Poirot and Me (28 page)

about it, not a whisper, and I could hardly

believe it. If they were going to cancel after

more than fifty hours of television, forty-five

films, nine of them two hours long, surely

someone from London Weekend or ITV

would have let me know – before anyone

else.

More than a little upset, I rang my agent

and asked her to find out what was going on.

There was no direct answer, just all sorts of

prevarications over the next week or two.

‘A spokesman’ for LWT told the Daily Mail,

‘Talk of the sleuth’s death is premature,’ and

then added, ‘No decision has been made,’

and ‘A new series is being considered but we

are waiting for the go-ahead from scheduling

chiefs.’ The two remaining unscreened films

were left to hang in the air with no fixed

transmission date.

The truth was, of course, that the decision

not to make any more series of Agatha

Christie’s Poirot had been made. Maybe the

drop in viewing figures was one cause;

perhaps the fact that I had decided to do

Oleanna had something to do with it;

perhaps it was that someone at LWT felt

that the series had run its course. I am not

sure, and I have never been told.

To be honest, I never expected any great

‘thank you’ from anyone at ITV, but I did feel

let down – badly. It was not so much the

decision itself, but the way it had been

handled. No one had bothered to talk to me,

and the press had discovered the truth

before I had. It was hurtful.

But I was professional enough to tell

myself, and anyone who asked me about the

decision, that ‘That’s show business . . .

nothing lasts forever.’ I had learnt from bitter

experience over the years that the only thing

you can possibly do as an actor is to close

the door on what you have done in the past,

no matter how proud you are of it, and move

on. For the moment, however, I had to turn

my back on Poirot and get on with the next

part of my life and career – whatever that

might mean. It would be five long years

before I would encounter him again.

I ended up playing an Arab terrorist called

Nagi Hassan in a £40 million Hollywood

action-thriller

called Executive Decision,

alongside Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal and a

gorgeous new young actress called Halle

Berry. To be honest, the first script I saw

was pretty dreadful, but, as always in

Hollywood, it changed all the time, which

meant that my character had at least two

dimensions, even if he was not exactly a

completely formed character by the time I

got to play him on camera. This role meant I

spent the summer of 1995 living in an

extraordinary house just above Sunset

Boulevard in Los Angeles, which belonged to

a rock star, and which I paid for myself.

Sheila and the children remember it because

it had a swimming pool that was sculpted to

look like a rock pool in Shangri-La. None of

us had ever seen anything like it before – in

fact, I am not sure that we ever have since

then. I wondered what Poirot would have

made of it.

The studio limo would arrive every

morning to take me to the studio. It was an

odd experience – there was none of the

family feeling that there had been on our

Poirot shoots. Everyone was very conscious

of their status. Who had the biggest trailer,

who got the special meals delivered, who

was powerful enough to be late on the set –

not like Poirot at all. Executive Decision was

a decent-sized hit around the world, but as I

was almost unrecognisable on the screen, in

very dark make-up and with an Arab accent

that you could cut with a knife (it was what

the studio wanted). I can’t honestly say that

it made a great deal of an impact on my

career.

Back home in Pinner, reality struck. There

were no more Poirots, and that meant I had

to look at all sorts of other opportunities. I

was blessed, however, by my friends in the

theatre. One in particular came to me with

an offer I really could not turn down. Howard

Davies, who had been an associate director

of the Royal Shakespeare Company when I

was there, asked if I would like to play the

part of the henpecked academic George in

Edward Albee’s dramatic masterpiece Who’s

Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which had been

made into an international hit as a film

directed by Mike Nichols and starring Richard

Burton (as George) and Elizabeth Taylor as

his viciously cruel wife, Martha. Howard had

asked the incomparable Dame Diana Rigg,

star of so many productions, most recently

Medea in London and on Broadway, to play

Martha in this new production for the

Almeida Theatre in Islington, north London.

A brutal commentary on the scarred lives

of a married couple in an American university

who are unable to conceive a child and who

invite an unknowing younger professor and

his wife for dinner, Who’s Afraid of Virginia

Woolf? had premiered on Broadway in

October 1962. At more than three hours in

length, it has gone on to become one of the

seminal works of the American theatre in the

second half of the twentieth century. It won

a Tony Award as best play in 1963, but was

denied a Pulitzer Prize in that same year

because of its use of swearing and overt

sexuality.

I knew it would be a huge challenge to

play George, as there is not a single moment

to relax for an actor during the play’s

mesmerising and cathartic three acts.

George is lacerated repeatedly for his

weakness and stupidity by Martha, but now

and again takes a bitter revenge on her.

Albee’s was not a play to be taken lightly,

but it was a wonderful opportunity to play a

tremendous part in a truly memorable

portrait of marital savagery steeped in

hatred, blood and alcohol. Not only could I

not refuse, I jumped at the chance. The

struggle was to bring this beautifully written

part off the page of Albee’s text and onto the

stage.

Albee did not make that straightforward. A

famously tight-lipped playwright, who never

used more words than he absolutely had to,

he had come over from the United States to

see the rehearsals, and came up to me after

one of the final run-throughs.

‘Why are you playing George that way?’ he

said quietly.

‘What way?’ I asked.

‘The way you’re playing him.’

‘Well, my interpretation is that I really do

believe that you have written a love story

rather than a play about two people hating

each other.’

There was a silence from Albee.

‘People think George is a drunk, but I think

you only give him two drinks in the entire

play. But it is he who pours everyone else

drinks,’ I went on. ‘He is the puppet master,

and he is doing what he does in order to

save his marriage, to save his relationship

with Martha.’

Another silence from Albee, before he

finally murmured, ‘That’s what I wrote,’ and

walked out of the theatre.

I think, and hope, I had found the

poignancy and humour that he had written

into the play, but which had not always

emerged before. Whatever the truth, the

prospect of the first production of the play in

London for more than two decades attracted

an enormous amount of attention, and the

run at the comparatively small Almeida was

sold out before the first night. As a result, it

had been decided to transfer it to the larger

Aldwych

Theatre

in

central

London

immediately after it closed in Islington at the

end of October 1996. Thankfully, the reviews

at the Almeida fully justified the move. They

were incredibly supportive.

In the Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer

was kind enough to say that I matched

Diana Rigg’s volcanic performance ‘every

inch of the harrowing way’, adding, ‘The

sense of buried pain and humiliation is

palpable.’ The Times Literary Supplement

even added that the production ‘must rank

among the best’.

The wave of enthusiasm for Who’s Afraid

of Virginia Woolf? among theatregoers did

not wane for one moment when we

transferred to the Aldwych on 30 October

1996. With quotations on the advertising

saying, ‘One of the theatrical sensations of

the year’ and ‘Masterpiece’, we were to play

there for almost five months, to incredibly

receptive audiences.

Time magazine even came over from the

United States in February 1997, to say that

we brought out ‘all the lacerating power and

poignancy of Albee’s depiction of the blasted

American dream’. My performance won me

the Critics’ Circle Award for best actor and

saw me nominated for the Evening Standard

Theatre Award for best actor. By the time we

finally closed on 22 March 1997, I was

exhausted.

Several potential film projects fell apart

around me, but that allowed me to spend

the school summer holidays with Sheila,

Robert and Katherine, the first time I had

managed to do that in what seemed like

years, as I had been filming Poirot in the

summer so often. Then I was offered the

leading role in a drama for Scottish

Television, another part of ITV, separate

from London Weekend, though it had been

commissioned by my old Poirot colleague

Nick Elliott. It was a part that could not have

been further away from the little man.

In a three-part drama called Seesaw, that

was to be broadcast in the early spring of

1998, I was to play an affluent and

successful north London husband and father,

Morris Price, in a contemporary drama which

sees

his

seventeen-year-old

daughter

kidnapped. Morris had made his money

selling security equipment, while his wife

Val, to be played by my old friend Geraldine

James, who had appeared with me in Blott

on the Landscape, had been an interior

designer. Written by Deborah Moggach, who

adapted her own original novel, the story

has my character being asked to pay

£500,000 in ransom for the return of his

daughter, Hannah.

It was as close a role to me in reality as I

had played in many years – Morris was about

my age, fifty-two, had a wife and two

children, as I had, and there was to be no

padding, no beard, wig or funny moustache.

It was the first time in many years that I had

appeared on television without wearing

some kind of disguise. It also forced me to

confront my own worst fears. What if it had

happened to my own daughter, Katherine,

who was then just fourteen? I only knew one

thing: that I would give up my life for my

child. Morris decides not to tell the police

and sells his business to pay the ransom.

In fact, I had first been offered the role

while I was playing Who’s Afraid of Virginia

Woolf?, but it had taken some time to pull

the production together, and so we did not

actually film it until six months or so after I

had finished in the West End. I was very

flattered because I had heard that when

Geraldine was offered the role of the wife,

she said she would only do it if I played the

husband, which, thank goodness, ITV had

already decided that I should. It was a

delight to work with her again so long after

Blott, where I played her cook, chauffeur and

handyman – although we ended up getting

married. This time, we were married from

the start, which we both found incredibly

easy and straightforward. After all, we had

done it before.

Seesaw played on successive Thursday

evenings in March 1998 and both the

audience and the critics seemed to like it.

But I hardly had a moment to notice, as I

was whisked off to Los Angeles immediately