Small Man in a Book (31 page)

Photographed at the opening of an envelope. Reading the
First Knight
script, July 1994.

There weren’t many lines at all, and they seemed to involve this poor First Villager pleading with an unnamed baddie to spare his life, while all around him evil henchmen began to pillage his village as per the instructions of the chief baddie (who was to be played by Ben Cross of
Chariots of Fire
fame). No mention was made of my subordinates, Second or Third Villager, but even the most optimistic reader would have to suppose that they would be lucky to avoid a similar predicament. Sadly, as I scanned the page, I could find no mention of Lancelot or Arthur (the roles to be played by Gere and Connery). A video camera had been set up in the office and I was instructed to deliver my lines straight down the lens, after which the tape would be sent off for consideration by the film’s director, the very hot Jerry Zucker, fresh from his success with
Ghost
.

Oh boy, this is it
, I thought to myself as I looked at the little camera.
Get this right, and you’re in films!

I began my performance by allowing a worried look to spread at first imperceptibly and then very perceptibly across my First Villager’s face, before uttering the line, ‘No … please, please no, I beg you, please … Urgh!’ This last word was not to be found in the script; it was my own invention and preceded a bold and ambitious mime, conveying to the viewer the arrival of an arrow in my young chest, at which point my eyes widened in horror and I slumped forward to a grisly death.

My performance over, Mary thanked me for coming in and promised to be in touch. I smiled a smile that I hoped she might recognize to be that of an as-yet-undiscovered film star, and left.

A couple of weeks later, Martina and I were at Wimbledon; her boss had given us Centre Court tickets. As Andre Agassi cruised to victory, my phone vibrated with a message telling me that I’d got the part.

Agassi won a point and I cheered as though he’d won the tournament.

Two days before I began my one week of filming, I was in the supermarket, filling my trolley with the gay abandon of a man on the brink of a career in movies, when the phone rang again. It was my agent with the bad news that my one solitary line of dialogue had been cut and Mary was therefore wondering if I still wanted to do it. Of course I did! It was a film with Richard Gere and Sean Connery; who wouldn’t want to do it, line or no line? I would have paid them to let me be in the film. In fact, I almost did – the money was
terrible
.

If you see the film, you may spot me at the beginning when Richard Gere’s Lancelot comes to my village and challenges the local men to swordfights in return for cash. Look out for the long-faced grinning idiot who urges Gere’s eventual challenger to step forward. I managed to get a line too. My character runs around a burning barn as the baddies are closing in and in the excitement I blurted out, ‘Shut the door! Shut the door!’

When we went to the Odeon Leicester Square to see the film the following year, I couldn’t believe how bad I was. I overacted appallingly; I look like a Griff Rhys Jones tribute act. (I’m not implying for one second that Griff is anything other than excellent in his acting, merely that I evoked the spirit of him playing a buffoon in a sketch.) Remembering how I’d tried to sit up tall in Mary’s office, as the film went on I now found myself sinking lower and lower in my seat.

But that was yet to come; at this point I had no idea how bad I was, and so I blustered on regardless. It was a remarkable experience for me, an actor who’d never been in a film before, to find myself in a scene with Richard Gere and his megawatt charisma, and I stared at him the entire time he was on set. He had been studying all kinds of sword trickery in the run-up to filming and was able to toss and twirl his blade with ease, all adding to the impression of a bona fide movie star. One of my problems was my complete lack of any sort of technique. I hadn’t worked my way up slowly, learning how to relate to the camera as I went. Up to this point I’d done some work as an extra, plus a few corporate videos, some sketches and a lot of radio. I had no idea about judging the size of the performance; witness my humungous gurning while Lancelot scans the crowd for a challenger.

If you’re looking for the ultimate rookie mistake, though, fast forward to the scene where the misplaced villagers arrive in the garden of Guinevere, played by Julia Ormond. There’s a shot over her shoulder that takes in some of the bedraggled refugees as she addresses our leader. I was there, right at the front of our group. But you’ll be lucky if you see me, as I positioned myself just so that Miss Ormond was squarely between me and the camera. I had yet to learn the truth of the saying, ‘If you can’t see the camera, the camera can’t see you.’ A couple of inches to the left or right and you wouldn’t have been able to take your eyes off me.
Who’s the little gurning chap?
you’d have asked yourself.
Does he have some sort of condition?

As well as Gere and Connery, the film featured no less an acting legend than Sir John Gielgud as Oswald, adviser to Guinevere, and I was able to watch him as he filmed a short scene with Julia Ormond. It involved Oswald telling Guinevere that he thinks she should accept Arthur’s recent offer of marriage. Please try to summon up Gielgud’s distinctive tones as you picture the venerable Sir John standing in a long flowing robe and holding a stiff wooden staff, while delivering his lines with that wonderful voice.

‘You know how I feel … An offer of marriage, from Arthur … of Camelot …’

Jerry Zucker would call, ‘Cut!’ and a folding chair would be brought for Sir John. His staff would be taken away, and he would sit down until the crew was ready to roll again, at which point he would stand up, the chair would be whipped away, the staff would return to his hands and …

‘You know how I feel … An offer of marriage, from Arthur … of Camelot …’

‘Cut!’ and the chair would be brought again. A few minutes would pass as Sir John, who was at this point eighty years old, sat in silence on his folding chair until off we went again …

‘You know how I feel …’

They must have shot his short speech seven or eight times, and each time Gielgud delivered his lines identically, not a pause or inflection’s difference; it was mesmerizing to watch.

This scene has a special place in my memory as Martina had come to visit the set and was standing just off camera throughout the takes. She was pregnant with our first child; the baby was due in a couple of weeks, so I was slightly on edge as I didn’t think Sir John Gielgud would be much help if she went into labour.

The pregnancy came to loom large over my involvement in
First Knight
, in a rather unfortunate way, when the production team set about trying to book our little band of villagers for an extra week or so of filming. As Martina’s due date was so close, I was not keen to be away from home any longer than we’d originally agreed. And so, when the First Assistant Director mentioned that I’d be needed for a little longer, I said that I didn’t think this would be possible. He brought it up a few more times over the next couple of days, and each time I said the same thing: I needed to be home and so I wouldn’t be able to do any more work on the film. If I’m being entirely truthful, I resented the assumption that an actor in such a small role would have nothing else going on in his life that might prevent his continuing with the film. This made me more determined to stand my ground.

After each exchange, the First Assistant Director would relay my feelings to the powers that be, until one day, the film’s producer, Hunt Lowry, wandered over to the village set where I was sitting on the grass with some of my fellow villagers.

‘Where’s the expectant father?’

I stood up. Hunt was a powerful man. He had just produced
The Last of the Mohicans
and would go on to make
Donnie Darko
, amongst many others.

‘Let’s walk …’

I was dressed as a peasant villager, with greasy hair and mud on my face, and followed him as he strode up the hill and away from the make-believe village. He began to chat with me in a very friendly way, telling me that he understood what I was going through and how it was only natural that I wanted to be there for the birth of my first child. I felt as though I was in a John Grisham novel or a Scorsese movie, being taken away to be whacked by a smiling assassin. Luckily, that wasn’t on Hunt’s mind. Instead, he tried hard to accommodate the actor on his film who was, let’s face it, little more than an extra. Here’s what he was willing to do; there were options. He’d have a nurse outside our home while I was filming, and if Martina went into labour the nurse would take her to hospital and he would stick me in a car and whizz me there to join her. Or she could come to the set; they’d give her a trailer and, if anything happened, we’d both be taken to the hospital together.

All these years later, I can see that he was being exceptionally reasonable and generous, but at the time I just wanted to be at home and not take any chances; I also had absolutely no idea how films were made and what was expected of actors, so I said sorry, but no. He turned crossly and walked away, explaining, in less friendly tones that I should realize this was how movies worked and how he’d never have booked me if he’d known I’d behave like this.

He was right; I was wrong. If you do dig out the film, there’s a moment about three-quarters of the way through when the villagers are rescued from a church where they’ve been hiding from the baddies. I should have been one of their number; it would have been a lovely opportunity to fit in some more over-the-top acting as I staggered out into the daylight, eyes blinking and mouth wide open in shock. I might even have managed to improvise another line.

The cinematographer on
First Knight
was Adam Greenberg, who had previously worked on
Terminator 2
. This was a cause of some excitement among the largely British cast. So was working for an American director in Jerry Zucker. The crew was mostly British, and I was chatting to one of them one day and asking how they were finding working for an American director. They were loving it, I was told; they had never worked as fast or as diligently as they were doing now, in an effort to impress their US boss.

A few days later, I asked Jerry Zucker how he liked working with a British crew.

‘Oh, they’re great,’ he said. ‘I mean, they’re a little
slower
than I’m used to, but …’

As it turned out, I could have filmed the extra scenes quite comfortably; our beautiful daughter Katie arrived on the 28th of August, nine days late, and I became a father for the first time.

While the acting jobs were few and far between – my only other role this year was a very small one in a BBC drama,
The Healer
– I was at least continuing to establish myself as a voice artist, and this brought in a steadily increasing income. I had an ongoing series of radio ads for LWT, in which I played a DJ and was encouraged to ad lib a bit, and I had also been chosen to take over from an unavailable Richard E. Grant as the voice of Long John Silver in the second series of an animated version of
Treasure Island
for ITV. This was great fun; it felt like a lead role and I got to work alongside Hugh Laurie, who also performed a voice in the piece. It’s probably worth pointing out that this was a reimagining of the classic tale and my Long John Silver was a fox, while Hugh’s Squire Trelawney was some kind of unspecified poultry.

I became involved with a project from the
Spitting Image
stable, a show I’d tried to get on many times (eventually getting close to the gig on the final series, but falling at the last hurdle when the job went to the brilliant Peter Serafinowicz).
The Strip Show
was an offshoot from
Spitting Image
and took the form of a collection of animated topical cartoons. I attended a few studio sessions, and it was here that I met for the first time Alistair McGowan, Ronni Ancona and Rebecca Front. The programme made it to air on Channel Four as a pilot, but it wasn’t picked up for a series.

Back in Cardiff, Rhys came up with an idea for a radio show and managed to get a commission.
Who Died Earlier Today
was a spoof obituary show he and I wrote together in six episodes, each recapping the life of a fictitious public figure. It’s notable for providing another stage in the evolution of Keith Barret, who here became celebrated as the subject of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, hence his passing being marked by a radio tribute. Other characters included a poet, a showbusiness agent (a reincarnation for my old friend Richard Knight), a footballer and a pop star in the form of Jeremiah Fanny (briefly revived from Radio Five’s
Rave
). If Penguin have got their act together and you’ve invested in the e-version of this book, then there’s a fair chance that you can hear a clip by clicking, swiping or blowing here. If not, then please read on with regret.

The series was broadcast on Radio Wales, and we submitted it to Radio Four only to receive a letter, in September 1995, from then Commissioning Editor Mary Sharp, who let us down gently with the judgement that
Who Died Earlier Today
‘was not sophisticated enough in tone for the tastes of our audience’. Ouch!

At the same time as all these voice jobs were happening, I was still trying to get myself a proper, established, connected acting agent. Ashley was doing his best, but simply didn’t have enough clout to make any real difference, and so I continued to send out a barrage of letters on a daily basis. I was missing a very simple point, expressed quite beautifully in the film
Field of Dreams
.

It is this:
If you build it, they will come
.

I wasn’t building anything. I was just sending out letters and tapes with cleverly edited compilations of indifferent material in the vain hope that the recipient would spot the potential I myself sometimes struggled to believe that I had.