Being an Actor Also by Simon Callow Dickens’ Christmas Henry IV Part Two Henry IV Part One The Night of the Hunter Oscar Wilde and His Circle Love Is Where It Falls The National The Road to Xanadu Acting in Restoration Comedy Shooting the Actor A Difficult Actor: Charles Laughton Jacques and His Masters, translator Simon Callow Being an Actor For Peggy, without whom this book would never have been written, and my grandmother, Vera Guise, without whom there would have been nothing to write about. BEING AN ACTOR. Copyright © 1984, 1995, 2003 by Simon Callow. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.picadorusa.com Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by St. Martin’s Press under license from Pan Books Limited. For information on Picador Reading Group Guides, as well as ordering, please contact the Trade Marketing department at St. Martin’s Press. Phone: 1-800-221-7945 extension 763 Fax: 212-677-7456 E-mail: [email protected] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Callow, Simon, 1949– Being an actor / Simon Callow.—1st Picador ed. p. cm. Includes index ISBN 0-312-42243-1 ISBN 978-0-312-42243-1 1. Callow, Simon, 1949– 2. Actors—Great Britian—Biography. I. Title. PN2598.C17A3 2003 792′.028′092—dc21 [B] 2003048283 First published in Great Britain by Methuen London First Picador Edition: August 2003 D 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 Contents Foreword, 2003 Foreword, 1995 Preface PART ONE One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine PART TWO Unemployment Getting the Job 1 The Agent Getting the Job 2 Preparation First Readthrough Rehearsal 1 Character 1 Rehearsal 2 Character 2 Rehearsal 3 Rehearsal 4 Rehearsal 5 Into the Theatre The Dress Rehearsal The First Preview The First Night The Reviews The Run 1 A Good Performance A Bad Performance The Run 2 The Audience Twenty-four Hours in the Life The End of the Run Unemployment Again Manifesto Gloomy Postscript PART THREE Thirty Years On One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Index Foreword, 2003 Not so long ago, I was having my passport checked by immigration at JFK Airport. Examining the document, the officer, an attractive young black woman, said: ‘You’re an actor?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Still?’ she asked, without looking up. It’s been a long time: thirty years. Over the twenty years since it was written, through various reprintings and one new edition, this little book has been amended with the addition of previously unprinted material (too late for the first edition), a new foreword and a coda. The main text has never been rewritten. I have resisted that because my entire point in venturing on such a precocious theatrical autobiography in the first place was to express the experience of acting as I was discovering it. Hindsight has no place in such a testament: bliss was it, in that dawn, to be alive, and to be a young actor was very heaven. Being an Actor came into existence to express the carnal delight of a young thespian setting out on what seemed to be the boundless ocean of a life in the theatre (while noting a few inconveniences of that life along the way), and though the theatre has changed enormously in the last twenty years, the essential challenges remain the same: coming to terms with oneself and with one’s craft. Whatever current theories may prevail, acting is always essentially the depiction of characters in situations, although the depiction can of course take many and various forms. The primary impulse of the actor—to stand up and say ‘Look at me! Listen to this!’—is a constant, the sine qua non of the whole enterprise, and I see no diminution of that impulse. More people than ever are drawn to acting. I suppose the crucial thing that has changed is the sense of what it is all for: why people become actors, and why other people want to watch them. At the end of the book I have added, in the spirit of What Katy Did Next, an account of my own subsequent career in the theatre since writing the book to show how that change has manifested itself in the life of one actor. If the original book set out to show what it’s like to be an actor, this supplement shows what it’s like to be a middle-aged actor, and aims to show a little more of the way the world works (or doesn’t) for actors. But first, please read what the thirty-something Simon Callow had to say—eager, unformed, intoxicated by the possibilities.