Just Williams

‘Actors have forsaken their status as rogues and vagabonds – they’re goodiegoodies now’

Simon remembers actors’ roguish vices

ACCORDING TO THEATRICAL folklore, an actor’s breakfast was ‘a cigarette and a puke’. Cigarettes ruled their lives; back in the good old/bad old days, actors didn’t go to the gym, they went to the tobacconist and the pub; they didn’t bother with Pilates, they emptied the ashtray beside the bed and studied The Racing Times. Actors have forsaken their status as rogues and vagabonds – they’re goodie-goodies now, squeaky clean with whitened teeth ready for Hello! magazine.

Today, smoking actors are outcasts – they have to put condoms over the smoke detectors in their dressing rooms. Others lean dangerously out of the windows in full costume to get their fix. Imagine the amazement of passers-by in the street: ‘Blimey, look there’s King Lear havin’ a fag!’ Smoking has been expunged from their lives, cigarettes are airbrushed from the photographs of bygone stars, so they’re left blithely holding up two empty fingers to the world.

In yesteryear, drawing-room comedies were powered by nicotine – actors would trot in through French windows and head for the cigarette box, the lighter and then the ashtray – an endless cycle of lighting up and stubbing out. In whodunnits, detectives sucked on pipes and old buffers puffed cigars – a freestyle tobacco-fest. Ciggies were a perk of the trade – on matinee days they’d get a double ration. As soon as you lit up on stage, the paying punters would follow suit (yes there were ashtrays in every seat). There’d be shafts of smoky light funnelling towards you on stage.

Another former hobby of mine is drinking, which likewise is no longer tolerated in the theatre. Gone are the days when you left your pint of Guinness on the prop table in the wings before making an entrance. Backstage at the Theatre Royal in Brighton there was even a bar next to the stage called The Single Gulp, where the cast would assemble during the performance – every now and then they’d cut short an anecdote about Noël Coward to do ‘a quick spot of acting, love’. There was always an alcoholic in the cast to keep you on your toes. Smelling of peppermints or aniseed, they’d deliver variations on the dialogue: ‘I’m afraid this looks like marple, Miss Murder.’ Or ‘Let us retire to a nosy cook.’ Despite being carefully monitored backstage, the diehard lushes went to great pains to protect their supplies – one crafty old actor kept a bottle of whisky hidden in the cistern above the backstage lavatory. When Richard Harris spotted Peter O’toole in the corner of a pub, far from sober, he said, ‘I thought you’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous.’ ‘I did,’ O’toole replied, ‘I’m drinking under an assumed name.’ Simon plays Justin Elliott in The Archers