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By Root 2289 0

to haul girls into bed. Of course the theatre is all that my mother thought and a great deal that the poor dear could not have conceived of. Yet also it must be remembered that the theatre is a profession and many perfectly ‘typical’ actors are middle-aged men who are regularly supplied with work and who live faithfully with wives and families in suburbs. Such persons are the backbone of the trade. Of course the theatre is sex, sex, sex, but how much does the subject-matter affect the professional? My mother was upset at the thought of my ‘acting bad people’, because she thought this would corrupt me. (In fact, except in school plays, she hardly ever saw me act.) I wonder if such corruption ever occurs? The question is worth asking. To some extent one has to ‘identify’ with villains in order to portray them, but there are limits to this identification partly because wickedness is so specialized. (Every actor has a level at which he cannot portray character. He may operate above it or below it.) And we are masked figures; ideally the masks barely touch us. (Such is my view, with which some fools will differ.) I recall a story of an old actor asked to portray an old man, who said with dismay, ‘But I’ve never played an old man!’ That was professionalism.

But to return to myself. I daresay, an unfashionable thing to say nowadays, I am not ‘very highly sexed’. I can live perfectly well without ‘sexual relations’. Some observers have even thought I must be homosexual because I did not have perpetual mistresses! I hate mess. Perhaps my morally hygienic mother somehow taught me to. And I have never liked the complicit male world of foul-mouthed talk and bawdy. Of course I have had not a few love affairs. But I never bribed a woman into bed. Someone (Rosina) once said, ‘You care about the theatre more than you care about women’ and it was true. I never (except for once when I was young) seriously considered marriage. I loved once (the same once) absolutely. Then there was Clement, eternal wonderful unclassifiable Clement. And I have been ‘madly infatuated’. And there have been, oh such sweet girls. But I am not a womanizer. I have always been a dedicated professional. I was in this respect harsh with myself as well as with others. Silly messy love affairs, especially within a closed group, interfere with serious work. I am very prone to jealousy myself, and I have mixed with very jealous people. Envy has always troubled me less. Crippling envy can be a terrible disability in the theatre, and I early realized that to overcome it was a prerequisite of success.

Was I sorry that I never became a first-rate actor? How often I have been asked that question! Well, of course. Directors always envy actors and I suspect that almost every great director would secretly prefer to be a great actor. Some people held the view that a more successful acting career awaited me in films and television and they tried to lure me in; but in spite of many amusing excursions I never cared much for these media. I always felt real drama belonged to the live theatre. I had my ambitions, especially of course in Shakespeare; but I always funked Lear and the less said about my Hamlet the better. I think I was a good Prospero, that time when Lizzie was Ariel. That was my last great part, and now so long ago. After that I laid a certain vanity aside. Vanity receives such a battering in the theatre, one would imagine that it would tend to vanish, but most actors manage to retain theirs: not only as an occupational ailment, but perhaps actually as a necessary instrument of survival. Genuine generous admiration, and there is plenty of it, always helps and heals. I looked at the good actors and the great actors, at Wilfred, at Sidney Ashe, at Marcus Henty (also one of Clement’s lovers), at Fabian Ginsberg, even at Perry, even at Al. And, as an actor, I quietly took a backseat. This was easier to do by then as I was fully absorbed in directing. I amused myself and the public by playing tiny parts in my own productions and once nearly stole the show as Jacob in The