Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor of enormous range, known for Alan Ayckbourn comedies, Lear, Galileo, and The Singing Detective.
On the island
Eight records
Well, I was a teddy boy in the fifties when I was uh eighteen. I was an apprentice in an engineering factory and uh was a quite a well known Ted in the area, and uh that record would remind me of that period.
Othello: Act V, Scene II ('It is the cause')
I love it. He, of course, was quite important in this um early career of yours.
Breaking Down the Walls of Heartache
that reminds me of Birmingham rep and and the sixties and um going clubbing.
I love Peter Piers, the purity of his sound. And I love uh guitar and lute, so this is a a good combination.
Oh, I just loved him, and it breaks my heart that he is no longer with us. I planted a tree for him.
Maria Aitken and Veronica Page
Oh, it's such an intelligent love song.
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92: II. AllegrettoFavourite
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karl Böhm
it reminds me of uh being in the theatre, you know, being on stage. I like to have that music, um playing on a walk headset underneath the wig.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:10Michael, you really do dislike fame, don't you?
Well, I don't know. I do like it, but I would like to to remain anonymous as an actor. I know that sounds ridiculous, really, but um I'd like just to be a blank page that no one knows anything about. Maybe it's impossible.
Presenter asks
2:42How have you chosen these eight records to take with you?
There are eight thousand records I could take and I've just used a pin really. And they're they're just records that remind me of events and places and people and that sort of
Presenter asks
3:55But you had no professional training as an actor. I mean, are you seriously suggesting that even then you knew you wanted to act?
Well, I must have done, yes. I joined an amateur theatre when I was seventeen, I think. I don't know why. I was just walking past it, I think. I went in and started painting the scenery in the evening.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
6:39But of course you weren't getting any big parts there [at the National Theatre], were you? That's the trouble. You were still the second gentleman and the third spear.
Yes. Well, I over the years there I built up the parts. I got quite good supporting parts towards the end, but in the end I um went to him and asked for better parts, and he said he couldn't give them to me, and I should go away into rep, which I did. I went to the Birmingham Rep.
Presenter asks
9:02You mentioned your Lear and you said something about getting right the bits you got wrong — there are people who say that when you played Lear you concentrated so hard on helping Anthony Sher with the fool that in the end you were entirely upstaged by him.
Well, I don't know, maybe. I mean, well, that rehearsal period was uh just glorious, I remember. Tony and I were inventive in rehearsals and we experimented and He became uh like a ventriloquist dummy during one in fact, during the performance we kept that in. Uh maybe it went too far that way, I don't know. But I'd like to play it again and have another game.
Presenter asks
12:54Now, while you were doing A View from the Bridge with him [Alan Ayckbourn], you were also making a film. I mean, how do you manage that?
Well, with difficulty. I I this film Paris by Night with uh Charlotte Rampling. I was doing that while at the Aldwych in View from the Bridge, and that's really tough, you know. One or the other tends to suffer in that situation.
Presenter asks
15:15How do you prepare for a major role like that [Galileo]? Do you live, breathe and eat it? Or do you think about it, analyze it?
Think about it, analyze it. No, you just uh you put yourself in the hands of John Dexter. Who's a real boss? and that you hope for the best, and you learn the lines, and you study the part, and Just hope and pray that it works out all right. and bring everything you've got to it. I don't know I don't know how you do it.
“I'd like just to be a blank page that no one knows anything about. Maybe it's impossible.”
“I was just walking past it, I think. I went in and started painting the scenery in the evening.”
“When I'm in the theatre, I've always believed in having a loaded water pistol in the wings with me, particularly if I've if I'm in a play with Stephen Moore.”
“I planted a tree for him. [John Lennon]”
“The singing detector I'll never get a part like that again on television notice but it's a part of a lifetime.”
“I get uh rather fed up with um being in the theatre all the time and being with theater people. So I have a life outside to do with engineers and collectors and entirely non-darling people.”