Author Archives: simon

Simon Russell Beale took up embroidery, he once told me, because everyone else at the RSC seemed to have a hobby and he thought he’d better get one too. It was a typical Russell Beale thing to do. A Clifton … Continue reading →

“Where’s the car?” said Shirley Bassey. “The car should be here. You shouldn’t have sent it away.” We have to walk from the Langham Hilton in Portland Place to the BBC, which is also in Portland Place. In fact if … Continue reading →

Raid your memories of Ronnie Barker and characters will tumble through your mind as if you were rifling through the picture archive at a casting agent. Butlers, businessmen, blusterers and stammerers, lags and lushes, old farts, young letches, tramps and … Continue reading →

Nick Park has to think how old he is. “I’m thirteeee…..um……eight. Thirty nine soon.” He started making movies when he was “Twelve…….um no…..thirteen.” He says ‘um’ and ‘er’ and ‘kind of’ quite a lot. And for a while when you … Continue reading →

Matt Damon smokes. A lot. And he drinks proper coffee. He’s a movie star but caffeine and Marlboro lights are not very LA. But then Damon isn’t. He is an East Coast boy, born in Cambridge Massachusetts, he studied English … Continue reading →

Mary-Louise Parker rarely gives interviews. And she’s never given one to a British newspaper. You might say ‘well who is she anyway, so who cares’? Well she’s one to watch that’s who she is. Although you shouldn’t conclude from that … Continue reading →

It’s pretty stupid and rather unfair but, when I walked through the door of the dressing room at the Drury Lane Theatre, I expected to see the redhead, the ditsy Hattie Carnegie hat model from New York who became the … Continue reading →

It is a hot, rather drizzly evening in London. And not much more than four years after we first agreed to do this interview, Kenneth Branagh and I finally sit down and talk together. It never seemed like it was … Continue reading →

The huskiness in Judi Dench’s voice makes her sound 16 going on Tallulah Bankhead. And her sentences lurch forward rather in the way of a car with kangaroo petrol. She talks with enthusiasm about everything, frequently getting words wrong or … Continue reading →

You can see why in 1990 Aaron Spelling cast a 21 year old Jason Priestley as a teen idol in the TV soap (sorry, youth-oriented drama series) Beverley Hills 90210. He’s stocky in an athletic kind of way, looks usefully … Continue reading →