I sat last night for an hour and a half, and listened to him talk about life and passion for acting. It was a thrill to hear some of his stories and his perspective on Shakespeare. His wit, kindness, and sincerity were apparent.
He was completely unapologetic about his work for Star Trek, while sitting on the stage of the Shakespeare Theater Company in Sydney Harman Hall, and, in fact, takes great pride in his time spent as Captain Jean Luc Picard.
He even recited the famous ST voice over--"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."--in his native Yorkshire accent. And admitted to originally auditioning for the role in a toupee and reading lines with a French accent--"Spaze ze final frontier. Zese are ze voyagez of ze starship..." (Thank heavens we don't have to deal with another toupee wearing starship captain.)
I hope to see him at work on stage some day. He's a pretty fabulous actor and I always enjoy his work on the big and small screen.
A few things he said last night that have stuck with me are:
When asked which actresses he had a crush on as a young man: I wanted to marry Doris Day and if she wouldn't have me, then I would settle for Debby Reynolds. (Seriously, I love this man.)
"You will never achieve success by insuring against failure."
Which film had influenced him as a young man: On the Waterfront (I'm adding this my list to watch.)
"Banish fear."
When asked if he thought Shakespeare had indeed written all his plays, he said yes, then elaborated: It makes no sense that a glove maker's son with a grammar school education could write such plays, but that to me is the strongest argument for the power of creativity. (I've paraphrased this last quite a bit, and, yes, I agree.)
3 comments:
Our first year in London, we saw him perform his one-man version of A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic. It was stupendous. Oh, and we were sitting behind Ben Kingsley.
3 years later we saw the show again in L.A. It wasn't nearly the same.
It was fun to talk about this last night. I LOVE his take on the validity of Shakespeare! Creativity is so incredibly powerful. Thanks for your wisdom and insight last night Christine, it was loads of fun to hang out!
@C in DC: I'm so jealous! And no, it wouldn't be the same.
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