Poirot and Me (5 page)

else, I didn’t feel comfortable.

There was no real purpose in that for me;

it just didn’t fit the man I knew I was: the

serious, slightly reserved son of a South

African-born gynaecologist and an English

actress who was the daughter of a music-hall

artist from Kent, and who’d gone on to

become a dancer on the West End stage

herself.

Deep down I knew that I didn’t want to

pretend to be someone else; I wanted to

inhabit them, to bring them to life. The

longer I thought about it, the more I realised

that what I really wanted to do was to

become different people, to transform myself

into them. I wanted to be a character actor,

not a star. That was what I enjoyed, that

was what acting really meant to me.

It was at that moment that I also realised

that the playwright or screenwriter of any

piece I appeared in depended on me as an

actor to give his or her character a

personality and voice. That was what excited

me,

because

without

character

and

personality, there can be no drama. I was

convinced that my purpose as an actor was

to become the writer’s voice.

That

understanding

came

like

a

thunderclap. I realised – suddenly – that it

wasn’t about me. It was about the character

I was lucky enough to play, and my job was

to bring out the truth in the character – and

what the writer wanted. Ultimately, that was

what really lay behind my decision to play

Poirot.

That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to

write this book. I wanted to try to explain

what being a character actor means for me,

and how it can sustain you even if you play a

single part for more than a quarter of a

century. I don’t think any actors have ever

really attempted that before – not Basil

Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, who both played

Sherlock Holmes; nor John Thaw, who

played Inspector Morse; nor Raymond Burr,

who brought us both Perry Mason and

Ironside; nor even Richard Chamberlain, who

was Doctor Kildare for all those years.

I wanted to try to explain what my craft

and profession mean to me personally,

especially when I’ve had the good fortune to

be asked to play a man who is known, and

loved, by so many millions of people around

the world.

And so it was that ‘inhabiting’ Dame

Agatha’s Poirot preoccupied me in those first

months of 1988. I wanted to understand

everything about him, to become him, and to

make him as real to the world as he was

becoming to me. He gave my work a

purpose, and I hoped that I would repay my

debt to his creator by bringing him truly to

life – in all his dimensions – for the first time.

Just as I was beginning to immerse myself

in him, however, I was offered a part in a

small British film based on a Michael

Morpurgo children’s story called When the

Whales Came. It was a charming piece set in

the Scilly Isles, thirty miles out from Land’s

End in the north Atlantic, about two children

who set out to save a beached narwhal that

had landed on their shores, and in doing so

saved their island from a curse.

The stars were to be my old National

Youth Theatre friend Helen Mirren and the

unforgettable but distinctly shy Paul Scofield,

Oscar-winner for his performance in the film

of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons in

1966, as well as receiving a Tony for playing

Salieri

in

Peter

Shaffer’s Amadeus on

Broadway in 1979. His portrayal of King Lear

has been described as ‘the greatest ever

Shakespearean performance’, and he was

undoubtedly one of the finest actors of his

generation. Filming would take ten weeks on

the Scillies between April and June, and I

was to play the third lead, a local fisherman

called Will.

It wasn’t an enormous part, but it was a

beautiful place to be, and I thought it would

give me a chance to read even more Poirot,

away from the demands of London and the

telephone. Besides, Sheila and the children

could visit me on the islands, which would

give us all a week together during the half-

term holiday.

So it was that I spent the beautiful spring

of 1988 on the smallest of the Scilly Isles,

Bryher, where the film was being shot,

spending my spare time reading Poirot

stories.

The more I did so, the more the little man

entranced me. There were so many foibles,

so many little habits that some people found

hard to understand, so many mannerisms –

his need for order, his dislike of the country,

his determination to carry a silver ‘Turnip’

pocket watch wherever he went. Each was

as idiosyncratic as the next, and each as

fascinating.

Then, as the warm winds of May turned

into an even warmer June, I started to write

my private list of Poirot’s habits and

character. I called it my ‘dossier of

characteristics’. It ended up five pages long

and detailed ninety-three different aspects of

his life. I have the list to this day – in fact, I

carried it around on the set with me

throughout all my years as Poirot, just as I

gave a copy to every director I worked with

on a Poirot film.

The first note I made read simply:

‘Belgian! NOT French.’

The second said: ‘Drinks tisane – hardly

ever tea, which he calls “the English Poison”.

Will drink coffee – black only.’

The third echoed the same theme: ‘Has

four lumps of sugar in tea and coffee –

sometimes three. Once or twice, five!’

‘Wears pointed, tight, very shiny patent

leather shoes,’ said the fourth, while the fifth

added, ‘Bows a great deal – even when

shaking hands.’

Very gradually, from reading the books

and keeping a note of every single item that

illuminated his character, I was building a

picture of the man I was about to play.

‘Hates to fly. Makes him feel sick,’ my list

went on, but then also: ‘Hates travelling by

water. Uses the “so excellent Laverguier

method” to prevent sea-sickness.’

‘Regards his moustaches as a thing of

perfect beauty,’ said my eighth note to

myself. ‘Uses scented pomade.’

‘Order and method are his “GODS”,’ was

my ninth commandment, and the next: ‘A

man of faith and morals. Regards himself as

“un bon Catholique”. Reads his Bible every

night before he goes to sleep.’ The more I

read about Poirot, the greater the respect I

found for his creator. I had not realised that

the woman born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller

on 15 September 1890, in my own father’s

favourite seaside resort of Torquay in Devon,

was the best-selling novelist of all time.

Nor did I know that her books had sold

some two billion copies around the world,

that she was the most translated individual

author ever – appearing in 103 languages –

and that hers are ranked the third most

widely published books in history, after the

works of Shakespeare and the Bible.

Perhaps if I’d known all those things when

I started out on the project, I might have

been even more terrified at the prospect of

playing Poirot and satisfying her millions of

fans.

After all, they had a lot of experience of

him: all those novels and short stories over

fifty-five years. Indeed, even though Dame

Agatha had professed to become ‘tired’ of

him in the late 1940s, she nevertheless

continued to write about him until 1972,

when

Collins

published Elephants Can

Remember. They went on to publish Curtain:

Poirot’s Final Case , which she had written

many years earlier, just a few months before

her death at the age of eighty-five in January

1976.

So, utterly determined to get Poirot as

right as Dame Agatha would have wanted

him, I sat in my room in the Hell Bay Hotel

on Bryher, steadily compiling my ever-

expanding list of his characteristics.

Number eleven read: ‘A great thinker who

says he has “undoubtedly the finest brain in

Europe”,’ while number thirteen added:

‘Conceited professionally – but not as a

person.’ Fourteen said: ‘Loves his work and

genuinely believes he is the best in the world

and expects everyone to know him,’

although

fifteen

conceded:

‘Dislikes

publicity.’

Every day Poirot’s complexities and

contradictions,

his

vanities

and

idiosyncrasies, became ever clearer in my

mind, but as they did so, I began to worry

about his voice.

In fact, in the ten weeks I spent on Bryher,

it was Poirot’s voice that worried me the

most. I would walk round that beautiful,

unspoilt little island, with its population of

under a hundred and where there isn’t a

single tarmac road, thinking about how he

would truly sound. Perhaps the quietness of

the island helped me do so.

‘Everybody thinks he’s French,’ I said to

myself as I walked across the great stones

that littered the beach at Rushy Bay, or

stomped over the tussocky grass of Heathy

Hill, with its famous dwarf pansies.

‘The only reason people think Poirot is

French is because of his accent,’ I muttered.

‘But he’s Belgian, and I know that French-

speaking Belgians don’t sound French, not a

bit of it.’

I started experimenting by talking to

myself in a whole range of voices, some of

them coming from my head – all nasal and

clipped – others coming from my chest,

lower and a little slower, even a little gruff.

Nothing sounded quite like the man I had

been reading about in bed every night. They

all sounded a little false, and that was the

very last thing that I wanted.

I also was well aware of Brian Eastman’s

advice to me before I left for Bryher: ‘Don’t

forget, he may have an accent, but the

audience must be able to understand exactly

what he’s saying.’ There was my problem in

a nutshell.

It certainly wasn’t the only one. I wanted

to discover everything I could about the

great detective, and as I read, I realised that

there were some clues at hand. In the midst

of

compiling

my

list

of

Poirot’s

characteristics, I came across a letter the

great man had apparently written himself in

April 1936, to his American publisher. It

appeared in an American omnibus of his

stories,

including The Murder of Roger

Ackroyd and Thirteen at Dinner – or Lord

Edgware Dies, as it is known in England –

and it answered at least some of the

questions in my mind.

‘What was my first case?’ Poirot wrote to

‘Monsieur Dodd’.

I began work as a member of the

detective force in Brussels on the

Abercrombie Forgery Case in 1904,

and for many years was proud to be a

member of the detective service in my

native Belgium. Since the closing of

the war, I have, as you know, been in

London, having rooms for some time

with mon vieux ami Hastings, at 14,

Farraway Street, under the motherly

supervision of Mrs Pearson.

As I read it, I remember being struck at how

similar it all seemed to Sherlock Holmes,

with Dr Watson and Mrs Hudson in 221B

Baker Street. What I didn’t know, as I read,

was exactly how much his creator had been

influenced by the exploits of Sir Arthur Conan

Doyle’s master detective. Dame Agatha had

been an avid reader of Holmes as a young

woman and although she’d decided to make

her detective as different in personality from

Holmes as she possibly could, she’d liked the

idea of having a Dr Watson-like friend and

helper who could be the narrator of the story

– enter Captain Hastings. And she’d liked the

notion of a kindly housekeeper to look after