We really enjoyed the Turner and Lowry movies. Did you learn to draw in both styles? Which famous British painter would you like to play next? Rextanka1 and DarkAnaemicII started painting a few years before we even started rehearsing for Mr Turner. I had this great teacher, Tim Wright, and I painted a complete reproduction of one of Turner’s masterpieces that I have on my wall and I still can’t figure out how I did it. Until I played Lowry [in 2019’s Mrs Lowry & Son] that I started to draw a lot. I couldn’t stop drawing between takes. I was doing slightly bad Turners, slightly bad Lowry knockoffs, then suddenly I started drawing but I couldn’t figure out who it looked like and realized it was me. I had my own exhibition last year [at London’s Pontone gallery], which was a huge surprise. Well, art imitating life. William Blake would be a hell of a role because he was not only an artist but a philosopher, a Christian mystic and an amazing character. There are so many artists, but I had enough problems with rats. I’ve played a few of them [Scabbers in Harry Potter, Nick in Chicken Run, and in the Mike Leigh play Smelling a Rat]. I’ve played Churchill twice [in Jackboots on Whitehall and The King’s Speech]. So I’m your man for artists, Churchill or rats. You have been framed… Spall to Mr. Turner. Photo: Film4/Allstar Do you take on a role like executioner Albert Pierrepoint (for the 2005 film Pierrepoint) with an acceptable degree of risk, or are you sure you can handle the psychological toll? eye roll I was sure that, as an actor, you were always playing someone else. You look into someone else’s psychology to tell their story. As a young man, I read his autobiography, Executioner: Pierrepoint, and was struck by the mixture of joy, kindness and darkness. So I knew there was something very unusual about this man. One of the first people I had to hang happened to be one of my sons [actor Rafe Spall]They are very good friends, who lived in ours with his girlfriend. They set up this replica of the gallows in the execution chamber from Wandsworth Prison. There were so many people coming in, I was like, “Good morning, how are you? I’ll hang you in a minute,” and I had to hang him the first week. So that was weird. When we went to Norfolk to recreate the German prison Hamelin, I had to drop off about 15 people in one afternoon. Pierpoint was conscious of showing respect to the bodies, and he cleaned and washed them afterwards, so he didn’t just throw them away. He took it seriously, as he does in the film. What are your memories of Danny Boyle’s 2001 TV movie Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise? conor_boyd This was Danny Boyle trying out his new style with cinematographer, Anthony Dodd Mandle. We had 14 cameras in the car, I had one camera attached to me, so it was a real experiment. I played this really out-there character: ugly and vulnerable, Bernard Manning meets Steve Jobs. It was: sell, sell, sell and it would never close. And at one point I had to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious backwards. It was bloody hard work, but I loved doing it. I had almost forgotten how crazy, crazy and inventive 1986 Gothic is. What was it like working with Ken Russell? GasparGarcao and TheFall2007Ken Russell were really very together and organized since he had a reputation for being this extremely wild person. I remember coming into rehearsal and he said, “Here we find you dead. Here’s the art director to discuss cockroaches coming out of your mouth.” I said, “Excuse me? Are cockroaches coming out of my mouth? There’s no way cockroaches are coming out of my mouth.” They ended up using a cast of my face. We also had a leech with this huge bucket of leeches. Ken freaked out and tucked his jeans into his socks because he thought one would slide down his leg. One minute you’re pulling cockroaches out of your mouth, the next you’re working with a bucket of leeches. That’s when you knew you were in a Ken Russell movie. Beyond our Ken… With Gabriel Byrne in Gothic. Photo: Sportsphoto/Allstar I remember you as the idiot boy in Merry Wives of Windsor at the RSC in the 70s. You stole the show. Given the chance, what role would you play these days? jimboy63 Yes, as Peter Simple! If I were ever to return to the RSC – which is highly unlikely – I’d like a crack at one of the old kings. At 65, I think my Hamlet days are probably over – Hamlet is 33 – but Ian McKellen just played Hamlet at 82 to great success, so it can be done. I guess all actors have this irrational and slightly irrational desire to play King Lear, as you always have to be old to play him. It’s one of the greatest parts in all of written drama, so extremely challenging. I’d probably have a crack at it, but I have no ambitions to go back to theatre. I worry that I might be living in a computer simulation. Are there any clues, blatant or otherwise, that might help me determine if I am, in fact, a lifeless algorithm going through the motions in the game of some vastly superior intelligence? randomly Um, no I think that’s the answer to that. But you can never be sure! It’s weird, I’m only in one scene in one episode of Red Dwarf, but I’ve been in all 40 episodes of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. It looks a bit like Harry Potter. I’m only in about 15 scenes total, so I’m hardly into it. It just goes to show that you don’t always have to play the leading role to be remembered. What Mike Leigh movie that you’re not in would you like to have? vammypProbably Nuts in May, the brilliant 70s TV movie, is really a game for today. It’s one of Mike Leigh’s funniest, most brilliant films of all time and I recommend it to anyone. One of my favorite scenes is the barbecue in Secrets & Lies because of the intricate choreography. How many rehearsals did it take and how many takes did it take, huh? boavisteiro It was very accurate. The thing about Mike Leigh is that there’s a misconception that everything is improvised. Is not. It is processed with absolute precision. you’re never going to be more rehearsed. I continued to cut steak. We did about 15 takes and ran out of chops, so they had to sew those chops together, and when I cut her, she had all these stitches, like she’d had surgery. It was absolutely disgusting! I met you when you came to see Rafe perform in my play, Death of England, at the NT in 2020. Have you ever been tempted to give Rafe acting notes? Does he give you any? Roy Williams We support each other morally, but I never gave him an acting note and he never gave me one. He grew up with me shouting at the TV: that was his lesson. You can’t talk someone into how to act. it’s something you learn in rehearsal. Is acting talent hereditary? I assume. Many sons and daughters of actors become actors. the same with painters. Look at all the Dutch, there is the “generational patch” between older and younger workers. It has to do with the atmosphere you are born into. Pierrepoint chose to be an executioner because it was in his family. If I was a hangman in real life, would Rafe be too? Who knows, except for the fact that we haven’t had the death penalty since 1961, so we wouldn’t have much work to do! Keeping it in the family… Rafe Spall in Death of England. Photo: /Helen Murray If you could meet Shakespeare, what would you ask him? alexHD My mind boggles at his genius. His incredibly prophetic and philosophical poetry touches everyone. Not only is he a great playwright, but he said things in two lines that philosophers are still trying to explain. So I would like to ask him what he does with everyone who tries to tell him it wasn’t him. So many people say: how could he have been, coming from such a humble background? He probably had a Midlands accent, he wasn’t an aristocrat. I’d say, “You might have thought you were underrated when you were alive, but things haven’t changed much, man.” Who would you like to play you? Bob Woodturn I’d say Rafe, but he’s a foot taller than me. Having just done Hamlet, Sir Ian McKellen could play my younger self, why not? I’ve played Margaret Rutherford, so she shouldn’t even be a man. Glenda Jackson played King Lear and is 80! As an actor, whatever you play, whatever you do, even if you spend your whole life playing a character, you’re playing other people. This is what you dedicate your life to: playing characters in stories that we hope people will enjoy. One thing you can be absolutely sure of is that you will never know your personal essence. You have no idea how you come across to others. I wouldn’t be able to cast. I wouldn’t know. It is open to anyone, any age, any gender. It depends on the interpretation, the format, so I’d happily deliver. Hopefully they would want to consult me, but they might not even want to do that. It can also be a musical! But it depends on the artist’s choice, so I’m definitely not going to pursue it. It Snows in Benidorm is now in UK cinemas
