You are in the Special Features section - Peter Egan, Ever Decreasing Circles, Paul Ryman, Oscar Wilde, Richard Briers, Penelope Wilton

Digger chats with Peter Egan. 

 

Peter Egan

 

 

 

 

Peter kindly agreed to answer some questions for Digger at www.retrosellers.com 

Some images courtesy of and © copyright www.rexfeatures.com

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

Digger: I've been watching some old series on DVD, including your famous series 'Hog'. And in one episode of Budgie there was a chap whose house was 'invaded' by Budgie and Charlie Endell. Budgie had been shot when someone was trying to shoot Charlie and they needed shelter. And the house owner looks, behaves and dresses like an old man. And he announces that he's 51, which is how old I am now!! Things have really changed there, haven't they?

 

Peter: Yes, 51 is the new 41.

 

Digger: If that logic carries on we're going to be going on forever aren't we?

 

Peter: I hope so. I think people didn't really start to age down until the eighties onwards. But maybe it all started in the sixties...

 

Digger: You lot started it!

 

Peter: Exactly, us and the Rolling Stones and The Beatles. That kind of extravagant dressing away from all the dreariness of the fifties. But then I think in the eighties, when you had big hits over here like Dallas, where TV image dominated the networks. People accepted the fact that you would do whatever you wanted to your face, particularly with plastic surgery and so on, and just age back. 

 

Digger: Larry Hagman is looking okay. But a lot of the cast have had problems of one sort or another.

 

Peter: He had a liver transplant, didn't he? So that must be quite good now, I suppose. That show was so huge and there's always a price to pay somewhere along the line.

 

Digger: Patrick Duffy is looking good. I saw him at a show not so long back.

 

Peter: Yes, I think he works out or something - he looks very fit.

 

Digger: Can you tell us how you got into acting? 

Peter: I left school at fifteen, I went to St. George's in Maida Vale. The school where the headmaster was stabbed a few years ago. He intervened in a street fight and it was very sad. Well I left in 1961.

Digger: Have you been back?

Peter: No, but I have met my old geography teacher who had moved to Hartlepool.

Digger: Did anyone inspire you there?

Peter: In the school? Not anyone in particular. I wasn't a very good pupil really, I was much more interested in being out on the street, playing snooker and things like that. So my interests dominated and I wasn't that scholarly - it was my own fault. It was a secondary modern. I'm perceived very much as a kind of public school boy and in fact my upbringing was very much north London, the unofficial capital of Ireland - Kilburn. My father was a Dubliner and my mother was from Battersea. 

Digger: My mum was from Kerry. My sister lives near Cork.

Peter: Great. The ring of Kerry is lovely, isn't it? Anyway, I left school at fifteen and didn't really have any idea of what I wanted to do. I worked in a machine shop, I worked as a hospital porter, I worked as a salesman. And I fell into 'am dram' by accident when I was sixteen and I went into an amateur group in Ladbroke Grove, off of Notting Hill Gate, to see if I could help out with design. Because I was quite good at drawing. I found that they needed someone to play a part in Arsenic and Old Lace.

Digger: The Cary Grant part?

Peter: No, it wasn't that role, it was Teddy Brewster and I was, of course, far too young for it but nevertheless they told me I had to play the part if I wanted to be a member of the group. I wanted to design but they persuaded me to play the part. And I fell in love with it. And it was just like when you twist the lens on a camera and it all comes into focus. I suddenly found at sixteen that it was what I wanted to do and it was for me really a lifesaver. Because I got totally involved and started to go to the theatre all of the time. By the time I was eighteen I went to RADA and auditioned for five drama schools and got into them all, so was very, very lucky from that point of view. I could choose where I wanted to go.

Digger: Who were your contemporaries at RADA?

Peter: Timothy Dalton, Hywel Bennett, Linda Thorson. People like that. 

Digger: A lot of good actors there and sixties movers and shakers. Did you all keep in touch?

 

 

 

 

Peter: Oh, absolutely, I've kept in touch with Tim for ... over forty years.

Digger: Was Timothy Dalton in The Lion In Winter?

Peter: That was his first job. He played Philip of France. In fact I tested for that, but he got it.

Digger: (laughs) Were you biting your lip when you just said that?

Peter: Not really, no. I mean he was really good in that role and he was also a terribly good James Bond. 

Digger: I interviewed Jane Merrow who was in The Lion In Winter and she had appeared in The Avengers and was lined-up for taking over from Diana Rigg but Jane was busy on 'Lion' so Linda got the role. It's funny how things go like that, isn't it?

Peter: It's a funny old business. In fact, one of my closest friends is an actor/write called Shane Connaughton. He did the screenplay for My Left Foot. And Shane was someone I met at that amateur group in Ladbroke Grove in 1963 . And we've been friends ever since and he's probably my oldest friend. Oh God, for over 45 years!

Digger: Have you got a good memory for dates and names and so on because you seem to be rattling them off with no trouble?

Peter:  Well, the significant things in your life I suppose you do remember. I've got a relatively good memory, I suppose.

 

 

 

Digger: What do you think you'd be doing if not an actor?

Peter: Do you know, I have no idea. I may have gone into writing or being an artist. I like drawing quite a lot. I always had a fantasy of wanting to be a writer but it takes more skill and commitment than I have. I wrote a screenplay which Working Title commissioned but it didn't go any further. I don't really know what I would have done. I think ultimately I would have had to have chosen something in the area of the arts. That's something that I was beginning, even at fifteen. When I began to go to life art classes in Finchley. So one way or another even though I was working in 'real' jobs my mind was veering in that direction anyway. It was a question of focusing it and the amateur group did that. I think if I had been in a different environment I might have started to develop those interest earlier but the lifestyle that I had didn't encourage that.

Digger: Are you doing any drawing or painting these days?

Peter: I do some sketches and some doodles that I send every year to the National Doodle Day. It's a very good charity and I send them some doodles and they auction them off. And I do some drawings just for myself. I always promise myself that when I do less of the acting I'll do more of the drawing. 'Cos you need a dedicated amount of time and my wife and I, apart from having a daughter and a grandchild, have four dogs. So they take up a huge amount of time. 

Digger: Are you away from home a lot?

Peter: I try not to be and with a lot of the tours I have been doing recently like The Hound Of The Baskervilles, which I did towards the end of last year, I'm accepting the ones where I can get back. Like when I was in Northampton, I could get back every evening because I live in north London anyway so it was dead simple just to commute.

Digger: When I first moved to Northampton after 'a life changing experience', I was living just a couple of doors down from the Derngate theatre and the house next door to me were taking in actors.

Peter: Oh really?

Digger: Yes, I used to see quite a lot of famous faces - character actors.

Peter: It sounds rather sad when you say they were 'taking in' actors. Poor souls.

Digger: (laughs) It's like the stories you hear about music hall actors of old who were seen as the lowest of the low by landladies. 

Peter: I can remember when I was a kid, my dad being an Irishman, I remember seeing signs on the windows of houses saying 'No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish'. So this next job I'm doing, A Song At Twilight, which is coming up to the Derngate again in the new year. It's an eight or ten week tour and eight of those weeks I can commute from. So that's the kind of deal that I'm happy to accept because I don't want to spend too much time away from home. 

Digger: It's not all about the money.

Peter: It's a combination of the money and the convenience really. Certainly, the way that television has gone, I still get offered a lot of stuff on TV and most of it is rubbish and if I can turn it down I do. And I do the odd film. But most of the time now I'm offered theatre and I'm happy to do it because the material's good and it keeps me off the streets.

Digger: The Big Breadwinner Hog controversy was a huge one at the time. Did this help your career or was it a setback and what were your views on the fuss that was made about the series?

Peter: It certainly wasn't a setback. I was 22 when I did Big Breadwinner Hog and it was a marvellous part to be given. Two wonderful directors, Mike Newell and Mike Apted. And the wonderful writer Robin Chapman was very, very in vogue at the time. And a marvellous series to do and all it ever did was give me a great stepping stone up the great ladder of success in this business.

Digger: It's of its time. Like a lot of the series like Public Eye and the cult shows. It was '69 wasn't it?

Peter: Yes.

Digger: So it just missed the colour thing didn't it?

Peter: It was just on the cusp of black and white to colour. 

Digger: It was very moody.

Peter: It was moody and the whole principle behind doing it was that it dealt with violence in a very real way rather than the way that violence was dealt with in programmes like The Saint where someone got hit with a chair that broke on their back and they managed to get up and carry on walking.

Digger: I suppose colour would have been dodgy for Hog because if it had been shown in colour you would have had the dilemma of whether to show blood.

Peter: Exactly. Absolutely. But what they aimed to do was to show violence that hurt. And that, of course, caused an absolute furore and it was talked about in the Houses of Parliament and I was on the front of all the national newspapers. They kept switching it around in the schedules so that it went on later and later and later because they thought it was going to incite the youth of Britain to some kind of violence. Which I don't think it did. But the short answer is, it wasn't a hindrance. Quite the reverse, it was a great opportunity and I really enjoyed doing it.

Digger: 'Hog' followed on from Cold Comfort Farm which was also rather controversial.

Peter: I did Cold Comfort Farm in the same year as I did Hog, and that was the first colour programme that was produced for BBC2.

Digger: Because when I spoke to Liza Goddard she said that Take Three Girls was the first drama recorded in colour. 

Peter: Yes, it may well have been.

Digger:  Do you enjoy these naughty/baddy roles more?

Peter: I enjoy anything that's well written. Baddies are always good to play because you can create your own kind of energy and logic with the part because a baddy can do the most extraordinary things and you accept it because they're a baddy. Whereas when your' playing a goody, you have to tread a very fine line of being acceptable and warm to the audience, if you know what I mean. Baddies are much easier and better to play than goodies.

Digger: Have you ever done pantomimes?

Peter: I've never done pantomimes. I've been asked to do Captain Hook. In fact I wouldn't mind doing Captain Hook now. Pantomime has become much more popular and, for want of a better word, more accepted in the profession now. Probably because Ian McKellen did Aladdin at the Old Vic a few years ago. I don't get asked to do pantomime and I think the general feeling would be that I wouldn't be a panto type actor. But I'd be up for Captain Hook. I don't know if I'd be any good at Dames or as one of the ugly sisters. Maybe I could do Baron Hardup.

Digger: I can't see you as a Dame. For you, what are the differences and which do you prefer between comedy and drama and TV and stage work? I probably know the answer now actually...

Peter: What's that?...

Digger: Well, as long as it's good...

Peter: Exactly, there's no difference at all. If I were given an absolute choice as an actor and they said "Okay, you can work for the rest of your life in either film, TV or theatre", it would be a difficult choice between film and theatre for me. Because both film and theatre are pure medium and the thing that's wonderful about working on stage is that there is a point where everything depends on the actor. And that's the moment after rehearsals when you're playing in front of an audience and you have the new partner, which is the audience. So it's you, the play and the audience. And you, and not the director then, after rehearsals, are very much in control of the life of that play. As an actor, when filming, you are in control, but after filming it's in the hands of the director. And TV is very plot-driven, so it's a bastard medium really. People say why is it called a medium? - well, because it's neither rare nor well done. Television is an extraordinary medium isn't it? Because it's so powerful. But it has, I think since the early nineties, exploded in so many directions and lost its way. We did produce the finest television in the world and now you have to struggle to find that heritage in modern day productions. I'm very much engaged by Little Dorrit at the moment; I think that's pretty powerful. 

Digger: Lots of faces there.

Peter: Yes, lots of faces and it's very well done, I think.

Digger: You have been something of a heart-throb. How did you deal with this and how did you deal with being recognised?

Peter: Being recognised is fine so long as the people who recognise you choose to do it in a polite manner. So most of the time it's absolutely fabulous and I'm very happy to be recognised because on the whole people are polite and generally very appreciative. It's when you get someone who wants to have a pop at you. In the rare occasion that happens it's uncomfortable. I think any actor who says "I hate being recognised" is not being very truthful. If you're not being recognised it means nobody knows who you are. The important thing is that people do know you.

Digger: I used to work in the west end and my colleagues and I used to stroll around and would see celebrities all the time and we played a game where we awarded points, and sometimes deducted them, for people we'd seen.

Peter: You can make yourself recognisable or you can make yourself anonymous and because we have such an appetite for celebrity now people are determined to be famous and recognised. Throughout my life as an actor one didn't promote oneself in that way. It was just doing the job.

Digger: You earned your stripes.

Peter: Yes, I think that was part of the deal. You worked and didn't get it just because of fifteen minutes of fame. That's the way it is now so that's the way it is. But I never had a problem with that and I'm perfectly happy with being appreciatively recognised. And as far as being a heart-throb is concerned, you never take it too seriously. You live with yourself through all kinds of things and you see yourself in the mirror in the morning, and whether you're in your twenties, thirties, forties or fifties, you look at this person and say "Who is that?" So I never took that seriously.