Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Actor who rose to fame in the 1960s with films like 'Far from the Madding Crowd', 'The Collector' and 'Modesty Blaze', later renowned for playing a transsexual
On the island
Eight records
This is definitely cheering me up on a rainy day. ... It's a thing I listen to if I wake up and I'm feeling a bit down and there's no reason for it.
The Music of IslamFavourite
This puts me in the right frame of mind for... Sunset watching ... It's the kind of thing I imagine guys play in the desert when they're on their own.
Pavane pour une infante défunte
it's played by Ravel himself, and it's just something so touching and wonderful about it.
I don't want to explain this'cause it's fully explained in the book. It's just called uh Blue Tango. I never collected it. I just when it comes on I paralyze for a few minutes.
My mother loved Mario Lanza, and this was actually her favourite, but because she loved him, she always used to take me. We used to go together to see his movies.
I love Netkin Cole. I often think that um. If there's any truth at all to reincarnation, it would be worth coming back, you know, to have a voice like Nat
You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
I missed John Lennon and ... the first time I ever met him He just made this record. And uh we ran at Brian Epstein's house and he played it for me.
Great Jim, another one lost crossing the bridge. Jim Morrison, who I knew. Who I think probably had the definitive rock'n'roll voice
Well, my mother was uh was musical, and I remember this de Bussie because She was wanting me to listen to it and I said, Oh, it's classic, you know, it's like it's so boring and she said, No, no, no, you this is this is the mother load, you know. All people steal from these great classical tunes. And I was able to in that moment I was able to listen to classical music differently somehow. And I've chosen this version because it was recorded in 31 and it might have been you know, the actual record that we listen to on our wireless, you know.
I always loved the voice of Sarah Vaughan. And then when when I realized how beautiful she was, I had a real crush on her. And I've always loved Cole Porter. I love the fact that he wrote the music and the lyrics, which give it a wonderful Outcome
This is my kind of introduction to jazz really. I was about 15, 16. And I was at a party and somebody played this actual record, this Pedido. And I was just really taken aback. I didn't know anything about jazz. I didn't even know this was jazz. and whenever I had to do something that was very frightening to me, Like leaving home, like Auditioning at drama schools, one of those things that were very intimidating. Immediately prior to leaving the house I would play this Podido, so I had to have it on my discs.
I always uh was crazy about D Martin and um I love his voice. I think if I had to come back in another body. Well If it was a male body, it would have a voice like Dean.
Uh Jeff Buckley's somebody that I kind of learned about from my kind of Muso friends. He's a very sort of a. esoteric musician really, he's a wonderful guitarist, wonderful lyricist. And he died very young. He died, uh he drowned. Uh after making only one record, and it's a record called Grace, which I love, and this is not one of Jeff's own compositions, but it's the composition that he sings of the great Leonard.
Number six is a wonderful, wonderful singer, composer who I love called Tim Hardin. Not a lot of people know him. Every one of his songs is a little gem, and um I really relate to this, and um so does Bill Clinton. We both love this song.
Yeah, this is uh the great Jimi Hendrix, and I think this is probably one of the few times that it's a Dylan song has ever been sung better than Dylan, because Jimi does it just so, so beautifully. And I've chosen this one because Jimi Hendrix sings it. But of course, you know, I'd have the whole Dylan canon on this programme if I could.
Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 66Favourite
This is um when I was in those moments of uh stress, I I felt that I was kind of um febrile, you know, I was too kind of I had layers of my skin missing and I just really was only happy with my own company and during those moments I'd play Chopin. And I've chosen this one because I thought that this is something on the desert island where I could contemplate the sunset.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:11What was the starting point of this book [your autobiography]?
I met a woman. ... was an agent, literary agent. And she sort of kept on to me about it. ... Then I went to shoot um Legal Eagles. In America. And my mother died. ... I was just kind of there. ... I was trapped in this situation. ... And I was really hit by it. ... The extraordinary kind of grief that I was experiencing. And It just occurred to me that if I r started writing down ... all that I could remember. initially about my mother, it would be something to sort of focus me ... to hold me together ... while I was going through this bad period.
Presenter asks
4:39Tell me about your dad, because he comes out of the book as being a raffish, attractive character.
Yeah, my father was A stoic. ... had that kind of schizophrenia that like Drinkers have. In the pub he was the life and soul of the party, and wildly funny, and then at home he was just like quiet and needed time on his own and I had always had the feeling that the core of my dad was just stainless steel, you know. It was external things that worried him, you know. He worried about, um, you know, not being able to write quickly, not being able to read very well.
Presenter asks
7:27Do you feel part of a special tribe [from the East End of London]?
The keepsakes
The book
Kenneth Grahame
I was just feeling that if I just read a few chapters of Wind and the Willows it would kind of throw me back onto that which I truly am.
I do. My friend Terry Donovan says there's a certain kind of steeliness that we got living there. ... for my generation, sort of growing up in the war and and getting it ... coming out of the the bomb shelter and and your house gone ... I felt gave me a kind of uh strength that I can fall back on in adversity ... there's something I can pull myself up and pull myself together and I associate that with the East End.
Presenter asks
8:29In that time when you were those giddy times, in the sixties and seventies, when you were this big film star, was that [East End background] an important touchstone?
Yes, because ... there's an awful lot of talk about how wonderful the sixties were, and they were. ... But there was also a lot of fear, you know. I mean, when you're absolutely nothing, you're absolutely ordinary. And then suddenly, you know, fate throws you up on the top of the heap and you get in this kind of adulation and it takes a lot of handling. ... So it was wonderful, but it was terrifying as well.
Presenter asks
11:46What gave you the idea, when you were living down the East End of London, that perhaps you might make an actor?
No, my mother had a certain kind of frustrated theatricality. I was a bit distant from my dad ... And I didn't have any kind of male figure. that I really identified with. ... I just hated school ... And so my escape came through the movies and I latched on to Coupe. Errow and They were my guys, you know ... I just wanted to be like them. And later on I realized that, in fact, you know, they weren't kind of pirates and cowboys, they were actors who made movies
Presenter asks
24:20What does that mean, 'If I wasn't an actor, I'd probably be a psychopath'?
I have a lot of things in my head, and obviously I'm kind of... There's a lot of time when I'm on when I'm fueled by kind of high-octane gas. As an actor, I get a chance to Express all the the different things that come up out of me. And so it's a kind of release. It's like a kind of a safety valve for me. ... I think if I didn't have that outlet. then I would be somebody who, you know, vacillated from terrific ups to terrific downs. And that's I mean, I consider that psychotic.
Presenter asks
1:12Why is it a blessing [not to have worked as much as you would have liked]? You could have done so much.
Yeah, no, I g I guess I could have, but but my life has been full, you know. I've I've been everywhere, I've met wonderful people, I've I've learned to have a life like outside of my movie career.
Presenter asks
2:48Do you look back now and look at Michael Caine and other guys you hung out with, and do you have regrets?
Regrets. No, no, I um I don't have those kind of regrets. My real regrets, my only regrets, are movies that I passed on. Because I was fearful. They're the things I really regret.
Presenter asks
5:22Is it true that the first your family knew about your being an actor was when you were booked to play the role [of Billy Budd]?
Yes, it really was. Uh my dad had stopped me talking about wanting to be an actor. ... Well he's he said, Look, son, you know, people like us don't do things like that and I had tried to protest, and he'd said, Son, I don't want you to talk about it. But this thing, you know, just kept pursuing me, this uh wish to try this, like, life in showbiz
Presenter asks
6:19How does a young man leave home [in the East End in the early fifties]?
No. I mean, if you met a girl, you know, and you got married, you moved into the bedroom upstairs kind of thing. And in order to pursue this I had to leave home. So that was the first big riff.
Presenter asks
7:41Where had [your ambition] come from? Who had you seen? What had inspired you?
Um when the war started my dad went back into the navy. He'd been a merchant seaman. But when he left I became her surrogate, everything. And so sh when I was about three she took me to see a movie and the movie was Beaugesse with the wonderful Gary Cooper. And I was lost in that moment, you know.
Presenter asks
22:21Was it when you came back [from the East] that you did General Zod in Superman because you needed the money?
No, no, no, not at all. I was actually in an ashram. And I had this long hair. And I was in robes. ... And when I opened it it said, you know, could you come to London to talk to Dick Donner about Superman One and Two with Marlon Brando? And could you stop en route in Paris and talk to Peter Brooke about Gurgie's meetings with remarkable men? And I got both parts. So I came back through like quite a big door really. albeit ten years later.
“I felt gave me a kind of uh strength that I can fall back on in adversity, you know, or if if I'm kind of really flattened either mentally or emotionally or you know, I get a really hard knock, there's something I can kind of draw on. I know I'm not finished, you know, I would never kill myself, but there's something I can pull myself up and pull myself together and I associate that with the East End.”
“My fame kind of coincided with the sixties, which I think of as a kind of cosmic I mean, I believe it was a cosmic thing. It was a kind of worldwide motion that happened. You know, they talk about the age of Aquarius. But that was happening to me plus this incredible fame, you know, like somebody had waved a wand and it was my turn. So it was wonderful, but it was terrifying as well.”
“I remember looking at her across the candles in this kind of basement in Beecham Place and thinking, This is her, you know. This is Gilda, you know. And she knew, you see. She was kind of the older woman, you know. I was looking at her and she would smile and and she was terrifically hip. But we did have a wonderful time. She was wonderful. She treated it like a proper date, you know.”
“And I thought if I could uh be good looking and if I could be successful and if I could be famous, everything would be solved. And when it all kind of came to an end, I thought to myself there's been lots of fun, but there hasn't been any kind of real deep internal satisfaction.”
“But you know, when the thing is that when I woke up in the morning, I was me, you know. So it wasn't a reality, as it were.”
“It never really occurred to me not to involve them, and in fact one of the probably the greatest joy of the fame and all the success that I had was um for my parents to experience it.”
“I think the toughest moment in my life really was when my mother died.”
“Sue, I think I'm going to live forever.”