Cold Feet star: Mumblers are a menace
COLD Feet actor Robert Bathurst has slammed actors who do not speak clearly – and admitted he struggles to understand some mumbling co-stars.
The 63-year-old – David Marsden in the ITV comedy drama – told The Oldie magazine he had worked with directors who felt unable to criticise stars he could barely understand.
He said: “It is a taboo in some circles now to say that an actor is inaudible.
“I’ve worked with directors who are too scared to say so or too clotheared to notice.
“I once filmed some dialogue with an actor who was standing about four feet from me but the only way I knew it was my cue was that his lips stopped moving.”
Mumbling in dramas has been a hot topic for several years now.
In 2017, there was a spate of issues with mumbling on shows including Jamaica Inn, Happy Valley and SS-GB.
More recently shows facing mumble criticism have included Poldark – although some experts have said new flat-screen TVs may be part of the problem as the sound is not always good on some models.
Robert was commissioned to write an article on “The awkward art of acting English” for The Oldie.
He wrote: “This is a very broad commission – to discuss the acting of Englishness.
“What we’re tackling here is the unfashionable end of the market: the portrayal of middle and upperclass, white, male characters. “Their emotional range is limited. “Limited to restraint, embarrassment, insularity, awkwardness, perverse obliqueness, fear of intimacy, self-deprecation, hypocrisy, modesty, courtesy, deception, fair play, sarcasm, understatement, fence-sitting, fuss-avoiding, overpoliteness, conformism and a searching for the happy medium in all things.
“It’s a rich seam, full of subtlety. The actor of Englishness must get all of the above into the line ‘I do beg your pardon’.
“David Niven, George Sanders, John Le Mesurier, Patrick Macnee, Robert Morley and DavidTomlinson knew exactly what they were doing and what value they could give to a line of dialogue.”
But he added: “All these actors, along with many others including Alec Guinness, Trevor Howard and Jack Hawkins, shared one underrated quality: you could hear what they said.”