MAN BEHIND MOUSTACHE

IT is a common misconception to assume actors are like the characters they play.

However, David Suchet does admit to sharing a number of attributes with his most famous creation, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. “I care about detail and he greatly cared about it too. I like symmetry, we’re very similar there... and the other similarity of course is that I’m the most difficult person because I’m a perfectionist, and so is he,” David notes. He last played Agatha Christie’s hero in 2013, hanging up his Homburg hat after a remarkable 70 TV adaptations for ITV. A decade on, he says he still misses Hercule very much indeed. “Personally and professionally, he changed my life, and I got to know him better than any other person. And then I had to die as him, which was a very conflicting moment for me. Even as I’m saying it now, I can still feel the emotion of it.”

David Suchet as Poirot

But while David will never play Poirot again, he is reunited with the great man and his “little grey cells” in an autobiographical stage show. Entitled David Suchet: Poirot and More, A Retrospective, it sees David being interviewed about his long and esteemed career, letting audiences into the secrets of how his Poirot came to be, as well as revisiting some of his great theatrical roles.

One of the sections of the show sees David offer a miniShakespearean masterclass, reciting speeches from Shakespeare characters he has played to demonstrate the Bard’s “highway code” of language.

David made his name in the 1970s when he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.

So it is fitting that his tour includes a date at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on March 3.

See rsc.org.uk for tickets.