Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An actor best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, also a Royal Shakespeare Company member and Olivier Award winner.
On the island
Eight records
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31: PastoralFavourite
Peter Pears, Dennis Brain, Boyd Neel String Orchestra, Benjamin Britten
It's um a piece of music that I've known since I was a teenager and during my eighteen years of living in California English music became more and more important to me because it evoked for me my [home] … and this piece in particular conjures for me the English landscape
On the Waterfront (Symphonic Suite)
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein
I saw [it] when I was 13. And the film had a huge impact on me because I saw a film about people who actually lived as I was living at the time. And I think it was the first time I was ever aware of film music.
Everybody's Got the Right (from Assassins)
My feeling is that um if I hear this I can fill in the rest of the musical myself.
Les Troyens: Act IV: Nuit d'ivresse et d'extase infinie
Jon Vickers, Josephine Veasey, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Sir Colin Davis
I came very, very late in life to opera … One night they were doing The Trojans, and I think for the four and a half five hours that this opera lasts I was literally … Transported with bliss.
So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)
He was a wonderful and delightful man, and he makes me laugh like a drain.
Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood Mama)
Leonard Brand, Kent Brand, Willie Spottswood, Edward Robinson
When my children were young we did a lot of road trips, long car trips … and sometimes when it began to get a little bit out of control, we would put in a tape, a fat swallow, and the restlessness and the arguments and the yelling would all subside into gales and gales of laughter.
Randy Newman, I think, uh perhaps along with Steven Sondheim, the primary songwriter living and working in the United States today.
Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, Patrick Stewart
I suggested to him he should have an Inkspots number on it, partly because I want it to be on the album too. So he sings It's a Sin to Tell a Lie and the backup vocals on this track are provided by Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, LeVar Burton, and myself.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:26Is the stage where you are happiest?
I became an actor to work on the stage. Everything beyond the stage had happened to me. It happened by accident. I never looked for it. All I expected was that I would spend a life in the theatre.
Presenter asks
5:52When you first went over to be auditioned for Star Trek, you didn't realise you were in for the long haul, did you?
I didn't think anything about it except it all seemed like a bit of a hoot … The whole thing was an accident because I was over there doing workshops on Shakespeare … Gene Roddenberry actively did not want me in his show … A bald, middle-aged English Shakespearean seemed to be the most unlikely set of ingredients for the captain of the enterprise … What I didn't know until my agent in Los Angeles spelled it out to me was that in signing my contract, I was signing for six years … and on the basis of their prediction, I signed a six-year contract, believing that it may not even last one year.
Presenter asks
12:45Did [your father] take his anger out on you three?
He did. He took it out on all of us and particularly on on our mother. And when he was bad, he was very, very bad. And home life was quite frightening. But they were only moments. There were other times, because he was a huge personality, a great raconteur, a very charming man.
The keepsakes
The book
A huge compendium of the world's best science fiction
Well, people expect me to be a fan of science fiction, and I'm really not, and I don't know much about it, and I'm always embarrassed. So could I have a huge compendium of the world's best science fiction?
The luxury
A 1920s antique billiard table (with a shed)
I have a billiard table. It's a 1920s antique table. And when I was in California, I played on it, usually alone, every day. And it was an activity that I came to love and became a sort of meditation for me. I'm not very good at it, however. So I thought if I had it there all day long, I could practice and practice and practice. And of course, I'd need to have a shed or some building to keep it safe from the elements.
Presenter asks
14:37What age were you when you first came across Shakespeare, and how did it happen?
I was twelve and it was an English teacher, Cecil Dormand, at Murfield Secondary Modern School. He was the first person to put a copy of Shakespeare in front of me. It was the Merchant of Venice. Of all of us in his class, to open it up and say, you read this out loud. This is not a book, it's not a novel, it's not a poem, it's a play and you've got to make it live. And he cast me as Shylock.
Presenter asks
20:12How did losing your hair affect you during that period?
It it happened while I was at school, at drama school, yes, and I was spending the little money that I had on all kinds of expensive treatments to try to stop it. It was sad, really … I was eighteen and it was difficult. It it undermined me actually. It undermined my self-confidence. I thought no woman would want to look at me and it made me self-conscious, it made me shy. And I also thought that it would be a handicap to me as an actor as well. It proved to be really quite different.
Presenter asks
27:20Is it tempting to suggest that you tap into your father and what you knew about him for these troubled, unhappy characters?
Yes. It was unconscious, of course, for decades. I'm now much more aware of that, I think. And it's true, the characters like Shylock and Scrooge have littered my career … I think it has been perhaps a means of getting close to my father, who made me very angry and scared when I was small. In a sense, perhaps it's a way for me to forgive him in different forms, presenting him to the world.
“It is the absolutely unique experience of going in front of a live audience eight times a week and knowing that it will never ever be the same as it was the night before. You're never repeating something.”
“The moment that I left the wings and walked onstage, I felt wonderfully secure. I felt as though nothing bad could happen to me on stage. And in fact, I still do.”
“I think it has been perhaps a means of getting close to my father, who made me very angry and scared when I was small. In a sense, perhaps it's a way for me to forgive him in different forms, presenting him to the world.”