Just Williams

‘My wife reads in the lines off-camera; her sinister butler, Mafia boss and elderly elephant are impressive’

Simon on the horror of the audition

AS AN ACTOR in the old days, if you wanted a part, you had to go to the West End in your suit and do an audition.

In the waiting room you’d see all your friends up for the same part – shoes polished, hair greased. Under their breath they’d all be muttering the lines – like a prayer meeting. When your name was called you walked on to the stage: in the darkness of the empty auditorium, there’d be two sepulchral figures with clipboards. Their vocabulary was limited: ‘Next...’ and ‘We’ll let you know’. At one audition, the wacky director asked an actor to improvise the most frightening thing he could imagine. After a pause the actor announced, ‘The play opens in two weeks.’

On one occasion I met an old friend who was leaving the audition as I arrived – we were up for the same part. ‘Any tips?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he confided, ‘They want the character played with a lisp.’ ‘A lisp? Right. Thanks, mate.’ I quickly recalibrated my reading of the part. Halfway through my lisping audition I saw from the astonished look on the face of the director that I’d been stitched up like a kipper. Thanks, mate.

With modern technology, actors don’t have to leave home to audition – the producers email the script, you selftape the scenes on your mobile phone and press ‘send’. My poor brain is chock-a-block with 50 years’ worth of random dialogue and theatrical anecdotes, so I cheat and pin my lines up on the lampshade nearby. Then I balance my mobile phone on a pile of books and press record. Sometimes I put on a hat or a cravat to show how versatile I am.

If needs be, my wife helps out, reading in the lines off-camera; her sinister butler, her Mafia boss and her elderly elephant have all been impressive. When she offers a tip about my performance, I take it like a man – with gritted teeth.

Producers have always hated actors. We are a necessary evil – the baking soda in their cake. Alfred Hitchcock summed up their attitude, ‘I never said all actors are cattle – what I said was, all actors should be treated like cattle.’ Producers are terrified actors will be late or drunk or get first dibs on the co-star. In the old days, after an audition they would call to say you were lovely, darling, but we’re looking for someone younger, shorter... cheaper. Today, not a dicky bird. What really swings a job your way is the number of online groupies you have. I’ve got 17 – so George Clooney is safe for the moment.

When a hapless American producer was interviewing Judi Dench, he made the mistake of asking her what she’d done. ‘Done?’ she replied sweetly, ‘You mean this morning?’

Simon plays Justin Elliott in The Archers