Thinking Outside The Box

The actor on avoiding Shakespeare, being Siegfried’s brother and keeping working

- Jack Watkins

THE subtitle of Peter Davison’s warmly engaging and honestly insightful autobiography is An Actor Despairs. Don’t tell us the man who endeared himself to the nation as the workshy, often inebriated and lovelorn ball of fun Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small is really a melancholy soul?

No fear: it’s partly a thespian in-joke, a play on the title of the prime Stanislavski text on the Method, An Actor Prepares, handed out to all drama-school students. ‘When I mention my book’s name to actors, they all say: “Oh! That’s really good”,’ laughs Mr Davison, but, he continues, it also contains a subtler message.

‘It links to my belief that an actor’s level of “despair” is consistent across the board, whether they’re a Hollywood star or unemployed in Frinton-on-Sea. Some will say they’ve done wonderfully well, they’ve worked in Northampton rep, they’ve done this and that, but I’ll think, by my standards, they’re not successful at all. Yet they’re really no different from me.

‘I can say I’ve worked consistently for five decades, but I’m not in movies or the really prestigious TV series, because so many film actors have come into that, making it harder for established TV performers. Then again, I was watching an American film last night starring Colin Farrell. Where is he now? Someone we regard as a big name, but he probably feels the same.’