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Gambon - A Life in Acting
by Mel Gussow
224 pages
£15.99
Nick Hern Books
Dateline: 15th April, 2004
This book is not quite what the title suggests. Over some years, American
journalist, Mel Gussow has published four different books entitled Conversations
with ... These have covered a quartet of the greatest English-language
playwrights of the twentieth-century.
Gambon - a Life in Acting should more properly have been entitled
Conversations with Gambon as, very precisely, this is what it
consists of. Mel Gussow has been lucky enough to spend a considerable
amount of time with Sir Michael, a man that he describes as combining
"the boldness of an Olivier with the blissful eccentricity of Richardson",
first in 1990 and then in 2002-03.
We do not get a very full biography of the actor whom Harold Pinter,
amongst several others, describes as one of the greats. This is principally
because Sir Michael is such a shy man. When asked for more biographical
detail in one of the interviews, he says of the public "if you're
an actor, the less people know about you the better it is. I don't think
you should pander to the public's curiosity". In the very last
conversation, he makes it clear that "This is a book about acting
in the theatre, about being an actor". There are rumours about
a wife and son but their names are never mentioned.
Despite his finest efforts though, many facts about the man emerge
as he is talking about his own life in the theatre and his more general
thoughts about the profession.
Young Mike Gambon left school at 15 and served an apprenticeship in
the engineering trade. To this day, he loves mechanics - the science
not the men - and is a gunsmith of professional standard. He lied his
way into the acting profession claiming at an audition in Dublin to
have played a lead on a West End stage having never done so. Many millions
will be grateful that he did so.
From there, he was soon adopted by Laurence Olivier and is proud that
he was the only person to have been employed at the National Theatre
on its inauguration and also at the time of its 25th anniversary.
His approach to acting is interesting and betrays the fact that he
is a natural who has received no formal training. He requires some outside
stimulus such as shoes in order to get into a part. He is likely to
flounder around during the early stages of the rehearsal process only
to have a blinding flash of inspiration after which he is almost instantly
perfect. Once he is working in the theatre, which is his real love,
he enjoys short runs. Otherwise, he gets bored and start extemporising,
a candid admission that one does not normally see in theatrical books.
His career has gone from strength to strength after proving to many
people that he was a far better and more versatile actor than they had
imagined. This was a result of an invitation from Peter Hall to take
on Brecht's Galileo in a John Dexter production that several
other directors turned down.
Mel Gussow is good at drawing his sometimes defensive subject out on
his finest parts. These include King Lear, numerous Ayckbourns,
David Hare's Skylight and, on television, Dennis Potter's The
Singing Detective.
Sir Michael is also often willing to give praise to actors, writers
and directors with whom he has worked and the compliment is repaid as
a selection of them are given the chance to say how wonderful he is
at the end of the book.
The nature of a series of conversations is that they will on occasions
get repetitive and a little more judicious editing might have improved
what is anyway a very entertaining book.
Gambon - A Life in Acting is generally a good read that feels
like a compilation of journalism rather than a full-scale biography
of a great actor. There is little doubt that the man himself will be
only too pleased that this is the case and that so much of his life
that remains hidden.
The lack of personal detail is exacerbated by the subject's ability
to invent and rewrite stories at will. Even allowing for this, the book
gives readers the opportunity to get as close as many of us are likely
to come to sitting down across several congenial tables with Sir Michael
Gambon.
You
can buy Gambon
- A Life in Acting directly from Nick Hern Books.
Articles Indices:
Articles from 2004
Articles from 2003
Articles from 2002
Articles from 2001
Articles from 2000
Articles from 1999
Articles from 1998
Articles from 1997
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