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Actors sent out to promote the latest movie/tv show they're involved in tend to sound often generic, so I was very pleasantly surprised byTimothy Dalton in an interview that may start with him starring in Penny Dreadful but then moves on to a rich variety of other topics. Dalton turns out to be funny, smart and a great raconteur in conversation (also not pretentious at all; he's absolutely gleeful about having been in Flash Gordon), and his descriptions of the people he encountered through work, from an aged Mae West onwards, read riveting. Here's a excerpt on Lion in Winter (wherein he played young King Philipp). Listen to his description of Peter O'Toole:
AVC: It’s interesting that you and Malcolm McDowell shared the same first TV experience, and then you went on to share your first film experience with Anthony Hopkins. It was his first film as well.
TD: Yep. And John Castle’s and Nigel Terry’s. I think Jane Merrow was the only one of us sort of younger kids, as it were, who’d ever done a movie before. So it was a great experience. I mean, she was fabulous, Katharine Hepburn. Just such a wonderful woman, so generous and kind and all-embracing and sort of… exciting, you know? And [Peter O’Toole] was great, too! I mean, he gave me… [Hesitates.] It didn’t work quite as well on film, but there’s a wonderful dénouement scene after I’ve sort of betrayed the whole lot of them, all his sons, when he stands there and gives a speech.
I can’t remember it, but he starts, and he’s just so shocked, so hurt, that he just starts talking about himself. And I think it starts something like, “I, Henry, Count of blah blah blah blah blah, Earl of this, Lord of that, King of…” You know, he builds this pillar of who he is: “He married out of love, a woman out of legend. She bore him many children… but no sons.” [Goes silent for several moments before laughing.] I’ll tell you, when he got to that, the air shook. The air trembled. I trembled! Every pore, every hair, every follicle across one’s entire body just went… [Gasps.] I had never heard or seen anything so powerful in my entire life as an actor. And it was great on the set. It was just brilliant. The air crackled. No, let’s say the air cracked. It was very powerful on film, but it was not quite the same, because you’re not actually in the room with him. But that was a fantastic moment, and I’ve never forgotten it. Well, you can see! I mean, years and years later—shit, 50 years later!—I’ve not forgotten that. I’ve never looked at the script since, and I can still remember bits of it!
As someone who may have seen The Lion in Winter a couple of times or ten or twelve, He married out of love, a woman out of legend etc is indeed the line verbatim. Also, damm, now I wish I could have seen it live!
The entire Dalton interview is here. Predictably, there is a James Bond debate going on in the comments. As for me, I'm with Andrew Wells (to a degree) in that I think Dalton was really good as Bond and was the first to try and make Bond a believable spy and a believable human being, but the time was against him, and thus we had to wait for twenty more years and Daniel Craig to succeed in that.
AVC: It’s interesting that you and Malcolm McDowell shared the same first TV experience, and then you went on to share your first film experience with Anthony Hopkins. It was his first film as well.
TD: Yep. And John Castle’s and Nigel Terry’s. I think Jane Merrow was the only one of us sort of younger kids, as it were, who’d ever done a movie before. So it was a great experience. I mean, she was fabulous, Katharine Hepburn. Just such a wonderful woman, so generous and kind and all-embracing and sort of… exciting, you know? And [Peter O’Toole] was great, too! I mean, he gave me… [Hesitates.] It didn’t work quite as well on film, but there’s a wonderful dénouement scene after I’ve sort of betrayed the whole lot of them, all his sons, when he stands there and gives a speech.
I can’t remember it, but he starts, and he’s just so shocked, so hurt, that he just starts talking about himself. And I think it starts something like, “I, Henry, Count of blah blah blah blah blah, Earl of this, Lord of that, King of…” You know, he builds this pillar of who he is: “He married out of love, a woman out of legend. She bore him many children… but no sons.” [Goes silent for several moments before laughing.] I’ll tell you, when he got to that, the air shook. The air trembled. I trembled! Every pore, every hair, every follicle across one’s entire body just went… [Gasps.] I had never heard or seen anything so powerful in my entire life as an actor. And it was great on the set. It was just brilliant. The air crackled. No, let’s say the air cracked. It was very powerful on film, but it was not quite the same, because you’re not actually in the room with him. But that was a fantastic moment, and I’ve never forgotten it. Well, you can see! I mean, years and years later—shit, 50 years later!—I’ve not forgotten that. I’ve never looked at the script since, and I can still remember bits of it!
As someone who may have seen The Lion in Winter a couple of times or ten or twelve, He married out of love, a woman out of legend etc is indeed the line verbatim. Also, damm, now I wish I could have seen it live!
The entire Dalton interview is here. Predictably, there is a James Bond debate going on in the comments. As for me, I'm with Andrew Wells (to a degree) in that I think Dalton was really good as Bond and was the first to try and make Bond a believable spy and a believable human being, but the time was against him, and thus we had to wait for twenty more years and Daniel Craig to succeed in that.
