LONG before Jim Carter accepted the role of a butler in the ITV series Downton Abbey, his name on a cast list was already a solid guarantee of quality. From the BBC’s The Singing Detective and Cranford to films such as A Month in the Country, The Madness of King George, Brassed Off and Shakespeare in Love, he had a CV to leave most British character actors green with envy.
However, within a year of the first airing of the Julian Fellowesscripted drama in 2010, his portrayal of the crusty, old-fashioned, deeply conservative yet loveably loyal and upstanding Mr Carson had turned him into a global name.
Slightly self-consciously, he says he’s since been publicly recognised on trips to such far-flung lands as New Zealand and India and even when riding a bicycle in Cambodia. ‘It’s been different for us all,’ he reflects. ‘I mean, Maggie Smith, with two Oscars, has never been in anything that made her so recognisable. Films don’t, because you only see them once, whereas with a TV series there’s repetition and, being in someone’s living room, there’s a human intimacy.’
He reckons it was on a trip to the US to publicise the second series at the end of 2011 that the cast first realised that they were part of a phenomenon. ‘I remember us walking down the streets of Manhattan and getting recognised a lot and thinking “that’s weird”.
‘Then we were invited down to the British ambassador’s residence, where all the great and the good, the mottled and the liver-spotted of Washington DC behaved disgracefully. It was like we were the Bay City Rollers. They were pulling at us, wanting selfies. It was so undignified,’ he laughs at the memory.
Denne historien er fra September 11, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 11, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
