LINDSAY RECALLS JOKER OLIVIER

Roberty Lindsay

Friday May 25,2007

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AS the centenary of Laurence Olivier’s birth is remembered this week with due reverence, actor Robert Lindsay has been recalling the lighter, puckish side of the man hailed by many as Britain’s greatest thespian.

Lindsay, 57, worked with him on the acclaimed Granada tv version of King Lear in 1982 – Olivier played the tragic King and Robert took the role of the villainous Edmund – and the pair became friends and even drinking buddies.

Recalls Lindsay: “He took the cast out one night to the Midland Hotel in Manchester and fed us oysters and champagne. We were all sick as dogs the next morning when we got into rehearsals. He was in the make-up room and he said to us: ‘It’s the one thing you have to learn, my dears – how to handle your food and booze the night before the recording.’”

Lindsay says that Olivier, by then 75 and a peer of the realm (he died in 1989), was not averse to playing schoolboyish tricks. “He was a cheeky imp. While I’d be doing my soliloquy as Edmund, he’d be standing behind the Stonehenge set making faces. I thought: ‘That’s Lord Olivier – the greatest actor of the 20th century – pulling faces at me.’”

Three years later, Olivier went to see Lindsay when he starred in the musical Me And My Girl in the West End. Robert says: “He was very frail but he came into my dressing room and we had a couple of whiskies. We had a really good chat about careers and stuff and I suddenly realised how vulnerable all actors are, no matter what status you have reached, because he was still worrying about his next job.”

Lindsay is following in his idol’s foosteps by playing Archie Rice in The Entertainer at the Old Vic and says: “I’ve modelled my career on him as much as I can. He was a true inspiration to a generation of actors. There won’t be another Laurence Olivier. He was a god and I don’t think people believe in gods any more.”

PHONEY,SHAKESPEARE WANNABEE

27.05.07, 7:19pm

Just what would interest Phoney Bliar,he so want's to be OLIVIER he never stops acting and he is such a HAM.
He longs to play Mc Duff,a scotch bloke of course,whilst the human letterbox is definitely Lady McBeth.......or
When shall we three meet again
could she be a witch on the heath,hubble bubble,toil and trouble,Phoneys gone and burst his bubble.hhmmm

• Posted by: rozipoz • Report Comment