Timothy West

Karen talks to actor Timothy West.

You’re appearing at the Grassington festival performing the Pity of War – what’s it’s about?
Well it’s the poems and letters of Wilfred Owen the First World War poet and they play some sonatas which fit round it and which were written at that time.

Have you been to Grassington before?
Yes I have. I can’t quite remember what we were doing there though. I think we might have been filming there some little time ago. But it’s a lovely place; I’m very fond of it.

What are your early childhood memories of the war?
Well we were in Bristol throughout the war which was a very popular place for Marshal Goering and his Luftwaffe because there was the Filton Aviation Works and also Avon Mouth Docks of course. So we had very heavy Sunday night raids almost every Sunday for quite along time and I remember waking up one Monday morning thinking it was time to get up because the ceiling was suffused with this pink light looking just like dawn and I opened the curtains and it wasn’t dawn at all it was about two in the morning and the whole of Bristol city was on fire. Pretty much every building in the old city except for a couple of churches went up that night.

Were you frightened as a child when you saw things like that?
I was a bit frightened that night but the ordinary air raids we thought were rather fun. We sat under the stairs with some ginger biscuits and sang songs. But we did see what it was all about because occasionally we would see dog fights in the sky between Spitfires and Messerschmitts.

Did you have a happy childhood?
Reasonably I think, yes. It was a bit stressful because my dad was doing police work so it was kind of jumpy and my mother got a bit depressed I think.

I hope you don’t mind me asking this but could you tell me about the time you nearly killed your baby sister?
It was just sort of an experiment really. It was in a village in south Devon and I think I was feeling a bit grumpy about various things but my mother had gone into a shop and left the pram on a steep hill and I just wondered what it’d be like if I just lifted the break and Ooh! Yes! There she went hurtling down the hill. Then PC Crocker - I still remember his name – he saw what was happening, raced across the road and just stopped the pram before it reached the cross roads, which was quite a busy trunk road between Newton Abbot and Exeter. She would have undoubtedly gone under the wheels of something if he hadn’t have stopped her. My mother was quite cross about it actually but I think my sister rather enjoyed it, she was giggling.

Your dad was called Lockwood where did that name come from?
He was called Harry Lockwood West, that was what he was christened but Lockwood was a family name I think, from his mother’s side. She was a Yorkshire woman you know. She was a Hartley as in Hartley’s Jam.

Both your parents were actors, is that where you got your inspiration from?
Well yes although it didn’t happen directly. My father said “You’ll have to get a proper job, this is no good.” So for a little while I did. I was a recording engineer for E.M.I. but I was a member of many different amateur dramatic societies. In the end my boss decided for me really, that I would be better doing the job to which I was giving most of my energy. So I left and became a student assistant stage manager at Wimbledon Theatre and my career went on from there.

Being a Bradford born lad now living down south, do you class yourself as a northerner or a southerner?
I don’t count myself as a southerner at all I don’t think. You see I travel all over the place so I’m just a gypsy really. It’s lovely to be in the north it’s quite lovely to be anywhere really but because touring theatre is the thing that I enjoy the most I just think that we’re all citizens of one country where different places have their own characteristics, thank God, and I don’t feel a stranger in any of them.

Do you think that there is a north-south divide?
I don’t think there’s a real one. I think there are people that like to pretend that there is. It was brought home to me when I was in the TV series Brass. We all loved it as it was such fun to do and it was a huge hit in the north. In the south it was a little bit like “Darling are they really like that up there? Is that really what they do?”

As an accomplished actor do you ever get nervous before you perform?
No! It’s an awful fault that I don’t. I know one should. I think you’re supposed to but as the curtain goes up on opening night I just think ‘Oh I just wish I was at home with my feet up watching something not really very demanding on television with a glass of whiskey then have a hot bath and go to bed.’ But having said that, once I get on I’m alright but I don’t get that thrill of adrenaline and the excited urgency that you’re supposed to feel. I don’t know whether that’s good or not.

If you were to choose three people, dead or alive, to invite round for dinner who would they be?
Ooh! I think Samuel Johnson... er, who else?... perhaps some sexy lady...

Obviously Prunella!
Obviously Prunella, yes, I’m glad you mentioned that. I don’t know! Nelson Mandela sounds like a bit of a cliché doesn’t it but I think I’ll go with him.

Have you any plans to retire?
No we don’t retire. What happens is the people who employ us retire but it comes to the same thing in the end.

How would you describe yourself?
I’d like to say I’m adaptable and hard working. I like to get it right. I like problems, I like challenges. To me acting is a bit like being a boxer in the ring and a bit like doing a crossword, there are elements of both and you have to try and combine them in the right proportions.

Interview from issue NL20 june/july 08. To order this issue go to the Northern Life online store.