An actor’s strange meeting

When David Harewood was 22, he met Shakespeare – or so he believed, says Nick Mcgrath in the Daily Mirror. The actor, 52, who has since found fame in Homeland and The Night Manager, had suffered a series of manic episodes and was lying in a hospital bed, having been sectioned. “I heard somebody talking Shakespeare, and even in my drug-addled brain, I thought, ‘I recognise that.’ I sat up and looked for him, and he was wandering around the ward. I remember drifting off to sleep thinking, ‘Everything’s OK.’” Eight months later he was back at work, and 30 years on he sees his experience of mental illness as a positive, “almost a badge of honour. I mean, how many people have a breakdown and go on to play the head of the CIA? A mental health problem is not a death sentence. You can bounce back.” Béatrice Dalle is drawn to dangerous liaisons – just like the woman she played in Betty Blue, the 1986 film that made her famous, says Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian. Her first husband was a painter who attempted suicide soon after they split up; her second was a rapist she met while filming in a prison; she had an affair with the rapper Joeystarr, a man so short-fused he once punched a monkey on TV. She is also said to have seduced Rupert Everett in the 1980s. Can this be true? “Bah ouais,” Dalle, 53, drawls. “Rupert is gay, but I am… “she pauses for effect... ”Béatrice Dalle. I’ve never thought I’m beautiful, but I have a power of attraction.” They are still friends. He “respects people”, and of course, he has an English accent, a trait she finds irresistible, in dandies, punks and even princes. “Ever since I was a little girl I loved Prince Charles and detested Princess Diana.” She herself is no princess. A lifelong rebel, she ran away from home at 14, and was living on the margins in Paris until she was cast in Betty Blue, aged 21. Later, a Hollywood career beckoned – but she’d recently been convicted of possessing heroin. She slapped an embassy official who challenged her about it and was denied a visa. For her, even her faith – she is a practising Catholic – is a bit rock ’n’ roll. “I love Christ because he invented bondage,” she says, laughing shamelessly. “He’s very sexy, no?”