I get too much respect for being a thesp
Stage supremo-cum-film star Mark Rylance tells Tim Auld about his new play, working with Spielberg, and his spat with the RSC
It’s been a busy year and a half for Mark Rylance. Aficionados of theatre have known for decades that he is one of the great actors and directors, but it has taken longer for television and cinema audiences to wake up to his talents.
That all changed with the Bafta he won for his portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall on the BBC, followed by an Oscar for his performance in Steven Spielberg’s
Bridge of Spies, not to mention pan-generational adulation for his turn in the film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s
The BFG – again directed by Spielberg. There are more Spielberg films in the pipeline – Ready Player One, set in a dystopian future, and The Kidnapping
of Edgardo Mortara, in which he plays Pope Pius IX; meanwhile, Christopher Nolan has cast him in his war epic, Dunkirk.
He has become, as he acknowledges, “a celebrity”. But despite Hollywood coming to call, he’s found time to work in theatre, appearing last year in his wife Claire van Kampen’s play,
Farinelli and the King. This will transfer to Broadway next year, but meantime he’s appearing in the West End in the British premiere of his own play, Nice Fish (directed by his wife).
Do Hollywood producers find it strange that he still wants to work on stage? “I remember my son-in-law [the actor and director Christian Camargo] worked with Harrison Ford,” he says, “and Ford said at one point, ‘Oh, theatre’s for poor actors.’ But actually, I feel sometimes there’s a heightened
respect for stage actors that is more than we deserve, really. I think for people who have only done film it seems a little frightening to them. So I don’t think that there’s so much of that attitude of ‘Why’s he going back to theatre, now that he’s been offered lots of films and won the award?’ I think it’s more that I get too much respect for being a theatre actor.”
My interview with Rylance takes place in two parts: first over the phone and later in person, in a cold, rather soulless room in south London above the studio in which he is rehearsing Nice Fish.
The 56-year-old emerges from the rehearsal wearing a woolly ice hockey hat, a quilted cagoule and fleecy hiking boots, and remains firmly tucked up in them while we speak. You might describe Nice Fish as
Waiting for Godot on ice. It tells the story of two old school friends, Ron (Rylance) and Erik (Jim Lichtscheidl), who meet up after many years to go ice-fishing on a frozen lake in Minnesota. Erik is the serious fisherman; Ron is just along for the ride, a rather hapless, but engaging fool, looking to kill some time. Rylance – who was born in Kent, but grew up in Connecticut and then Wisconsin – was inspired to write the play by the prose poetry of the American writer Louis Jenkins. The subjects of Jenkins’s absurdist, earthy writing range from the joys of baloney sandwiches to sea lions, and the meaning of life.
But, for all the play’s whimsy, there is a darkness there, too. “There’s the theme of ice melting [at the end of winter], and I guess that has a certain resonance with me at the moment, with so much ice melting around the world – us being on the verge of falling through into something much more unusual, unprecedented. That’s never talked about in the play, but there’s a connection there.”
Last month, Rylance spoke out in the strongest terms against BP’s sponsorship of the RSC, saying that he would not work for the theatre company while it took money from the oil giant. “It’s not philanthropic of BP, it’s a calculated advertising ploy to represent themselves as a respectable, society-loving organisation, which I don’t believe they are,” he said.
Was he inspired to take a stance by the subject of his play? “No,” he insists, “the play is no polemic about global warming. I’ve had two very good letters from people who worked with BP, angry about what I’m saying and saying I don’t realise how much good stuff BP is doing. So that’s been helpful for me and I absolutely recognise I don’t know everything.
“Both letters have said it’s not reasonable to imagine we can move away from oil and gas. Well, I mean, it may not be reasonable at the moment, but that’s like saying it’s not reasonable that we move away from horses. We do move away from things…”
You and I fly, we go in cars, I say. It’s difficult not to be hypocritical.
“Yes, exactly, that’s the trouble with speaking out,” he says (though, to be fair, he’s trying: he drives an electric car and has solar panels on the roof of his house).
He has said that the RSC actors are being used to “whitewash and protect a company”. I put it to him that it may be fine professionally for him to take such a stance, but what about young actors getting their first break with the RSC?
His brow furrows. “Exactly. Exactly. And that’s offensive and I understand that. They’re not in that place, but I’m also not in their place any more. I’m in a leadership place in my particular craft and I think there is an ethical stand. I don’t think the RSC would take money, say, from drug dealers or people abusing children.”
Can we equate those with what BP is doing?
“That’s the question. That’s the question,” he says. “But there is a line.”
If we won’t be seeing Rylance acting with the RSC any time soon, he is keen to do more Shakespeare – though not, he says, at the moment. “I think that’s a few years away. I certainly would like to return to the Globe, which is the only place I’d really like to do Shakespeare. When I left the Globe, having spent 30 or 40 years doing Shakespeare, I thought I’d just really do it every five years. So I’m not quite ready for it again yet.”
From where we are sitting, we can almost glimpse the roof of the Globe. If we turn our heads to the right we can see Tower Bridge, where Nick Hytner, former director of the National Theatre, is planning to open a new theatre. Has he approached Rylance about working with him?
“I have no relationship with Nick Hytner,” says Rylance, his voice a degree colder than usual. “I respect him. Anyone who runs the National Theatre, I have great respect for, but he never invited me, during his time there. I took certain ideas to him; he didn’t want them. No, I don’t have a connection with his theatre.”
As to working with his wife, they’ve collaborated many times over their careers. Who now wins when it comes to creative decisions?
“Nowadays, she wins,” he laughs. “I’d say it’s been a gradual change over the years: the best way we’d describe it would be to say that she’s the master chef and I’m the sous-chef.”
And what about his relationship with Spielberg – has he been happy to play sous-chef to him, too?
“Yes,” he says. “Film directors need to be very ordered and deliver things on time and on budget. So what they can’t indulge themselves in is chaos. I think they like people who are able to bring chaos to them, as much as the formal gardener is very appreciative of compost.”
So Spielberg’s the policeman and you’re the criminal?
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” he decides firmly. “I’m the compost
and he’s the gardener.”
‘I’m in a leadership place in my craft and I think there is an ethical stand’