i n
t e r v i e w
- july / august
1998 spotlight -
Farther from the Madding Crowd
by Andrew Duncan
from The Radio Times, 5-11 December 1992
Modest, likeable
and, above all, talented,
Alan Bates has
evaded the pitfalls of fame for over 25 years. But the
star of BBC2's
new series, "Unnatural Pursuits"
has not avoided the pain of personal tragedy.
He has looked fortune in the face and
turned his back on it. A very private person in a public profession,
he manages to avoid the "luvvy" trap of protesting
too much about the so-called hazards of fame. He is affable,
courteous, genuinely modest, with only a hint of the bleak introspection
two years of deep personal tragedy have wrought. In short, he's
a good bloke, instantly likeable, suspicious of the hype that
so often surrounds actors of his class.
 For the past year he has worked harder than
ever -- solace, some may say, after the deaths of his wife Victoria,
in June, and his 19-year-old twin son, Tristan, two years ago,
from an asthma attack.
This week, he stars in the first of Simon
Gray's two-part series Unnatural Pursuits on BBC2, as
well as in David Storey's new play, Stages, at the National
Theatre, and a film with Sam Shepard. "Acting is acting,"
he says. "I don't care what the medium is. If people who
write stuff you love offer you a part, you do it. I like to be
a maverick in my work."
 Now 58,
he knew from the age of 11 that he wanted to act. "You never
quite understand where these things come from. Maybe it was a
small play at school [in Belper, Derbyshire] and I thought, 'This
is it.'"
His parents were both fine musicians -- father
a cellist, mother a pianist -- who could have become professional
but didn't. Instead, his father went into insurance, which he
hated. "I think somewhere deep down he was frustrated, but
my parents had a good life together and family meant a great
deal to them. Ambition comes into it. It's what makes you get
up and spend your whole life doing something. If you're not ambitious,
I suppose you're not frustrated."
Recognising their son's early promise, Bates's
parents hired a voice coach to eliminate the broader northern
vowels and encouraged him to join a local Shakespeare group.
He overcame sturdy working-class accusations of "cissy"
to win a verse-speaking contest.
National Service in the RAF
divided his two years at RADA,
and after a year in rep he joined the newly formed English Stage
Company at the Royal Court, a forcing ground for post-war theatrical
talent, where he starred as Cliff in the original 1956 production
of Osborne's Look Back in Anger.
"It was sheer chance. I was lucky to
come into the business at a time when things were happening.
I became known and, touch wood, I've survived. Films were actually
being made from great novels in those days -- Women in Love,
The Go-Between, Far From the Madding Crowd. One couldn't
have asked for better.
"I despair of some of today's hugely
successful films -- Terminator, Lethal Weapon. You can
have a good night out, but they're pretty awful, and don't reflect
the lives people lead. I suppose it's a wild, excessive escape
that people want. You watch Basic Instinct and wonder,
'Who are these people?' No one lives like that. Or, if they did,
it wouldn't be for very long. It's slick film-making, but it's
also voyeurism and cheap entertainment that doesn't engage any
serious element."
If you're a successful actor,
you're well paid anyway.
You don't need to earn millions.
After his early success, he went to
Hollywood to make An Unmarried Woman and The Rose
and was offered several lucrative contracts. "I didn't object
to working there, but found the things I wanted to do were either
in the theatre or low-budget films in England. In the end, I
wasn't ambitious for Hollywood.
"I like to keep flexibility. That way
you stay in control of your own life in some kind of way. At
least that's how I see it. It's difficult to maintain integrity,
whatever job you do, so you try to hang on to your own sense
of what you want to do. Some actors will do anything to achieve
financial success or fame, but it seems to me you've slightly
forgotten about being an actor if you do that.
 "Of
course, there are occasions when life runs ahead of you and you
might do things to pay bills or the tax man. That's happened
to me as well as everybody else. You just get on with it. Let's
face it, one is lucky to be able to do films you don't want to
do. If you're successful as an actor you're well paid anyway.
You don't need to earn millions."
His whole career, he says, has been put into
new perspective by the deaths of his wife and son. Victoria died
suddenly in her sleep, while on holiday in Sardinia recuperating
from the recent deaths of her sister and mother, as well as still
trying to come to terms with the premature death of Tristan.
It was said she died of a broken heart.
"You think, 'So what to my life? They
call me a successful actor, but what does that mean?' It begins
to have no meaning, except it does really because one has to
get through this life. What elese is there to say except it's
a nightmare, a horror? They shouldn't have gone and I miss them
dreadfully. When a child dies it just knocks something out of
you. Tristan and his brother [Benedick] were modelling in Japan,
earning money to see the world. They made a huge success of it,
and I'm glad I saw that.
"You have to try to be positive because
if you're lucky, as I was, your children give you a great deal,
a sort of strength. The fact they were with you for part of your
life is tremendous, and that doesn't go. I don't expect to get
over it. I don't even want to.
"My other son and I are getting on with
life because we don't have much other choice. He's a wonderful
chap, in his last year at LAMDA. He wants
to be an actor and he has a terrific future. I haven't discouraged
him. I think it's very fortunate if people know what they want
to do. They should set about it. If they fail, they fail. At
least they'll have had a go. Tristan also wanted to act, and
he'd have been extremely good. He wouldn't have wanted me to
stop. One has to remember that."
I suspect that if I had a
talent for anything else
it would be for writing --
nothing original, like a
play, but some form of writing.
 Another
Bates film, Shuttlecock, may be released here next year,
[It was not. -Ed.] and it illustrates some of the frustrations
in his career. "I made it two years ago, but it's been delayed
by producer squabbles. You think, 'Come on. We sweated our guts
out doing something good, and it  can't
be shown because of misunderstandings at the top.' It's very
tiresome.
"I've also worked on French films, one
of which, Force Majeure, is good. The Americans bought
it and said they wanted to re-make it with different people.
I suppose the French producers couldn't resist the offer -- it
paid their bills. But it's awful to sell a film so that it can
be re-made. It will live on, though. It was a huge success in
France.
"I'd like to have more control over
my work, but I've always loved what I do. Until 30, I was very
happy just acting, and afterwards I had a family to support.
If I do want to do anything else with my life it will have to
be in this stage when one's responsibilities are less. The day
may come, or it may not. Acting is enormously satisfying, but
you always think what someone else is doing is even more so."
Mid-life crisis? "I'm not aware of it.
Those two tragic events have probably wiped out any mid-life
crisis. They are crises of their own. I'm not a naturally confident
person. Actors have to be vulnerable to play other poeple, which
means their confidence can shatter very easily. But I have stoicism,
a resilience, a kind of determination to fight through those
moments. From time to time I feel insecure as an actor, but something
turns up, or has so far. The oddest things can happen, the most
unlikely people are out of work.
"I suspect that if I had a talent for
anything else it would be writing -- nothing original, like a
play, but some form of writing. I haven't put it to the test.
I should have done. Everyone should try something else. We're
all capable of much more than we do. Not many of us test ourselves
in areas where there might be other talents.
"I think it would be great to paint,
to have a real vision and gift. I'd also like to have been an
opera singer. Probably singing gives the most pleasure of any
profession, if you can master it. I've taken loads of lessons
because at the back of my mind I want to be ready in case I'm
asked. I sing a little shakily in Unnatural Pursuits."
 In the series he plays
writer Hamish Partt, whose finances diminish as his alcohol intake
increases during the trauma of having a new play performed in
London, Los Angeles, Dallas and New York. "It's loosely
based on Simon Gray himself," says Bates. "I've always
loved playing his stuff [Butley, Otherwise Engaged, among
others] and relish his words. Somehow you can just eat them.
"Partt watches his life crumbling and
even relishes it. However much of a wreck he is himself, he sees
everyone around him incredibly sanely and with affection. He
understands ego, paranoia, the nonsense of everything. He's constantly
coming up against other people's obsessions and, at the same
time, he's smoking and drinking himself into a rather bad condition.
I've known people like that, and you can see how near we all
are to a similar sort of edge. There's a real mixture of the
clown and despair in one." He paused, grinned, and added:
"Well, we're all clowns, aren't we?" RT
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