Tom Courtenay
Tom Courtenay
Sir Thomas Daniel "Tom" Courtenayis an English actor who came to prominence in the early 1960s with a succession of films, including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Billy Liar, and Doctor Zhivago. Since the mid-1960s, he has been known primarily for his work in the theatre, although he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the film adaptation of The Dresser, which he had performed on the West End and on Broadway. He received a knighthood...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth25 February 1937
Take all this thing now about working-class actors and writers: it's simply a release of certain talents from that class.
When I go out on stage I like to be aware that there are a lot of women there. They are generally the loudest laughers.
When you're in a two-shot together, you can't be the same as when you're both in singles. Try as you will, it cannot be the same as when you're in the shot together. It simply cannot be. It's physically impossible. You're behind the camera desperately wanting to help your colleague. When it's just you, on your own, it can be self-conscious in a way that you're not when we're just talking, you and I, and then all of a sudden it's me and then it's you. The two-shots were probably more natural.
My occupation has been a great deal with David Foster Wallace, and he didn't manage it, and he was very much looking for something that isn't totally selfish, and finding meaning. It's a struggle.
I'm not religious. I love what Clive James said the other day. James is a brilliant writer, but he keeps on writing poems on stuff. And he said, "God doesn't have a leg to stand on."
The old actors in the old days, they used to go on tour, to get the play ready for the West End, and to learn their lines. The old timers used to say, "Be very careful, dear boy, what you get in to during the first weeks of a long tour."
This is something particular to actors, especially in plays, and in films, too - but in plays, it's like, don't get involved with anyone in the play.
My now-wife - we got together in '81, we married a few years after - she's been very good in the past about going in the theater with me to see actresses I had known. But then, she's not an actress.
It was still quite late when I got married, 30s, I don't know.
I keep saying that backwards is all you can see. You can't see front. My wife says, "Stop, you're always in the past." She sees me sort of daydreaming.
There just doesn't seem to be a market for something with aspiration anymore.
My emotional investment started when I read the first scene of the actual drama [45 Years]. I can't explain it, there's no logic to it, but the notion of one's youth that somehow comes back but is gone, a man of my age connecting to that timing of life.
The film business is absurd. Stars don't last very long. It's much more interesting to be a proper actor.
I never did anything about my stardom, it never meant anything to me.