Do You Know Who I Am?
Tim Pigott-Smith Bloomsbury €26.59
doing King Charles on Broadway, it’s as if Jesus himself has dropped by (‘This goddess...’). He nicely recalls the amazing charm and largesse of Sammy Davis Jr entertaining his guests in a hotel suite till 2am: ‘I have never, ever encountered anything like it since.’
Pigott-Smith briefly became a star himself, of course, when he played Ronald Merrick, the brutal police superintendent in ITV’s
The Jewel In The Crown. The role made him famous, though stardom was doubleedged: ‘I couldn’t cope with it. I was lousy at it.’ Being buttonholed in the street left him bemused or freaked out. But if he was rueful, he was also grateful. It meant he was never out of work again. Like many actors, he seems a martyr to insecurity, agonising over work, ambition, the acting ‘process’. Only once does his mask slip. Writing of Kenneth Tynan, doyen of post-war theatre criticism, he says: ‘There are no skills required to be a critic.’ And this, from the son of a journalist! But it’s hard to stay mad at him for long. His decency overwhelms the reader, and compounds the sense of loss: as Macbeth nearly said, he should have died hereafter.
On achieving stardom: I couldn’t cope with it. I was lousy at it’
With his death so recently upon us, it’s a melancholy experience to read Tim Pigott-Smith’s memoir. At 70, the actor had just completed the role of a lifetime – his brilliant performance as King Charles III in Mike Bartlett’s BBC drama. It is now, alas, his swansong.
Like many of his generation, Pigott-Smith climbed his way up the professional pole via the repertory system. A choirboy at Leicester Cathedral, he became immersed in theatre once his parents moved to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962. After studying drama at Bristol University, he landed a job at the Prospect Theatre, where he met Pamela Miles on the first day of rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing. They married quickly, lest his mother found out that he was ‘living in sin’.
As his career picks up pace, the anecdotes begin to gather. He has a good memory, and a generous spirit. He recalls working with Jeremy Irons and Maggie Smith, Michael Caine and Judi Dench, with whom he had a long-running in-joke about gloves (perhaps you had to be there).
He laments the way great actors are quickly forgotten – Peggy Ashcroft – and seems genuinely in awe of star power. When Meryl Streep comes backstage while he’s