Sam West: 'I'm cheap and available – tell your friends!'

He may be theatre royalty – and he observes the fashion for class – but the actor/director is more political than posh

Sunday 08 April 2012  

Belief in the project, for which Lee Hall has supplied additional material to Plater's blazing 1968 script, is something that West, 45, possesses in abundance. He's certainly done his homework, quoting frightening statistics about safety standards in Chilean mines, and providing staunch defence of the union movement, whose struggles and occasional triumphs down the decades provide the beating heart of the play. "If you want to use Conservative rhetoric, unions are the Big Society in action, people getting together to help each other for not very much money," he says pointedly. As a council member for the actors' union, Equity, and vice-chair of the National Campaign for the Arts, it's a point that matters dearly to him.

Lee Hall has provided staunch advocacy of mining before, in Billy Elliot and The Pitmen Painters, and I wonder aloud whether mining has, for us now, somehow come to symbolise something greater than itself, namely the death of a manufacturing and unionised Britain. "I think it does stand for something we fear we might have lost," West agrees sadly. "Part-time jobs, itinerant workplaces or service jobs don't breed unionisation – or community, or community spirit – in the same way."

All of which seems a good juncture to ask him for his views on the "actors and class" debate that has been rumbling in the media for some weeks, ignited by Downton Abbey's Rob James-Collier saying that it's harder for working-class actors and Dominic West (no relation to Sam) adding fuel to the flames by claiming "Old Etonian" is a label that provokes hatred. Sam West starts off by sidestepping the question. "Speaking personally, as somebody who does a reasonably good RP, I wish I was 10 years younger. When I came out of university, from about 1989 to 2002 nobody made anything but East End gangster movies. And now everybody's doing posh stuff and I haven't got any cheekbones any more! I've got my career in completely the wrong order!"

I suspect this won't be West's last word on the subject, and it isn't. "Shameless is the new Boys from the Blackstuff: there's certainly a change in the way the working classes are being portrayed on television. In our last government we had a home secretary who used to be a postman and now we've got the 19th Eton-educated prime minister, so Dominic might reflect on that. I hasten to add that I'm an enormous fan of Dominic's and I get quite a lot of his fan mail, so I don't want to diss him in any way!"

West returns from time to time to the subject of social mobility. "I think it's really important that what it's like to live in this country doesn't just become an upper-class narrative," he says at one point, before concluding as we part, "I really do think the things that make our society what it is are under threat. It should be about everyone having the potential to be what they're going to be."

What, then, does he think about our current televisual fixation with the rigid class hierarchies of the past, in Downton and Upstairs Downstairs? He confesses that he doesn't watch the programmes but hopes they're not a reflection of an idea that this is the way things are supposed to be.

"I wonder whether we look back to a time of supposed certainty, where people knew their place, because we don't know our place at the moment and looking into the future is difficult. The really interesting thing about reviving a play written in 1968 is there's a much stronger feeling of potential and hope for the future. At the moment we are having to face the known possibility that we are passing on to our children a less good world than we inherited. I don't mind people being at the top of the ladder, I mind them pulling it up after them." Would he ever consider a role in period dramas like these? "Of course. I'm cheap and available – tell your friends!'

Despite fluctuating demand for cheekbones and RP, West has enjoyed a wonderfully varied career as an actor, director and voiceover artist. One of his earliest roles, as Leonard Bast in Merchant Ivory's exquisite film adaptation of E M Forster's Howards End, led to a Bafta nomination and with it the chance to try to crack Hollywood. However, after discussing the possibility with his parents, Prunella Scales and Timothy West, he chose to stay at home.

Does he regret that? "Only in so far as one regrets the things one hasn't done just because one hasn't done them. When people say, 'If I had my life over again I wouldn't do anything different', well, I'd do everything differently just for the variety'." This course of action, he says, meant he didn't have to "risk failure" in Los Angeles. Is he scared of failure? "Not as much as I'm scared of success," he replies emphatically.

Success happened over here anyway, with acclaimed turns as Richard II and Hamlet for the RSC and, latterly, with the "performance of his career", as one critic described it, as Jeffrey Skilling in the multi-award-winning Enron. He also had two years as artistic director at Sheffield, before disagreements with the board ended his tenure. Did he enjoy being at the helm? "Modified rapture," he says wryly. "It was awfully difficult and I messed up a lot of things about it." Nevertheless, he'd like to run another building some day and I suggest that the Almeida, just over the road from his Islington flat, might be the perfect fit.

West is disarmingly honest about the benefits of having parents well established in the family business. "It certainly got me auditions, but I don't think it ever got me jobs. People wanted to meet me because they knew my parents, yes." He claims that all his professional ambitions – "to be in Doctor Who, play Hamlet and read the shipping forecast" – have been fulfilled. So what about doing a Glenda Jackson and going into politics? "Being a frustrated idealist backbencher, like many of my favourite MPs, would sometimes be hell on earth," he says ruefully. Anyway, for now, Sam West is gloriously content with taking a play about coal-mining to Newcastle.

Close the Coalhouse Door is at Northern Stage, Newcastle, 13 April to 5 May (0191 230 5151, northern stage.co.uk), then tours nationwide until 30 June

On the most cursory of glances, it seems an unlikely fit. Actor-director Samuel West, owner of some of the nicest vowel sounds on our stage and Oxford-educated scion of famous acting parents, is off to Newcastle to direct Alan Plater's fierce modern classic about mining, Close the Coalhouse Door. Yet after just a few minutes' conversation, West, eloquent and personable, leaves one in no doubt as to his passionately held political and ideological convictions. He's clear what he would say to any who question his suitability for this job. "Their point would be? That I'm not authentic? I didn't believe in talking mice either, but I was still allowed to be in Narnia [as King Caspian in the television adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]. You can't tell the story of mines without believing that most of the time progress was made at the expense of the people who were at the bottom and got paid the least. I believe that, so that means I'm allowed to direct the play!"

Samuel West Is A Law-Abiding Angel

By Marion McMullen on Jan 29, 12 09:04 PM

BRITISH actor Samuel West is flying high playing angelic solicitor Zak Gist in quirky legal drama Eternal Law
In a career that's spanned more than two decades, Samuel has played many different roles, from Shakespearean monarchs and princes, through to Dr Frankenstein and an infamous spy to tragic dreamers.
However, there was one gaping hole on his CV which, thankfully, has now been filled.
He hadn't made a habit of tackling heavenly bodies until Eternal Law came along. And his character here, Zak Gist, isn't just any angel - he's also a lawyer.
"He's a tough, uncompromising angel who's not afraid to break the rules - which makes him sound like every bad cop that's had a series based around him!" Samuel says with a grin.
"He is grumpy though. He's quite cynical. Angels do tours of duty like soldiers do, and they get pulled back when it all gets too much, which is what's started happening to Zak."

The basic premise comes from Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah of Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes fame.
Joining Zak on Earth is his rookie angel sidekick Tom (Ukweli Roache). They rent rooms in the home of Mrs Sheringham (Orla Brady), a former angel who, unlike Zak, did give up immortality for the human she loved - only for him to die, leaving her bereft.
But there's another 'character' at the centre of the drama - the city of York.
The entire series was filmed on location there, with a former hospital overlooking the historic Minster providing studio and office space for the cast and crew.
It's a fittingly ethereal setting for this heavenly drama, and being there has given West a chance to reconnect with a county he feels is in his blood.
His actor parents - Timothy West and Prunella Scales - both grew up in Yorkshire, while Samuel himself, the elder of their two sons, lived there for two years until 2007.
"I used to run Sheffield Theatres and lived in Yorkshire, although North Yorkshire people believe that South Yorkshire folk are from a different country - and in some ways that's justified! I loved Sheffield and miss it very much."
Having grown up surrounded by show business, it seemed inevitable that he would become an actor.
After studying English Literature at Oxford University, he gained rave reviews for his professional acting debut as Michael in Cocteau's Les Parents Terribles.
Many acclaimed theatre roles have followed since, including the leads in Richard II and Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
He gained a Bafta nomination for Howards End, in which he played Helena Bonham Carter's doomed lover, and other film and TV projects include Van Helsing, Notting Hill, and Cambridge Spies.
However, unlike many thespians of his age (he's 45), Samuel hasn't had what could be described as a signature role - until now.
Although he admits he doesn't have the analytical brain required to be a good lawyer like Zak, there are similarities between being an actor and a legal eagle.
"There's a certain amount of empathetic perception involved in defending somebody other people think might be guilty," he remarks.
"And there's a brilliant principle involved, which is being eroded at the moment thanks to the cuts in legal aid - that everybody deserves an equal chance before the law, whether they can afford it or not.
"I hope that this series will do something to remind people of that. It's a great system, and one that deserves to continue."
Coventry Telegraph

How to give Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' new meaning

By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine

23 September 2010 Last updated at 10:51

John Simm of Life of Mars fame is the latest actor to take on one of drama's defining roles, Hamlet. But how can anyone bring new meaning to the most familiar six words in literature, "to be or not to be..."?

Talk about pressure.

There are more than 1,500 lines to learn, and the words have already been immortalised by theatre greats like Olivier, Gielgud, Burton, Jacobi, McKellen, Branagh and Russell Beale.

The character of Hamlet is possibly the most challenging in drama, and therefore one of the most alluring, with John Simm the latest to join what amounts to a hall of fame for classical actors, as he treads the boards at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield. Olivier award-winner Rory Kinnear continues the tradition at the end of the month in London's National Theatre.

As well as taking on one of the most complex characters ever created, there is the small matter of trying to bring something new to the most quoted lines in literature: "To be or not to be..."

The famous passage comes in Act III Scene I, when Prince Hamlet is trying to establish his uncle's guilt in murdering his father and usurping the Danish throne. This scene, in which he appears to be talking to himself, is a deep philosophical reflection on life and death.

"The challenge is to make the audience listen to what Hamlet is saying, rather than drift into a hazy memory of school days," says Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington, who has seen about 50 Hamlets over the years.

"They need to sit up and listen to this man who is debating whether to kill himself or not to kill himself and why by the end he decides not to."

For him, the most memorable rendition was by Sir John Gielgud, who brought "breathtaking intensity and intelligence" to the passage, although it wasn't in the context of the play but Gielgud's Ages of Man anthology in the 1950s

Given the familiarity of the lines, many directors and actors like to try something new.

Samuel West, who spent a year playing Hamlet to wide acclaim in 2001, says there are multiple ways of doing the speech, four of which can be seen in the video above, including a "gameshow" version.

Interpretations can differ, he says, depending on how much you think Hamlet is suicidal or philosophical.

There is also a choice between introspection and engagement, he says. When he acted the part for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the stage lights came up, he strode out towards the audience and looked them in the eye.

"Whether you do soliloquies to yourself or do them to the audience is a decision you'll make with your director.

"You might think 'I'm a very thoughtful, philosophical person and I'm very private, therefore I want my Hamlet to be alone in existential despair.'

"Or you might, like me, say 'I like being in a public sphere, I like the idea of embracing audience. We shouldn't pretend they're not there and I want to turn the lights on and talk to them as if I want to ask for their help or indeed interrupt.'"

It was important to address them directly because the passage is about death so no-one can say it doesn't affect them, says West, who is currently rehearsing Caryl Churchill's A Number at the Chocolate Factory in Southwark, south London.

Few theatre roles explore the emotional range of humanity as fully in three hours as Hamlet.

That is why, he says, it's impossible to master the part and every actor brings something new, rendering any talk of the "best" or "perfect" Hamlet a nonsense.

"It's a very difficult part but also a very easy part. It's very forgiving of things you can't do. But it brings you up against them very quickly, it brings you up against your limitations as an actor and as a person quite fast.

"You're calling your girlfriend a whore, your father's been murdered, you want to kill your mother, you might want to sleep with her. All of these things. There are no dark corners of yourself that this play won't hold your hands in, if you want to explore them.

"You can't say: 'He's not going there.' He really is. Shakespeare is absolutely interested in those things."

The challenge of playing Hamlet

Why is Hamlet, after more than 400 years, still seen as the ultimate test for an actor? Partly because it's a role of unmatched complexity. Hamlet is intellectually inquisitive, emotionally volatile, physically magnetic. The part places extraordinary demands on an actor who has to be introspective and athletic, bestial and angelic, cruel and compassionate. The role also carries with it an unfair burden of expectation. Any Hamlet who steps on stage knows that he (sometimes "she" since the part transcends gender) is wrestling not just with the text but the weight of tradition.
Michael Billington, The Guardian

So can a serious acting career ever be complete without Hamlet on the CV?

When Simm accepted the part in December, he said it was probably the greatest part ever written, and one he couldn't turn down.
"When you get asked and you're 40 years old it's probably wise to say 'yes', because I'm probably not going to be asked again to play Hamlet, so this is the last chance saloon."

Many other actors would agree. Sir Ralph Richardson is probably the only big name not to have played the part, says Billington, perhaps because his "robust countenance" didn't fit the bill for the lean, thoughtful Hamlets of the time.

The reason why the role is so important, he says, is because the play is big box office and the part is so challenging.

"The play itself is one the audience crave to see because it contains so much and it's the archetypal Shakespeare play. And secondly, if you're a young actor between 20 and 40, you feel you have to test yourself against it. It's the ultimate acting test for any actor."

Outstanding performances have launched stellar careers, he says. When the gangly, 24-year-old figure of David Warner shuffled on to the stage in Stratford in 1965, dressed like a student in a red scarf, he appeared to speak for a generation.

Jude Law's Hamlet was warmly received on Broadway

And nearly 40 years later, Ben Whishaw was the same age when his performance at the Old Vic ignited his stardom.

Strangely, the reverse doesn't seem to apply. A poorly received Hamlet has rarely dealt a fatal blow to acting aspirations.

Billington thinks that's partly because it's difficult to fail in a role which is so adaptable. It will always coincide, he says, with the actor's personality and strengths.

As West puts it, you can fail. But only in an interesting way.

BBC News - How to give Hamlet's 'to be or not to be' new meaning

Cad files: Sam West turns supervillain in a new play about the collapse of energy titan Enron

Born into theatrical royalty, Sam West made his name playing 'linen' parts in Merchant Ivory productions. So how did he come to be taking on one of this century's biggest corporate villains?

 

Sunday 05 July 2009

 What must it be like to have achieved all one's ambitions? Sam West has just turned 43 and discovered he has done everything he thought he had wanted: "I've played Hamlet, been in Doctor Who and read the shipping forecast. I'm having to draw up a new list." Luckily, there is plenty he still wants to do (including the shipping forecast on Radio 4 proper, as his first go was only in a play).

When we meet, he is midway through rehearsals for his latest project, the première of Enron, by young playwright Lucy Prebble, about the collapse of the US energy giant. "Apart from being a brilliant play, the timing couldn't have been better," says West. "It was commissioned two years ago, just before the banking collapse and it comes out just when people are asking how the hell it happened."

West plays the part of Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO of Enron (the US corporation that went bankrupt in 2001 as the result of an accounting fraud) who is presently three years into a 24-year jail sentence. It's quite a departure from West's previous roles, which have included Ted Heath, Anthony Blunt and a number of other English eccentrics.

Skilling is the Machiavellian charmer from Illinois who had never run a company before Enron but discovered that as long as the share price stayed high, investors would continue to pump in money. West is fascinated by Skilling, even though their politics could not be more different. West is a former member of the Socialist Alliance, Skilling a rampant free-marketer. Yet when he talks about Skilling, West could almost be talking about himself: "What drives him? A belief in ideas. A belief in the purity of the idea. A belief in brilliance."

West has a strong moral instinct and a keen sense of injustice. He is spitting at the news that Stephen Hester, Sir Fred Goodwin's replacement at RBS, is to get a £10m package, £6.4m of which is conditional on the share price rising. "Have they learnt nothing?" he rages. "It's not socialism, just common sense to know not to reward irresponsibility at a time when banks are meant to be less risky. You can't give someone £6.4m if they hit a certain share price at the same time as letting 3,000 people go."

West has what the Prime Minister would call strong "values". It's refreshing to meet an actor more interested in politics than his own IMDB listing – though West's is impressive. His big break came when he got the part of Leonard Bast in Howards End aged 26, and he was soon in demand for period dramas including Persuasion, Jane Eyre and Carrington. "They were great fun," he says, "although one can be tarred by the linen brush."

It was that fear of becoming too used to playing parts in petticoats that prompted Helena Bonham Carter to give up Merchant Ivory dramas and go to the US, where she wowed her critics with her American accent. "People don't need any encouragement to put you in a box," admits West. "And I have been mostly lords and princes. But I would be foolish to turn my back on Merchant Ivory. You have an idea as an actor as to what you think you can play, but it's much more important to know what other people think you can play. If you get a chance to play a very different animal, in terms of their background and their country, it's delightful."

West hails from theatre royalty – his father is Timothy West, his mother Prunella Scales – but he doesn't believe he was ever given a part because of who they were. "That would be absurd. The only difficulty is that you don't quite decide to become an actor. I've just gone into the family business." Growing up with famous parents was never a problem, as he didn't know any different. "There was a time when they were big names, when mum was in Fawlty Towers and dad was in Edward VII. Occasionally I would be asked at school to get an autograph, but there was no reflective glory."

Unlike some power families, the Wests were not competitive, but rather operated with a spirit of collaboration, reading each other's reviews and seeing each other's performances. "I remember getting a review at Oxford that said I was OK but I didn't have the presence of my famous mother and father. I was playing Florizel in The Winter's Tale and my father said, 'I think that's very unfair. I mean, I would be hopeless as Florizel and Ma would be even worse.'" Rehearsing Enron has made West grateful to be an actor. "Acting is, unusually, a collaborative medium, not a competition. And I'm now involved in making a play about a company that is not a company, but a competition. As a group, we are trying to get on as well as possible so that on stage we can beat the shit out of each other."

Apart from a bit of waitering, West has never had a job beyond actor or director. He says the real stars, though, are the writers; West has never attempted to write for stage or screen himself, although he reveals he is supposed to be writing a book about how to approach a variety of roles. "It's going rather slowly. Writing isn't really my thing," he admits.

West is consistently modest about his achievements. The first play he ever directed, Hamlet at the Edinburgh Fringe, so impressed the Almeida's artistic director Michael Attenborough that he gave West a job at the theatre seven years later. His enthusiasm for regional theatre led him to take on the post of artistic director at the Crucible complex in Sheffield in 2005, although he stayed for only two terms after a disagreement with the managers – he wanted to put on plays while the theatre was closed for refurbishment, they didn't. He also found the distribution of funds frustrating. "It's no secret that marketing departments in regional theatres have grown massively while the number of actors in work has reduced," he says. "There is a fight to be had for the soul of regional theatre in this country. I suspect that the culture of over-management has reached the stage where artists are seen as slightly tiresome people who want to spend money on things that don't make profits. And if you use a monetary model, a regional theatre can be seen as very unproductive. I suspect we should be fighting for our theatres as we do our car factories."

The experience has not put him off, though. He would like to run a theatre again one day, although "because it becomes your baby", he plans to start a family first. He lives in Islington with his partner, the playwright Laura Wade, and hopes to have children soon. Achieving one ambition leads to the next, it seems. In fact, his list has never been longer, but does he really mean it when he says he wants to be James Bond? "Everybody says they want to do Hamlet, and nobody ever jokes about wanting to be Bond. But it's the part everyone secretly wants to play. I would." With his experience of playing toffs, frauds and serial killers, he'd be perfect for the part.

'Enron' runs from Saturday to 29 August at Chichester Festival Theatre (01243 781 312, www.cft.org.uk)

Tips for aspiring actors by Sam West

Try to stay solvent so you don't have to do rubbish. You might be tempted to take the first well-paid part on TV, but it might prove to be more damaging than beneficial.

Try to be happy for your colleagues' success. Acting is a collaborative art. In rehearsals it is vital to work as a team.

Remember that the writers are the true stars. Actors take a lot of the credit, but the playwright and screenwriters are the true creative forces. Without them, we wouldn't be able to exist.

You may have an idea as to the parts you think you can play, but it's much more important to know what other people think you can play. If you get a chance to play a very different sort of part to one you would normally take, then do it.

Three Hamlets: how to play the Prince

Three Hamlets: how to play the Prince

Samuel West: "We are living in a Hamlet age"

Chris Hastings

12:01AM GMT 23 Nov 2008

Comment

This is what some notable princes of Denmark have to say about the complex character at the centre of what our voters regard as Shakespeare’s greatest play Interviews by Chris Hastings

• Telegraph Shakespeare Survey: results | About the Shakespeare Survey
• Peter Hall | Patrick Stewart

Kenneth Branagh, 47, played Hamlet for the RSC in 1992 and played the role in his own film in 1996

“I think for an actor playing Hamlet and for the audience it is the most sort of naked account of a human being’s understanding of what it is to be happy. Fundamentally, I think the play is about the understanding of and the preparation for death. It is about preparing for death through understanding how to live. In wonderfully entertaining and complex ways it explains how we can live in the moment, how one can and might value relationships with parents and siblings. How to look at the world? How to understand one’s self. How to be sometimes intuitive rather than intellecutal. It really discusses what it is to be happy and what it is to be a human being and it does so inside a wonderful revenge drama which has continued to hold the attention for 400 years...

“It is hard to imagine there will be another full-length version of Hamlet. I know from my own mailbag that for many students, for many people doing their doctorates and for people coming to Shakespeare for the first time in reading groups it can be useful to watch the entire play. In that way you also understand why we have arrived at some versions which are shorter. It is an incredibly strong reference tool for people even if it is not their favourite Hamlet, and there is no reason why it should be.”

Simon Russell Beale, 47, played Hamlet in 2000 for the National Theatre

“When I was offered Hamlet. I thought I have just got to do it and I have to do it now...
“I went to it with very few ideas. I had a couple of negative ideas in my head. I wasn’t convinced by his madness and I also knew that I didn’t want to sexually assault my mother. What came out was not what I had expected. He came out very soft, very sweet, he was a sweet Prince. The role of Hamlet is very hospitable. It will take anything you throw at it. You get bitter Hamlets, you get revengeful Hamlets, arrogant Hamlets, witty Hamlets. He [Russell Beale’s Hamlet] was just so devastated by the unexpectedness of grief. He didn’t know what to do with himself. The moment he sees the Ghost he knows it’s suicide. He knows he will die. He sort of wants to really...
“I think King Lear is probably the greatest play. I think Hamlet has structural problems. I think the 'How all occasions’ solilolquy is in a funny place. 'To be or not to be’ is in a funny place. It feels odd...
“I remember touring with Hamlet in eastern Europe and there was an extraordinary proprietorialness shown by a lot of people towards the play. Two of the arts ministers we met were former Hamlets and they took it very seriously. I remember in Belgrade going into a shoe shop. My face was on the poster for the play and Belgrade is quite a small town, so I was everywhere. I walked in and the woman serving said, 'Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet.’ She had no English at all except 'To be or not to be’, which we said to each other 40 times, and then I asked her assistant to translate it for me in Serbo-Croat. How extraordinary I thought, how this one funny little phrase is known the world over.”

Samuel West, 42, played Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2001.
“We are living in a Hamlet age. A friend once said to me, and I think it’s true, that there are two sorts of ages: there is a Hamlet age and a Lear age. A Lear age is when we believe in God or Gods and when we believe we are the playthings of them. The big belief is in structure, in authority and in collectivisim. The Hamlet age is exactly the opposite and we look inwards. We think about character rather than behaviour. We are secular, we are doubtful, we are cynical, and we pull things apart...
“You can never fulfill the demands of every piece of the role. There will be bits that come right and there will be bits that come right at different times, and some things that will never quite succeed. A lot of the pleasure in playing him comes much later. At the time you never stop thinking about it. Your whole world becomes this man. It is hard to break off, but why would you want to? You have only got one year of your life to play this role. Twenty thousand actors across the years have had the same problems that you are having. You have inherited this crown from them and you are staggering along under it for a few performances and then passing it on. While you are wearing it you want to do your best. The play has an amazing ability to fit itself around the person who is playing it...
“Basically, Hamlet, when he walks out to the front of the stage for the first soliloquy, is saying, 'My dad is dead. My mum has remarried my uncle. Can we talk?’ The thing I liked about the production I was in was that we played all of the soliloquies as conversations with the audience. In fact, for 'To be or not to be’ we turned the house lights up. 'To be or not to be’ is the most extraordinary piece. I didn’t realise until I started studying it that it doesn’t include the words I or me. In terms of the plot of the play it has no purpose. What it talks about is us and dying. The great thing about the soliloquy is that because it’s about death it applies to everybody. The reason that this great piece has been anthologised, and repeated, and why it is the most famous of piece of literature in world history is that it applies to each and every one of us.”

Portrait of the artist: Sam West, artistic director

'My tip for a young actor? Keep solvent so you don't have to do rubbish'

Tuesday 13 February 2007

'Some of my best friends are computers.'
Sam West. Photograph: Martin Argles

What work of art got you started?
Seeing my mum and dad [Prunella Scales and Timothy West] doing Love's Labour's Lost when I was six.

What was your big breakthrough?
Six days after I left university, I auditioned for a film called Reunion, directed by Jerry Schatzberg with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. I got it, and it went to the Cannes film festival.

Who or what have you sacrificed for your art?
I haven't started a family. That's the main thing I don't have in my life that I would like.

Does an artist need to suffer to create?
Yes. Ow.

If someone saw one of your performances in 1,000 years' time, what would it tell them about the year 2007?
I hope it would remind them that there's no us and them. It's all us.

What one song would feature on the soundtrack to your life?
Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric. The first line is, 'When I was a young boy my mother said to me, there's only one girl in the world for you and she probably lives in Tahiti.'

Have you done anything cultural lately?
I saw Phyllida Lloyd's extraordinary Opera North production of Peter Grimes twice - one of the best things ever.

Do you like computers?
Some of my best friends are computers. I couldn't do my job without them, but it stops short of liking.

Is the internet a good thing for art?
It's good for research and telling people about things that are happening, but it stops them actually experiencing them live.

What's your favourite film?
At the moment, 12 Angry Men, because it shows democracy in action.

What's your favourite museum?
Sir John Soane's in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. It's a magic box full of weird cupboards and unfolding walls.

What's the greatest threat to art today?
A culture that defines us by what we buy and consume, not by how we behave towards each other.

What advice would you give a young actor just starting out?
Join the union, keep solvent so you don't have to do rubbish, try to be happy at your colleagues' success and remember that writers are the real stars.

What cultural tip would you give to a tourist about Britain's arts scene?
Don't just look for it in London.

What work of art would you most like to own?
Anything by Bridget Riley.

Complete this sentence: At heart I'm just a frustrated ...
DJ.

In the movie of your life, who plays you?
Me, or John Inman if I'm not available.

What's the best advice anyone ever gave you?
My dad told me: 'Try to put yourself in the way of surprise.'

Born: London, 1966

Lives: Between Sheffield and London

Career: Has performed in Hamlet for the RSC, Antony and Cleopatra for the National Theatre, and in films including Howards End. Currently artistic director of Sheffield Theatres. His production of As You Like It is at the Crucible this month.

High point: 'Playing Hamlet at the RSC for more than a year.'

Low point: 'One review of The Romans in Britain, which I directed, was unjustifiably cruel and knocked me down for a long time.'

20 Questions With...Samuel West

20 Questions With...Samuel West

Date: 10 December 2001

Samuel West in Hamlet

Actor Samuel West, who brings his acclaimed RSC Hamlet to London's Barbican this week, regrets not going to drama school but says he wouldn't mind taking a break from acting for awhile now.

Samuel West has been winning rave reviews at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford over the past year. First there was his Richard II, which many critics rated better than the simultaneous Almeida production starring Ralph Fiennes, and now there is his Hamlet, which this week opens the RSC's final winter season at the Barbican Centre in London.
The son of actors Timothy West (recently seen at the National in Luther) and Prunella Scales (now starring in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg in the West End), West was schooled in the ways of the theatre from an early age.
It seems appropriate then that his West End debut was in a production of A Life in the Theatre (Haymarket) opposite the late Denholm Elliott. His subsequent stage credits have included Arcadia (National), Hidden Laughter, The Sea (Chichester Festival), Mr Cinders (King's Head), The Importance of Being Earnest (Royal Exchange) and Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 (English Touring Theatre).
His film credits have included Howard's End, Notting Hill, Complicity, Carrington, Stuff Upper Lips and the upcoming Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch; while, on television, he has appeared in Hornblower, Voices in the Garden, Inspector Alleyn, Persuasion and Heavy Weather.

Date & place of birth
Born in London 19 June 1966.
Lives now in...
Islington, North London.
Professional training
I never went to Drama School - my biggest regret. Making a complete tit of yourself in front of people who don't care is probably the best learning experience an actor can have.
First big break
At the time, it should have been A Life in the Theatre with Denholm Elliot at the Haymarket, but audiences were generally underwhelmed. After that, the film Howard's End. I'm a very bad snooker player - I keep planning big breaks and missing the first shot.
Career highlights to date
Being part of two very happy companies at the RSC, having anything at all to do with Persuasion, and saying "Thirty seconds to computer achieving full power status, Mistress" to Kate O'Mara in the last-ever episode of Doctor Who.
Favourite production you've ever worked on
Richard II last year, because it changed some people's minds about the play, continued to grow up to and beyond its last night, and wasn't nearly as long as Hamlet.
Favourite co-star
David Troughton in the above, because he taught me you should never be afraid to try a new thing, and never apologise when it goes wrong.
Favourite director
Steven Pimlott, for being the only one ever to employ me twice (in Richard II and now Hamlet). Also for being confident enough to listen to others and sometimes act on their suggestions, and for having the patience and determination to do whatever it takes to turn his actors into a company.
Favourite playwright
I have to say Tom Stoppard because as long as I live I'll never be in any new play as brilliant or inspiring as Arcadia. At the moment, I'm very jealous of those RSC actors who get to be in The Prisoner's Dilemma by David Edgar, which blew me sideways.
What role would you most like to play still?
Hamlet again: "No matter; try again. Fail again; fail better" (Beckett)
What's the best thing currently on stage?
The Prisoner's Dilemma, as before. The only play I've seen recently that assumes its audience is intelligent, demands that they keep up and refuses trite moralising. The writing is particularly telling in the current international situation, but perhaps great writing always is.
What advice would you give the government to secure the future of British theatre?
I think funding the arts is a necessary part of a society that would like to call itself civilised. Funding should be seen as investment, not giveaway. A government that is serious about theatre as a forum for debate and not just a place where the jam-making classes can go and have their prejudices gently teased, should try some or all of the following:

Wipe out all regional theatres' debt accumulated through years of under-investment and no fault of their own.

Invest enough in established companies for them to be able to plan work several seasons ahead and not waste time and money reapplying to ACE every year.

Since actors trained on stage often go on to success on film and pay back more in tax than it ever cost to fund their training, give mandatory tuition and maintenance grants to all those who get places at accredited Drama Schools so they can concentrate on their course and not exhaust themselves with bar work.

Set LEA grants at a level where an evening at a subsidised theatre costs no more than an evening at the cinema.

Invest enough to enable a proportion of all tickets to sold-out shows to be given away free to under 25s.

Set up an e-mail network where unsold seats are offered free to schools, and pay the coach drivers and teachers to get them to the theatre. The generation that grew up on affordable repertory is dying, and there may not be another to take its place.
If you could swap places with one person (living or dead), who would it be?
I'd like to swap places with any Wimbledon FC player ever. A recurring dream is pulling on the yellow-and-blue just for one Saturday afternoon. And Vinny Jones's Hamlet at the matinee would have to be seen...
Favourite holiday destination
I have to say the Galapagos Islands, because I've just returned from the best holiday of my life there. Closer to home, West Cornwall, the stocking-toe of England.
Favourite book
It's often the one I'm reading at the time (currently, Atonement by Ian McEwan). But the one under the pillow is Shakespeare's Complete Works. It's the only book I know will never bore me.
Favourite websites
Am I allowed two? The International Dialects of English Archive - invaluable for audiobook homework. And The Surrey Stick Figure Theatre of Death - absolutely no use for homework at all.
Favourite joke
A man goes into a bar and orders a beer. As he drinks it, he hears a tiny voice saying "Mmm, nice tie". He looks around but can't see anything and goes back to his beer. Another tiny voice says "Yes, nice shirt too". He stops again, but again he can't find the source. The barman's walking past and the man stops him and says "Excuse me, ever since I've been in your bar I've heard little voices saying nice things about my clothes. Can you tell me what's going on?" "Yes of course, sir," replies the barman. "It's the peanuts. They're complimentary."
What impact has having actors as parents had on your career?
It's meant inheriting quite a strong streak of self-criticism and a certain insider knowledge. The encouragement about balances out the breast-beating. As for whether it's helped me get work, who can say? I've been offered auditions because of who my parents are, but never, to my knowledge, jobs.
If you hadn't become an actor, what would you have done professionally?
I would probably have become a director. I still hope to. Quite a lot of me still wants to be a train driver. Or a DJ.
Why did you want to accept this part in this production?
Are you kidding? When someone offers you Hamlet at the RSC, you say yes. Because I was already in the company and working with the director, it was as unscary as such a scary leap could be, so a better offer was impossible.
Whose is the best Hamlet you've ever seen? How do you make such a famous role your own?
Mark Rylance, Mk I (RSC 1989, Ron Daniels) is still my favourite. I hope mine's half as brilliant and funny. I think trying to make a part your own is a sure way to screw it up. You must of course, make your own sense of it, but your job is to play the part the production requires you to play - which will be influenced by your own character and those of your cast, director and "the age and body of the time". But it must lead you - if you arrive at rehearsal determined to fit the part to your idea of it, you will never be surprised by where it takes you. However, it does help to forget your preconceptions of the play, and how famous it is, and how in love with the leading character we all were for hundreds of years. Looked at unsentimentally, Hamlet's a childish, self-obsessed melancholic with a fetish for maggots.
What's your favourite line from Hamlet?
"Who's there?" (I.i.1) Has any play ever begun better?
What, if anything, makes performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company special for you?
It is special - without a doubt the happiest (and hardest) time of my professional life so far. Now Simon (Russell Beale)'s finished at the National, I'm the only person in the world playing Hamlet (in English) for a whole year. It's a rare privilege, and it teaches you a lot. At a time when fashion says it's cool not to care about what you say, 18 months talking 400 year-old verse certainly retrains your mouth. A company dedicated to work like this feels curiously revolutionary. And there is no greater happiness than being inside something greater than the sum of its parts. Team before self, every time.
What are your plans for the future?
I'd like to start a company and direct its shows. I don't mind not doing any more acting for a while, though I am playing a serial killer on Waking the Dead for the BBC. Hamlet kills three people himself and another four by proxy, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

---

Hamlet, directed by Steven Pimlott, opens at the Barbican Theatre on 11 December 2001 (following previews from 6 December) and continues until 2 April 2002. The production first opened in May 2001 in Stratford and then visited Newcastle before transferring to London

Whats On Stage Interview

That Hamlet moment

That Hamlet moment

Doubt, cynicism, moral confusion ... Sam West has no trouble getting into the mood for his next role. He talks to Lyn Gardner

• The Guardian, Wednesday 28 March 2001

The media likes to portray actors as rather dim, decorative things. But all genuinely interesting actors bring a large dollop of intelligence to their roles. The great ones match brainpower with instinct: part of what they do is as mysterious to them as it is to us watching.
Watching Sam West play Richard II for the Royal Shakespeare Company last year, you caught a glimpse of that. West's Richard was a man too bright and aware to be the kind of king he was born to be. His tragedy was to discover that divine right is a prison. Only in death does he finally behave like a king. West made you understand the tragedy of that journey.
It was an astonishing performance, given that his previous Shakespearean experience amounted to playing Hal in Henry IV and Octavius in the National's derided Anthony and Cleopatra. His reward is now to get a crack at Hamlet, a man who you could say is too intelligent for his own good.
As the son of Timothy West and Prunella Scales, Sam West has acting in his blood, yet he fears he may be too naturally analytical to be an actor. "I have a talent; I don't think that I have a gift for it," he says. "Those that have a real gift are often unashamedly subjective in their approach. They are not interested in talking about The Cherry Orchard in general because as far as they are concerned the play is about Dunyasha or whoever it is they are playing. I admire that. But I am not like that at all. I take the view that doing your homework can't do any harm. I want to know everything about the world of the play."
It shows. When West arrives from rehearsals for Steven Pimlott's RSC production of Hamlet, he proceeds to give a dazzling masterclass. It is hard to get a word in as he dissects the play, quoting not just his own part but everyone else's, and throwing in little asides on 17th century Catholic and Protestant theological attitudes to revenge and redemption. Before long he is demolishing the critical Tower of Babel that surrounds the play and analysing some of the 20-odd productions that he has seen.
It sounds more like a director talking. West laughs, admits that he can get carried away and points out that he directed his own production of Hamlet for the RSC's fringe festival last summer. "In the absence of better solutions, I will be nicking some things from that," says West. He admits that it took him a while to adjust from directing the play to being in it. "I find myself thinking more and more like a director, and I know I have to watch that. You do have to make a choice. You can't be an actor and a director, especially not at the same time."
He is enjoying being part of the RSC, after what he admits were "too many years in TV limbo" playing damaged upper-class people in the Merchant Ivory mould. "In TV and film I am already considered old at 34, while in theatre it is possible to be at the start of a classical career, although I am wary of saying that. I love it that in the theatre you get employed because people think that you have the potential to play a role, whereas in TV and film they only cast you because they know that you can do it.
"A friend, the actor Leigh Lawson, said to me that the only time in his career when he didn't feel he should be somewhere else doing something else was when he was with the RSC. It has been like that for me. I find it moving that I've spent a year in a company of young actors speaking 400-year-old language with no apology and an almost revolutionary zeal. The zeitgeist is so much about not caring, about it being cool to mumble and be back footed. But you can't do that when you are speaking verse, and there is something that makes you feel happy to know that you are going out there and giving people pleasure." He pauses. "Small dollops of pleasure. The number of people who will have seen Richard II during its entire run is smaller than the Saturday afternoon gate at Cardiff City."
If West has one regret about doing Hamlet now, it is that we are living in a Hamlet age. "It must have been thrilling to have been David Warner and played Hamlet in a Lear age, a world where you've got something to kick against," he sighs. He is referring to the 1965 production that cast Warner as a spokesman for a generation that was challenging the entrenched views of its parents. But what exactly is a Hamlet age?
"A Tony Blair age," says West. "If Tony Blair isn't good casting for Claudius who smiles and smiles, who is? Oh yes, this is very much a Hamlet age. Doubts, cynicism, moral relativism, these are the norms now. It is hard to notice the bitterness in Denmark because there is so much sugar coating the pill. Hamlet is a character that exists in opposition, but it is hard to stand up to something that seems quite liberal. He is a man for our times because he distrusts himself. He is a worrier, not a warrior. Steven Pimlott described the play the other day as being like Gladiator with Woody Allen playing Russell Crowe. That's about the measure of it."
• Hamlet previews at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from Saturday. Box office: 01789 403403.