20 Questions With… Robert Lindsay

Since becoming a household name as revolutionary Wolfie Smith in 1970s TV sitcom Citizen Smith, actor Robert Lindsay has had a diverse number of roles on stage and screen.

In theatre, he scored massive hits with the musicals Me and My Girl (which won him Best Actor in a Musical prizes in both the Olivier and Tony Awards) and Oliver! (garnering a second Olivier). He has also had seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Royal Exchange, Manchester, and has starred in plays including Becket, Cyrano de Bergerac and Richard III in the West End.

Back on television, Lindsay has twice portrayed the Prime Minister, in A Very Social Secretary and this year’s The Trial of Tony Blair, and is also well known for My Family with Zoe Wanamaker, Horatio Hornblower, Jericho and Alan Bleasdale’s GBH (which won him a BAFTA for Best Actor) and Jake’s Progress.

Lindsay’s other screen credits include: Wimbledon, Fierce Creatures and Divorcing Jack on film; and Gideon’s Daughter, Friends and Crocodiles, Hawk, The Canterbury Tales, Oliver Twist and The Office on TV.

Lindsay has returned to the theatre to play fading music hall comedian Archie Rice, a role created on stage and screen by Laurence Olivier, in the 50th anniversary revival of John Osborne’s The Entertainer at the Old Vic.

Date & place of birth

Born 13 December 1949 in Ilkeston, Derbyshire.

Training
RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art).

First big break
Let’s be totally clear: in every tabloid I’ve ever been in, they say my first break was on TV in Citizen Smith, but to me that was the worst break because I never wanted to be a TV celebrity. I didn’t expect Citizen Smith to be as big as it was. I left after three series, when it was just about to go big time, and I went to the Royal Exchange in Manchester. For me, my big break was there, realising I’m an actor. But you can’t talk to the great British public about that because most of them didn’t know I did it. I love rehearsals, I love researching and I love being someone else… and the joy of working with genius talents like Michael Elliot, the great late director of the Royal Exchange. It was a real revelation that whole season at the Exchange. I guess my real break came when I did Hamlet. I suddenly found I was liberated. I found a role which is endless. You could do anything you wanted and that’s really alarming. You realise you’re swimming in the sea, wanting the shore. But some nights you have to let go, and the nights when you let go are the most thrilling moments in the theatre. You have to let go of your emotions and your feelings.

Career highlights to date
Me and My Girl obviously. Going from rehearsals in a church hall in Leicester to the Adelphi in the West End to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA and then being one of the biggest hits on Broadway was a personal journey I made with the producer Richard Armitage who became a great friend. Richard was the son of Noel Gay and his dream was to put on his father’s musical again, and I went through that with him. We used to be like two little boys together, it was like The Producers.

Would you do another musical now?

I’m asked all the time, two or three times a year, to do a musical, but I’ve never found one that I really, really wanted to do. Plus I think Me and My Girl scarred me in many ways. It damaged my domestic life because of my commitment to it for so long and the fact that I was in America. I suppose I kind of got carried away with the whole euphoria of its success. If they get an actor who’s going to play the lead in a musical, they want you for the year. That’s a big commitment and I’ve got kids now so I have to think very carefully about what and where and when I do things.

Favourite productions/roles
I think my favourite was Henry II in Becket. I loved the flamboyance and the anger and the disrespect for my best friend who became religious, and the teasing and taunting, it was a great role. But my real passion was Cyrano de Bergerac at the Haymarket. I absolutely adored that production though it almost killed me, literally! I used to fly in from the gods and I almost landed on the Queen’s hand one night at a royal gala. We hadn’t been able to tech it yet and it was hugely technical – there were four sword fights and I had to fly from the gods above the royal box, down onto the stage and smash the set up. I can’t tell you what the adrenaline was like! I twisted my ankle badly while I was up in the gods and did the entire show with an ankle throbbing – I had to cut my boot off at the end. But it was amazing. Adrenaline sometimes gets you through. There are highlights in my TV career – GBH was I think the best performance I’ve ever done on television, and the best role written for me on television. Also Jake’s Progress. All my work with Alan Bleasdale has been great.

Favourite co-stars

I have to mention the great Julie Walters. I think she is one of the most diverse, major talents in the country, capable of almost anything. Also Helen Mirren who I’ve worked with twice, both on TV, who again has such a range and acts with the most extraordinary intelligence, she’s so sharp. And David Threlfall, who’s an extraordinary, mad genius. I always love actors when they don’t put up a front.

Why do you like to return to the stage?

I get a cab back to the flat tonight and the cab driver’s always saying “how’s it going? I don’t know how you learn all those lines” and “how can you do it night after night, the same thing” and I always want to say “how can you drive this cab night after night” because what they’re going to say is “I get a different customer each night” and of course we get different customers, and that’s exactly what it is like. Occasionally you get someone really interesting and it goes really well, and then occasionally it’s a drab rainy Monday night and they’re all fed up and a mobile goes off and you think “I hate them!”

What was the last thing you saw on stage that had a big impact on you?
I went to see Propeller’s Twelfth Night (which preceded The Entertainer at the Old Vic). I am now Propeller’s number one fan, it’s a fantastic company. They bring such clarity to the work. I’ve done Twelfth Night, both on stage and TV. And there were things I didn’t understand that suddenly became completely clear – I went “oh my God, of course!”. There were tons of schoolgirls in that night who all recognised me and were turning round taking pictures on their mobile phones. I really had a go at them – in fact, I got told off by the headmistress because she said I was rude to them. I wasn’t. They wanted my autograph, and I said first of all, your phones shouldn’t be on, and I said, if you want an autograph, write to the Old Vic and I’ll send you some signed pictures to the school. I got an email from the Old Vic the next morning saying “Mr Lindsay was very rude to my students, they were only being polite”. And I thought, no they weren’t. But actually those girls turned into a fantastic audience – they were spellbound and when the actors asked them something they actually answered. It was like what plays should be about.

If you hadn’t become an actor, what might you have done professionally?
My family are all carpenters, my father and my brother. I try for my boys to look as if I can do a few chores around the house. My daughter told me: “you are an actor”. I said, “what, all the time?” And she said, “well, yes”.

If you could swap places with one person (living or dead) for a day, who would it be?
Tony Blair. I’d like to find out if I got him right.

Favourite holiday destination
Marrakech. I went there in the Seventies, in my hippy days. I travelled there in a car, all the way from Raynes’ Park. I went back recently and it’s still clinging onto its identity – just.

Why did you want to do The Entertainer?

David Hare asked me to do a reading a year ago for the 50th anniversary of the Royal Court. I did it with Pam Ferris, who’s now my leading lady. That tingle I got from just doing a reading – I thought, hmmm, I should take this further. That was the first feeling I’d got about a play, that I just knew I’d reached the age where I could give it its weight.

And how did it come about at the Old Vic?

After the reading, I went to the Royal Court and asked them if I could do it there. They said, we don’t have the rights, a man called Kevin Spacey has them. I assumed he wanted to do it himself so that was that. David Hare said, why don’t you call Spacey? I said I didn’t know him, and David said, well you don’t get anything if you don’t ask. So I wrote to him. Then one Saturday night the phone rang, my daughter answered and it was Mr Spacey himself, which freaked my daughter out completely. But Kevin was fantastic. He said, “I’ve heard great things, I think you’re the actor for this and I’d really love you to come here to do it”. I had no problem at all with that – this is where Olivier started the National Theatre, of course. This rehearsal room (at the Old Vic) to me is amazing. Can you imagine the energy in this room alone? I sit here some nights and think, this is where all those ideas were spawned that got me as a 17- and 18-year-old student passionate about doing stage work. All the fantastic Beaux Stratagems and Much Ados, the amazing Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith and Derek Jacobi – I saw all those performances and they were all spawned in this very room.

Have you enjoyed working with Kevin Spacey?
Kevin is away promoting A Moon for the Misbegotten on Broadway, but he came back the other week and stayed for an entire afternoon to watch us rehearse and he was incredibly supportive. He’s incredibly welcoming, he really wants everyone to feel at home at the Old Vic and there’s a real buzz about the place. And that’s what Larry did here, you know? All the young actors in our cast were saying “oh God, he’s coming into rehearsals”, and I said “you know what, he’s an actor.” And they said “oh yes but but…”. It doesn’t matter, I told them, he’s an actor, he goes through the same vulnerability, the same things you go through when someone comes to watch your performance. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you get in this profession, you’re always vulnerable and the vulnerability is what makes you special. You have to use that, that’s what you are.

Which are your favourite John Osborne plays?
I remember seeing Inadmissable Evidence when I was at RADA, that had a huge impact on me. With Look Back in Anger, I found it very hard to care for Jimmy Porter, I didn’t understand him. But to me, being the kind of performer I am – frustrated comic, frustrated clown, frustrated song-and-dance man, frustrated serious performer, frustrated on all counts – this play has resonance because it encompasses everything.

How do you feel taking on a role immortalised on stage and screen by Laurence Olivier?

It doesn’t worry me – otherwise actors would never do anything because everything’s already been done. However brilliant Olivier was – and there was no doubt that he was totally stunning – his performance can’t be definitive because the play’s still here, it’s all still up for grabs. I worked with Olivier in 1982 doing King Lear. In 1985 I had a drink with him after a performance of Me and My Girl at the Adelphi, and funnily, he told me I should do Archie when I was old enough. I didn’t remember that until the other day, but now I’m doing it, the words of himself ring loud and clear in my brain.

How would you describe Archie Rice?

You have to look at John Osborne first of all. He was, I think, a much maligned individual. People labelled him as the “angry young man”, the “angry voice of Britain”. I’ve always felt, if you’re going to be angry about something, you’ve got to really care about it in the first place, which I think he did. I think of Archie as a man who passionately cares but who has buried his feelings. All the baggage of the years, he’s buried it, buried it, buried it and then he’s started drinking on top to bury it more. As he says to his daughter: nothing really touches me any more, look at my eyes, I’m dead behind these eyes. But I suspect that Archie’s bleeding inside and that’s the tragedy. I think that represents a lot of people who’ve reached middle age, who’ve dealt with things badly – relationships, bringing up children, their own angst with the establishment and so on. But Osborne also put politics with that and used Archie as a metaphor for the crumbling empire. Everybody says he’s a failing comedian, but I don’t think he’s that bad, he’s just not of the time.

What was your personal experience of Osborne?

I met Osborne at the Garrick once – I was summoned to meet the great man – when I came back from America after I’d done Me and My Girl on Broadway. We were meant to have lunch but it never got to that point because I think he’d had a few too many and fell asleep so I never found out in the end what he wanted. I remember being terrified about meeting him, and he looked very grand and immaculately dressed in this huge armchair, and he took me by the hand and said, “I’ve heard great things about you, young man”, and I said “thank you very much, sir”. There was a real twinkle in his eye. I never did find out why he wanted to see me. I was told it might have been about Luther or Paul Slickey , that musical he wrote. I don’t think it could have been about The Entertainer because I’d have been too young then to play Archie, I was only in my late 30s.

Your production opens 50 years to the month of The Entertainer’s premiere. Aside from the anniversary, what makes it timely?

It’s obvious really, the parallels. The Middle East immediately comes to mind. Archie and his wife lose a son, who at one point is captured and held to ransom – they read about it in the newspapers before they open the telegram – and then, when they raise their hopes that their son’s coming back, he’s shot. And it’s happening, it’s still all going on.

What’s your favourite line from The Entertainer?

“I have a go, don’t I?” is my favourite, that’s Archie’s act. The other is: “You see this face? This face can split open with warmth and humanity, it can smile and tell the worst unfunniest stories to a great mob of dead drab irks, and it doesn’t matter because I’m dead behind these eyes.” I love all that. I think performers have a love-hate relationship with their audience, it’s a real argument.

The Entertainer opens on 7 March 2007 (previews from 23 February) at the Old Vic, where it continues until 19 May.