"Yes, I'm in decent fettle, really," says
Threlfall, before adding with a mocking lilt. "Especially for The
Independent." Does he mistrust journalists? "No, it's not that; it's
more about having to listen to myself banging on," he says. "I don't
think I've got anything interesting to say." Which is interesting enough
in itself, you might think.
"I'm
not sort of faux about that," he continues. "I just think there's so
much that is trite around the business. I'm an accessible-enough chap, but I'm
not really interested in people knowing my opinions and I certainly don't
subscribe to Twitter or Facebook as a method of communicating."
Part of
that may be to do with his age (Threlfall turned 61 last October), but an ever
larger part stems from his desire to let his work speak for itself. "I
always think that if people know your proclivities and your views about things,
they might be less inclined to tune in, or come and see you in the theatre, or
whatever. I just like to get on and do what I do."
And what he's been doing
recently is impersonating a police officer – Detective Chief Superintendent
David Baker, the real head of CID with Leicestershire police in the 1980s, who
was charged with finding the killer of two local teenage girls, Lynda Mann and
Dawn Ashworth. The new two-part ITV drama, Code of a Killer, shows how Baker
made the bold decision to join forces with Alec Jeffreys of the University of
Leicester, who had recently developed DNA profiling. In the first ever use of
this revolutionary technique in a criminal investigation, 5,000 local men were
asked to volunteer blood and saliva samples and, in the process, 17-year-old
Richard Buckland, who had confessed to Ashworth's murder, was found to be innocent,
while the real culprit, Colin Pitchfork, was nabbed.
Threlfall met
Baker in preparation for the role. "He was very kind and open and
accessible – to the point – and not falsely modest but monosyllabic when he
needed," he says, before adding mysteriously: "And things passed
between us about the case and the job which obviously are off-the-record and
confidential."
Code of a Killer
is another fine example of Threlfall disappearing into a role, a technique he
likens to Michelangelo chipping into a lump of marble to create a statue –
albeit with an acute sense of how pretentious he might sound ("Let me not
put myself up there with Michelangelo," he says, with what I am
discovering is a characteristically ornate turn of phrase).
"The first
thing I had to acquire was that Leicestershire accent, so I called a very fine
dialect coach, Penny Dyer, who helped me with Tommy [last year's biopic Tommy
Cooper: Not Like That, Like This] and Prince Charles [he played the heir to the
throne in 1993's Diana: Her True Story]. A Leicestershire accent is interesting
because it's not Brummie," Threlfall continues, illustrating his
oft-remarked-upon attention to detail. "It's off to the right of the
motorway, sort of, as an accent. Anyway, that's the surface thing to study, as well
as the mind-set – the day-to-day things of being a policeman."
"OK... I'll
take that," says Threlfall. "But if I'm doing something, whether it's
Tommy or whether it's David in Code of a Killer, I am the guardian of the
reality keys. I think I drive directors nuts." Funny he should say that
because Trevor Nunn, who directed Threlfall in the breakthrough role of Smike
in the legendary eight-and-a-half-hour RSC production of The Life &
Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, and which transferred to Broadway (where
Threlfall was nominated for a Tony award), called the actor "a bit of a
handful". What did Nunn mean by that?
"You'll
have to ask Trevor. I don't know. Maybe it's just because I'm curious," says
Threlfall. "A bit of a handful... mmm... I don't know... I don't think he
means it badly because he's a good, old friend; I was with him at Christmas, in
fact. I think he means it affectionately, otherwise I wouldn't be invited
round. I know Mike Leigh said I'm a surrealist – which is rich coming from
him."
Threlfall was
born in Burnage, Manchester, in 1953. His father, Tommy, a builder, hoped that
young David would join the family trade, but Threfall was smitten with acting
after being taken on theatre visits by two particularly inspirational teachers
(he is still in touch with them both), and appearing in a school production of
Arthur Miller's The Crucible. "But I didn't think about it as a career,
because I was ready to go to art school," he says.
However, he
dropped out of his art course at Sheffield Hallam University after one year.
"Then there was a possibility that I could have started a rubbish removal
business with my friend Kim," he says. "But I just remember saying to
mum and dad, 'I can't do this; I need to give this acting thing a go'. And I
set about trying to find out how to translate watching things on television...
how do I get from here to there. I had no idea how you do it."
"Larry – because he liked us to call him Larry – was the
first person I met on the first day of production," says Threlfall.
"We were out one night eating in the Midland Hotel in Manchester – Noël
Coward liked to eat there – and I took great delight in walking in in my
Wrangler jacket. You see these eyes come towards you... 'Can I help you sir?'
'Yup, Lord Olivier's table please...'
"We had several evenings of a
convivial nature... I took the time to ask him things, and I kept in touch with
him. When I did Hamlet at Elsinore, I wrote to him to say I was going to do it,
and he said he had great memories of it; somewhere I've still got some letters
from him which is very nice."
Which anecdote brings us to the hot
topic of social mobility, or the lack of it, and the way that acting is said to
be becoming a predominantly middle-class profession. Does Threlfall agree with
fellow working-class Mancunian Christopher Eccleston, who recently doubted
whether a would-be thespian of his background would have the same opportunities
today?
"I think it's just a phase,"
says Threlfall. "If we were sat in 1958 with George Devine and Look Back
in Anger you'd say, 'Oh, it's all gone working class'. Pshh. The point surely
about the arts and acting is that it should come from anywhere; if you can get
over Brian Sewell's way of talking, he's got some very straightforward things
to say about art. You shouldn't pillory him for that. If acting's good, it's
good whatever it is. For me, anyway, it's a great leveller.
Threlfall's own
career slowly ground to a halt with the turn of the millennium. "Two years
before Shameless I couldn't give it away," he says. Paul Abbott's
ground-breaking underclass saga lasted for 11 seasons, and tends to over-shadow
the fine work that went before. Does he mind? "It doesn't annoy me because
I honestly did not spend much time thinking about it. I was aware in those
years on Shameless that there were casting directors and producers who would
have come into the business [after Shameless] and think perhaps that's what I
do. But there were sufficient people who knew I had done other stuff and that
there was a bit of reach in what I do."
Did he end up,
after playing him for so long, in a schizophrenic relationship with Frank
Gallagher? "Only when I was directing," he says, addressing, without
my asking, a widespread criticism that the show dragged on for too long.
"I stayed with it because I enjoyed it," he says. Was he sad or
relieved when Channel 4 finally decided to call it a day? "No, something
else really; the best antidote was that I'd finished directing what turned out
to be the last episode on the Saturday and on Monday I was on the set of What
Remains. So that kind of took care of that, really."
Threlfall isn't
one of those City supporters who feels nostalgic for the days of yo-yoing
between the divisions ("No, I'd take this any time," he says.
"Of course Chelsea throw brickbats at us, but let's not forget that
Chelsea bought their first title") and the club provides him with his
parting metaphor when I ask him whether he preferred playing Prince Philip or
Prince Charles (he has done both). "I prefer to work," he says.
"As long as something's got a challenge I don't mind – it's why I've been
a City supporter all my life".
No comments:
Post a Comment