i
n t e r v i e w
spotlight september/october/november 1997
Alan Bates: An
Actor Who Prefers To Be Anonymous
by Peter Buckley
From SHOW (the magazine of films and the
arts) May, 1972
© 1972 by H&R Publications, Inc.
PART ONE (of three). "Hi! I just wanted
to say hello." A slight pause of indecision hung in the
air. "I mean, well, you are...ahh...Alan Bates, aren't you?"
 We had been chatting and taking photographs
in the middle of Picadilly Circus directly in front of the Criterion
Theatre which framed us with its banners, posters and blow-up
photographs loudly proclaiming its hit show Butley and
its star Alan Bates. We'd been there less than twenty minutes,
about 5,000 people must have passed by, yet not one had paid
the slightest attention to us until this smiling young American
hippie did her double-take and complete with knapsack walked
over to make friends.
"Hi," Alan smiled back, "Nice
to see you," adding under his breath, "Well, at least
she didn't call me Brian Bedford," and it was time to move
on. Somebody might ask for an autograph or something embarrassing
and that would be too much. Anonymity is a way of life for Alan
Bates and he seems to prefer it that way. He knows that if more
people actually put his name and face together instead of nudging
each other with "Hey, isn't that what's his name,"
he wouldn't necessarily get any better parts or make any more
money, but he would have a lot more trouble being himself. It's
not false modesty, just realistic honesty.
He's been a star for ten years yet he can still walk through
a crowd without anyone taking a blind bit of notice. It's not
that he's particularly plain--on the contrary, he's an unusually
handsome man--it's just that he sort of blends in; a face, a
voice, a person that one might know, but one can't quite place.
On second look, if you get the chance, you're sure it's "somebody,"
but you're never sure exactly who.
The definitive non-star star, he's always
there without seeming to push his way to the front of the line,
and he's been very careful to file his private and public lives
into separate drawers. He is the quiet chameleon who makes bad
newspaper copy--not a headline to his name, not a slur behind
his back, no brawls, no scandals, no burning causes, not a trend
setter or a follower, and as they say "imagewise, he's just
not"--and as an actor he has made the unspectacular but
steady climb to the top through his reliable and versatile professionalism.
So far though it's been a career as the "second lead,"
the eternal "other man."
Yet the real Alan Bates has yet to stand
up in public, on film, or even on the stage. One only gets a
vague impression of him in the flesh. Once out of a crowd, he
is the crowd: far bigger and heavier than he appears in
the distance, he defies the laws of perspective and grows at
a disproportionate rate the closer he gets. Broad-shouldered,
barrel-chested, thick-necked; not particularly tall, just big
with the overall massiveness of a lineman from one of the Mid-Western
states--or rather an ex-lineman who now limits it to tossing
the ball around on weekends. At an honest, robust 37, he's well
past the post-graduate stage.
The open, square, crinkly face is weighed
down by a mass of unruly black and gray speckled curls, while
the throwaway clothes have that slightly rumpled, unpacked look
of someone with more important things on his mind. He appears
to move more vertically than horizontally and as he bounces along
on the balls of his feet, the total effect is that of a much
loved teddy bear on springs. It's hard to see how he could blend
in so easily, but I know that I have passed him on the street
and never even noticed him, and I was looking for him.
 But then I wasn't looking for
those eyes. I'd never heard about them before, and they are the
most extraordinary eyes I've ever seen--clear, sharp piercing
black dots that go out in concentric rings from emerald to turquoise
to pale blue, ending up in chocolate brown--sort of a one man
color wheel.
Physical appearances aside, it's the voice
that finally gives Bates away--with a sound like that he'd have
to be either an actor or a priest. Full of rich, resonant tones
surrounding precisely clipped vowels, it's a sound that never
quite gets below the Adam's apple before it cuts back across
the room, and it never seems to pause for a rest. Obviously it
has been trained for the London stage where microphones are scorned
and the slightest whisper must be heard at the back of the top
balcony, and it's a voice of studied contrasts--in full command
of its words and in total control of its silences. There's no
room for "umms" and "ahhs," stammers and
mumbles, and there are none of those "Well man, like you
know what I mean" idiocies to cover up. when Alan Bates
says something, he damn well says it, even though he's convinced
that he has very little to say.
For an actor, he is a refreshing change.
In a business noted for its egomania and verbal diarrhea, he
is aggressively modest in a private way, and although he doesn't
mind talking about anything, and seems completely at east with
any subject, he finds talking about himself and his career a
"bloody bore."
 In private, Bates may not feel
that he has all that much to say, but in his current West End
hit Butley, he says plenty. In fact he hardly ever stops
talking. In the title role of the loud-mouthed, aggressive loser
who refuses to give up, he is on the attack mentally, verbally
and physically for over two hours. It is a demanding part, one
of those acid-coated sugarplums that only come along every so
often, and Bates gives it all it's worth, and then some, in a
brilliant performance that is totally exhausting for the audience
and for the actor.
"I find it much more tiring than even
playing Hamlet. I don't even get a breather. In old Hamlet
now there's plenty of time all the way throughout to have a good
rest. You can even go off to sleep if you want--not just the
audience, but Hamlet--and even when he's onstage, and he is a
lot, much of that time he really isn't doing all that much; just
lolling about. But not Butley. No, he never gets a loll. He's
up there and at it for the whole time. I shed pounds every night
from the sheer hard slog of it all, but it really gets me up
there flying high, so high that it takes another three hours
after every performance just to get back to earth."
Go to Part
Two
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