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.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin September 11, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin September 11, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning
