Poirot and Me (6 page)

them.

Keeping Poirot as different as she could

from Holmes was absolutely vital, because

his books were still appearing when she

began to write her first Poirot story. Sir

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear was

published in 1915, when she was planning

Poirot, and his next story, His Last Bow, in

1917, appeared after Dame Agatha had

finished her first draft of The Mysterious

Affair at Styles, her first book and Poirot’s

first appearance.

It was inevitable that Dame Agatha’s

detective would set himself quite apart from

Holmes. ‘How, you ask, would I be

recognised in a crowd?’ she had him write to

his American publisher. ‘What is there

distinctive about my appearance? Alas, I

have none of those theatrical peculiarities

which distinguish the detectives in story

books.’

Not quite true, I remember thinking, but I

saw her point.

True, I have my little prejudices.

Anything in the least crooked or

disorderly is a torment to me. In my

bookcase, I arrange the tallest books

at the end; then the next tallest; and

so on. My medicine bottles are placed

in a neatly graduated row. If your

necktie were not correct, I should find

it irresistible not to make it straight for

you. Should there be a morsel of

omelette on your coat, a speck of dust

on your collar, I must correct these . . .

For my breakfast, I have only toast

which is cut into neat little squares.

The eggs – there must be two – they

must be identical in size. I confess to

you that I will stoop to pick up a burnt

match from a flower bed and bury it

neatly.

But Poirot denies that he’s a little man,

insisting fiercely:

I am five feet four inches high. My

head, it is egg-shaped and I carry it a

little to one side, the left. My eyes, I

am told, shine green when I am

excited. My boots are patent leather,

smart and shiny. My stick is embossed

with a gold band. My watch is large

and keeps the time exactly. My

moustache is the finest in all London.

You see, mon ami? You comprehend?

Hercule Poirot stands before you.

Well yes, he did, there was no doubt of that,

and he certainly was not Sherlock Holmes.

Yet the more I read, the more uncertain I

was about his voice. I could hear the accent

– but what was it? Seeing Poirot was one

thing – I was sure that Brian Eastman and I

could settle that – but hearing him, that was

quite another matter.

There was also the matter of what playing

him might mean to my career. Was I in

danger of losing myself in a single character?

Would that overwhelm me? Would I fall into

that actor’s trap of being typecast? I was

determined not to, but I could sense a

danger.

One evening in early June, shortly before

the filming of When the Whales Came came

to an end on Bryher, and just weeks before I

was due to start shooting the first of the

Poirot films, I had a conversation with the

film’s executive producer, Geoffrey Wansell,

who was to become a dear friend and who is

writing this book with me. We talked about

my playing Poirot and what it might mean.

‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing,’ Geoffrey said.

‘It will change your life forever. You will go

through a door and never be able to go back

through it again.’

‘Don’t be so silly,’ I told him. ‘I’ll still be

exactly the same person I am now: an actor.

That’s all I ever want to be.’

‘Believe me, you won’t stay the same,’ he

replied. ‘Everything will change, whether you

want it to or not, and you won’t be able to

go back. But that doesn’t mean for a

moment that you’ll be typecast. Poirot may

consume part of you while you’re playing

him, but not every part of you.’

That was what I wanted: to play the

character of Poirot as I had played the

characters of Blott or Freud. I was a

character actor. And that’s exactly what I

did. That was what I was doing now. I was

going to become Poirot, not a ‘star’

personality performer.

Shortly afterwards, I started the long trip

home from Bryher – a boat to St Mary’s, the

largest of the Scilly Isles, where the former

Prime Minister Harold Wilson still had his

bungalow, then a helicopter to Penzance,

and then the long train ride back to

Paddington and my house in Acton. As the

journey progressed, I began to wonder

exactly what I had let myself in for.

It didn’t take long for me to find out.

Chapter 2

‘We must never, ever,

laugh at him’

Back in London, the one thing that was

preoccupying me was still Poirot’s voice.

I had to get it right. It wasn’t a joke, it

wasn’t there for anyone to laugh at; it was at

the very heart of the man. But how could I

find it?

To help me, I managed to get hold of a

set of Belgian Walloon and French radio

recordings from the BBC. Poirot came from

Liège in Belgium and would have spoken

Belgian French, the language of 30 per cent

of the country’s population, rather than

Walloon, which is very much closer to the

ordinary French language. To these I added

recordings of English-language stations

broadcasting from Belgium, as well as

English-language programmes from Paris. My

principal concern was to give my Poirot a

voice that would ring true, and which would

also be the voice of the man I heard in my

head when I read his stories.

I listened for hours, and then gradually

started mixing Walloon Belgian with French,

while at the same time slowly relocating the

sound of his voice in my body, moving it

from my chest to my head, making it sound

a little more high-pitched, and yes, a little

more fastidious.

After several weeks, I finally began to

believe that I’d captured it: this was what

Poirot would have sounded like if I’d met him

in the flesh. This was how he would have

spoken to me – with that characteristic little

bow as we shook hands, and that little nod

of the head to the left as he removed his

perfectly brushed grey Homburg hat.

The more I heard his voice in my head,

and added to my own list of his personal

characteristics, the more determined I

became never to compromise in my

portrayal of Poirot. I vowed to myself that I

would never allow him to be a figure of fun.

He may have been vain, but he was a

serious man, just as I was, and I wanted to

bring that out.

That was when I started to realise that

perhaps he and I had more things in

common than I’d suspected. We were both

outsiders to some extent – he a Belgian

living in England, me a Londoner who was

born in Paddington but nevertheless had

always somehow felt something of an

outsider. That was not the only quality we

shared, however. I had exactly the same

appetite for order, method and symmetry

that he did. And, like Poirot, I was not

prepared to compromise what I believed in.

That certainly applied to his clothes.

After I got back from Bryher, I was shown

some of the proposed costumes for the

television series. But they weren’t quite

right. In my eyes, they didn’t represent the

image of the man that I had formed after

reading the books and making my own

notes. They were too loud, too garish. They

had more to do with a comedy programme

than the character I wanted to play, and I

didn’t want that. I didn’t want my Poirot to

look foolish.

Sadly, the moustaches I was offered were

almost as wrong: far too big, drowning my

face, so that I looked like a walrus – quite

horrible. I hardly knew what to say. I was

terribly disappointed, but it made me all the

more determined. I was not going to be put

off. Everything I’d been shown had nothing

to do with the Poirot I wanted to portray,

and I was not going to allow him to be made

a fool of.

With Brian Eastman’s help, it was agreed

that I would be ‘permitted’ to wear the

clothes that Agatha Christie herself had

dictated that Poirot should wear – a three-

piece suit, a wing collar, shiny patent leather

shoes and spats. There were one or two

people working on preparing the series that

weren’t too keen. ‘They will look so dull on

television; they aren’t interesting enough,’

they said. But I dug my heels in.

If Agatha Christie said that Poirot would

wear a morning jacket, striped trousers and

a grey waistcoat at certain times of the day,

then that was exactly what I wanted him to

wear on television – not a jot more, nor a jot

less. After all number twenty-two in my list

of characteristics said: ‘Very particular over

his appearance,’ while number twenty-four

added: ‘Always wears a separate collar –

wing collar,’ and number thirty-three

explained: ‘His appearance (including hair) is

always immaculate. His nails groomed and

shined.’

My Poirot would always be dressed like

that or I wouldn’t play him.

I felt exactly the same way about his

moustache. I didn’t want it to look like

something stuck on, a silly afterthought. It

was central to the man he was, a reflection

of his fastidious attitude to life. There was

never a single moment when Poirot wasn’t

enormously particular about it. As my note

number twenty-one said firmly: ‘Will always

take his solid-silver moustache-grooming set

with him when travelling.’

That was why Brian Eastman and I,

together with a make-up artist, decided to

design the moustache that I would wear for

the television series ourselves, rather than to

accept the suggestions we’d had so far. And

we based our moustache on the description

that Agatha Christie herself gave in Murder

on the Orient Express, the full-length story

that she wrote in 1933 and published the

following year.

As she herself was to say, almost forty

years later – when the film version starring

Albert Finney appeared – ‘I wrote that he

had the finest moustache in England – and

he didn’t in the film. I thought that a pity.

Why shouldn’t he have the best moustache?’

I was determined to serve my writer, and I

certainly wasn’t going to allow my Poirot not

to have the finest moustache in England.

In the end, Brian and I came up with a

moustache that we both thought exactly

conveyed what Dame Agatha had in mind –

a small, neat, carefully waxed one that

curled upwards, and where the tip of each of

end would be level with the tip of my nose.

For us, it was the best-looking waxed

moustache in England, and exactly what

Hercule Poirot must have.

With those decisions behind me, I found

myself at Twickenham Film Studios on the

south-western outskirts of London, not far

from the River Thames, in late June 1988,

climbing carefully into the outfit that would

define my portrait of Poirot. It was my first

screen test.

First came the padding. I needed to wear

a good deal on my stomach, chest, back and

shoulders, to make sure I was the right

shape. I’m actually fairly slim, but it was vital

that Poirot shouldn’t be. The padding helped

me gain almost 40 pounds in appearance,

transforming me into a man who weighed

more than 200 pounds. Even the separate

wing collar that gripped my neck like a vice

helped to make my face look a little fatter.

After the padding came the clothes, and I

insisted that the striped trousers be

immaculately creased, the black morning

coat freshly pressed, the grey waistcoat a

perfect fit and the white shirt sparkling for

the screen test. Then my dresser added the

little brooch of a vase containing a tiny posy