WHAT I’VE LEARNED

Actor, film-maker, 68

Christopher Guest on comedy, art, acting — and Stonehenge!

Whether it’s film-makers or thimble-makers, the personalities are the same — the same dynamics, aspirations, the same emotional investment.

Success doesn’t always come the way you expect it. After This is Spinal Tap [1984], we were doing interviews and this journalist looked terribly confused. He said, “Excuse me, I don’t know what’s going on. But you’re not the people in the film. They were English rock musicians.” I’ll take it.

You have to trust your intuition. I can’t audition new cast members, because there’s no script to read from. So we just talk for 15 minutes and at the end I make a decision. In the last 25 years, there’s only been one person who hasn’t been able to do what’s needed.

I like obscure things. I tie fishing flies. I play and collect arcane musical instruments. I’m just not very mainstream.

I’ve played at Wembley and the Royal Albert Hall, and it’s the same feeling as a much smaller place, actually. It feels very cosy and nourishing to be playing and hearing music. And it’s absolutely pure.

As an actor, improvising is like playing music. You play in the same key, you have to establish a melody before you go off and come back. It’s not something that can be explained or taught, either. Which is fine, because nobody responds to a piece of art because it’s acrylic instead of oil. Once you disassemble something, you ruin it.

I’ll spend two or three years wandering in the wilderness — literally, up in the mountains — before I start another project.

It probably sounds suspicious but ambition has played zero part in my life. In New York, people said, “Don’t leave town, this is when they do the casting.” But if I wanted to go backpacking, or skiing, I just went.

A friend of mine did a film that got bad notices and he plummeted. I haven’t read reviews since 1986. And I feel freed by it. I just do what I do, and it doesn’t really influence me if someone likes it or not.

If you can’t decide between insurance and jazz guitar, then you’re probably going into insurance — because if you want to be a musician, you’ll be one.

When my daughter was learning to drive, she said, “I already know how to drive.” When you’re 17, you think you know everything. But you don’t.

As I’ve gotten older, I have shrunk my expectations in terms of what I can influence. I cultivate my garden, as Voltaire said. People who try to fix the world are going to be disappointed.

The only truly positive thing out there is art. Because artists might be pretentious, some of them, but they’re never trying to hurt people.

I have experiences but I don’t know about wisdom. It implies elitism. I recently worked with an actor who was as talented a person as I’ve met in my life. And I felt as if he was my hero, even though I’m old enough to be his dad. That’s a far healthier way to look at it.

Comedy analysis is really a slappable offence. Five slaps, I think. If someone talks about comedy without any trepidation, there’s something wrong with them.

There’s no mysticism. I don’t pray. I believe in the natural laws of the world. And we should treat people and the world well. Bear in mind I’ve stood there at sunset touching the rocks of Stonehenge. It was a lovely evening, but I didn’t feel any great vibration.

I’m the Right Honourable Lord Christopher Haden-Guest, Fifth Baron of Saling in the county of Essex. Being in the House of Lords is as interesting as it is absurd. It’s like being in a movie from another time.

This will make me sound like a curmudgeon, but there’s a lot to see in the world that isn’t happening on a screen. People sit in the front row of the Wimbledon finals while Federer is serving for the match, and they’re texting. If it was up to me, I’d kick them out.

‘There’s no mysticism. I’ve stood there at sunset touching the rocks of Stonehenge. It was a lovely

evening but I didn’t feel any great vibration’

I’ve been a football fan all my life — Manchester United, since you ask — and I know this much: England will never win. They can’t possibly. Just look at the history.

I watched TV till I was 12 years old and then I never watched it again until a few years ago. So I’ve missed every famous show. Cheers, M*A*S*H, The Sopranos, all of them.

I think the internet has lowered the bar on so many things. For Best in Show [2000], one of these internet journalists came to the interview in a dog suit. So, of course, the interview was about him, not me. And he said, “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” I said, “That’s the end of the interview.” I’m the kind of animal that walks out of interviews.

I wake up at 6am every day, I read The Independent, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Salon. But never television news. I gave up on CNN in the Eighties.

I’ve won awards and lost awards. And it is more fun to win than not win. But in the end, I would chuck it all. It’s not important.

My youth was insane. I bounced around doing different things. But I would never say to anyone, that’s what you should do.

It all started with Beyond The Fringe [1960–’66]. My family were friends with Jonathan Miller and he came to stay with us in New York. You could make the argument that it led to Monty Python. Smart people doing smart comedy, but also being very silly.

Mascots premieres on Netflix on 13 October

Christopher Guest, photographed for Esquire in Los Angeles, July 2016