Mike Davies gets into character with David Suchet.
--------
Almost by definition, being a character actor means you should be able to play pretty much any role. However, while one of the British greats, David Suchet confesses that when approached to take part in Roger Donaldson's crime thriller The Bank Job, he just couldn't see himself in the part.
"Roger took me for lunch," recalls Suchet. "And said 'I want you to play this role and I'm not thinking about anyone else. Read the script and ring me'. I went home, read it and said to my wife, 'I have no idea how to play this man'. So I told him I didn't know how I was going to do it. And he said 'that's why I want you. You're a character actor and you always find a way into the truth of the person you play. I don't want to typecast the role, I want you to become it.'"
The role in question is Le Vogel, a nasty piece of work who, while based on a still active Soho figure once dubbed the king of porn, is also an amalgam of several dodgy names from the 50s and 60s, notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman among them.
As scripted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, Vogel is a shadowy villain involved in several shady enterprises. In total ruthless control, with numerous corrupt police in his pocket, he's frightened of nothing. Not until he realises that, among the loot taken from safety deposit boxes during a bank robbery is a ledger recording all the payoffs he's made.
This much is fiction. The facts, as speculation has them, are that the vault also held photos taken by Black radical and full time criminal Michael X of a certain Royal's sexual indiscretions on the Caribbean island of Mustique. Photos he was using as blackmail to keep the police off his back.
That they were stolen during the heist was no accident. As the film sees it, the gang believed they were just pulling off a surprisingly easy robbery, unaware they'd been set up by MI5.
The target was the Baker Street branch of Lloyds. Ironically, it transpires Suchet knew it well.
"Until I was eight we lived in a flat almost opposite the corner where the bank was. So when we got to the set they'd built at Pinewood it was a very strange experience to be taken back to when I was a boy."
Suchet was 25 when news of the robbery broke on Monday Sept 13, 1971.
"I was playing at the Birmingham Rep at the time and I remember they called it the Walkie Talkie Robbery (the gang's communications were picked up by a radio ham) and that the headlines said More Money Stolen Than In The Great Train Robbery. It was front page news, then, three days later, it disappeared from the papers entirely."
The popular wisdom is that the government slapped a D-Notice on the story to bury the truth, the screenplay's conspiracy also embracing the 70s police corruption scandal, Cynthia Payne and the Profumo/Mandy Rice-Davies/Christine Keeler affair of the mid-60s.
Quite where truth and dramatic invention divide is open to conjecture, but Suchet subscribes to the film's interpretation.
"I wouldn't for a moment doubt these things go on," he says. " We're not allowed to mention names, but from the fact it's Lord Mountbatten who picks up the stolen photos you'll know who (the Royal) is. We think we're a democracy but we're very often pawns in the game of politics. Everybody here is guilty of something, but the most innocent of the guilty are the robbers!"
Although he plays the bad guy here and a wife murderer in the upcoming Act of God, the self-confessed Birmingham devotee ("one of my favourite cities, a wonderful place") is, of course, best known for being on the right side of the law in the role he's made his own; Hercule Poirot.
Although no fan of TV detective series himself, preferring nature programmes, Agatha Christie's daughter, Rosamund Hicks, told him his was the only portrayal of which her mother would have approved.
"But I had to fight in some of the early ones, because they wanted to be more comedic," he reveals. "The costumes were ridiculous. I told them that if they wanted me for the role, then by nature of the actor I am I'd want to play it as Christie wrote."
And yet, despite being one of televisions most beloved characters, Suchet admits that, although due to shoot two more episodes in April, it's by no means certain the remaining eight will get made.
"It's now my life's dream to leave behind the complete works because it would be a TV history first. But I have no confirmation that they'll complete the series."
Among the Poirots yet to be Sucheted is, of course, the big one; Murder On The Orient Express. But, that's in more doubt than any.
"There's some debate as to whether, how, or when we can do it," he says. "I certainly don't have a contract. Alfred Molina did a modern version (in 1971), complete with computers. Irrespective of that not being successful, the difficulty is that the rights were then tied up for several years and no one is allowed to make another version until they run out. And I don't think that's until 2009."
But, even if the unthinkable happens, there will still be at least two more Poirots to look forward to. After 57 episodes, it must be like slipping on a glove. Apparently not.
"I wish I could just turn up and pick up where I left off, " he sighs, "But I can't do it. It always surprises me because I think I'll just put on the suit and I'll be there. But he's such a strange little man with his quirks, accent and walks that I can never find him again and I have to go through hours of viewing the character every time I come back to him."
Meanwhile, we have his chilling performance in The Bank Job to relish. But with plans for a film version of Man And Boy, the Rattigan play in which he recently starred, having foundered with the collapse of financing, 61 year-old Suchet believes his already rare movie outings may be drawing to a close.
"Part of me wishes I'd done more films because I love the medium and I wish my character range could be seen on the big screen, " he says wistfully. "But my days may be numbered because now it's very much about being a personality player, which I've never done. I've never known how to play me, only other people. Character acting has become less desirable because cinema audiences are now used to the characters reflecting who the actors really are. I'm not in vogue with what Hollywood wants.
Maybe The Bank Job will change that. I'd like it to."
