song is for all those who are brave enough to say no to war.
String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135 (second movement)Favourite
The late quartets of Beethoven... the 132 is probably the saddest and most profound piece of music I know.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:58Do you think listening and watching a lot is at the very heart of good acting?
Yeah. Listening particular, yeah. I like having my parents described as compost. Creative compost. Creative compost, of course. I was trying to be nice.
Presenter asks
2:04Have you thought about how sudden fame is going to materially change your life?
I I think I feel happy to be coming to it at fifty-four, fifty-five rather than at twenty, twenty-one. I I feel like I've dodged a a bullet there, that that that's quite a difficult fate to hit this kind of um this kind of world where there's a lot of risk and so there's a lot of people all the time going, Oh, it's great, it's fantastic. There's a whole kind of circle around people being very positive and and about things. … Yeah. But I can see also why they're being positive in what's going on. I th and I I have less interest to believe it now.
Presenter asks
2:49Tell me about the process of bringing Thomas Cromwell to the small screen.
We were talking about that over dinner last night, and someone said you must act exactly the same on the stage as in front of the camera. In terms of whether your emotions are truly felt, whether you're thinking things through and discovering things. So all those things are the same. Acting's a mixture of reaching out to people, which I would call a kind of electric thing. You have to stir and engage their imagination at times, and at other times being more like a magnet and drawing them towards you. It's really about hiding and revealing. Say the famous nunnery scene of Hamlet and Ophelia. When does Hamlet discover that Ophelia's father is secretly watching? And when does he reveal that he knows that? But obviously you've got to play your cards a lot closer to your chest when there's a camera.
The keepsakes
The book
The Big Red Book: The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship
Rumi
I take this book of the poetry and writings of of Rumi, the great uh Sufi poet. It's called The Big Red Book, The Great Masterpiece Celebrating Mystical Love and Friendship, and thi this will satisfy me.
The luxury
Well, I think I'm going to take the stand up bass that my wife bought me when I left the Globe, and I ha as she reminded me this morning, you haven't touched it. I have touched it, but I I at one time played bass in a in a band when I was a teenager. And listening to music today, I think I could learn to play along in some way. I think that would keep me occupied.
Presenter asks
5:29Was staying largely in the theatre a very conscious decision for you?
Well, maybe it was. I I've made a number of films. There've been odd films, you know, The Institute Venumenta and Intimacy and The Government Inspector was wi it was a good film. I I I went up for a lot of film auditions, but they didn't work out very well. … You don't want them to come out and say, We've got some things we served last night that we can reheat for you. You you want the meal cooked fresh, for you and and likewise in the theatre. … I turned eventually to the I Ching, and you just ask it where now? and it gives an answer, and the answer it gave if I went to the theatre was Community. And that swayed it for me. And I thought, yes, I had never experienced community on film sets. … So, um, that decided it for me and it and it was because of that decision that I met my my wife, Claire.
Presenter asks
9:18Tell me about your twenties. What was it you were working out?
I was very intense. I felt I wanted to change things. Were you very idealistic? I was idealistic. I I got together with friends. I started a cooperative theatre company to try working without a director. I had troubles with authority figures. I was a very joyous character at times, but very uh uh isolated and melancholy at other times. Very, very serious, far too serious. And and of course I'd come from a very different culture from the Midwest of America. Arriving in London, I didn't really know what a pub was. And of course the news in the Midwest was terrible. I didn't know anything. So I had a lot to catch up with. I think I had some issues with honesty too. I don't think I was uh able to be honest. I needed to be liked too much. I think that's the kind of miner's dust of an actor's life, is that you are a professional liar and you can not only lie to others, you can lie to yourself.
Presenter asks
28:26You took your Hamlet to Broadmoor. What did the audience there make of it?
Well, we were very concerned that things like the the violent treatment of Ophelia, the murder of Polonius it was a modern dress production at the RSC and and I was in pajamas and stuff. It was it wasn't distanced by period. And uh about a hundred and fifty people crammed in. Maybe eighty were staff and nurses. The nurses were the ones who actually got us in and the doctors were against it. The nurses said, No, if it upsets them, that's fine. Until they get upset, they don't get better. Uh m m most of the patients there have killed someone they dearly love and so they have to realize who they are and what they've what they've done, and then not kill themselves, but actually have some hope that there's a point to to carry on with their lives and to learn what the triggers are that that disturbed them so. Did you talk to any of the patients afterwards? Yeah, we went back a week later, and actually the thing that had affected them most was the um graveyard scene. I used to jump into the grave and say, I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers, with all their quantity of love, could not make up my sum. And I always thought, in performance, I'm amazed that some woman doesn't stand up in the audience and say, How dare you say that with the way you treated her and projected on to her all your problems. And uh A young man, a patient at the hospital, that day when we acted it, came over when I said that line, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, I believe you. and it was the most remarkable thing.
“I feel like I've dodged a a bullet there”
“Acting's a mixture of reaching out to people, which I would call a kind of electric thing. You have to stir and engage their imagination at times, and at other times being more like a magnet and drawing them towards you.”
“I think that's the kind of miner's dust of an actor's life, is that you are a professional liar and you can not only lie to others, you can lie to yourself.”
“A young man, a patient at the hospital, that day when we acted it, came over when I said that line, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, I believe you.”
“I look forward to accidents and things going wrong on stage. I think, oh great, now it's going to happen when people forget lines or I forget lines or things go f because they become so present.”