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Still acting suspiciously 

BY IMOGEN EDWARDS-JONES 

David Suchet has shrugged off Poirot to play...another detective. He explains why 

David Suchet is playing mother. Immaculately dressed as one would expect from the man who has made Agatha Christie�s natty Belgian detective Hercule Poirot his own, he�s wandering around a BBC meeting room, pouring the tea, serving the biscuits and smiling. �Everyone takes me so seriously,� he grumbles, stirring his cup. �Everybody I know takes me seriously. I�m actually desperate to do some comedy.� 

There is not much chance of that, though, with his latest television role, a gritty policeman in BBC1�s new two-part psychological drama NCS: Manhunt, co-starring Samantha Bond and Kenneth Cranham. 

�I was nervous at first about playing another detective,� says Suchet of his role as an inspector in the National Crime Squad that targets known criminals. �My character is not the most charming figure. He is dark and moody and broody, very acerbic, not the type you�d like to go out and play with. You don�t know much about his private life at all. And the drama is not terribly naturalistic. It�s heightened language, very sparse indeed.� 

Suchet is well aware that some viewers might not accept him as another TV sleuth. �I hope they do,� he says. �Although they certainly know me better as Poirot, I have done a lot of other things on television (including playing Freud, Tom Sharpe�s Blott and Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer) and they see me as a character actor, so I am hoping that they will accept me in this.� 

Followers of 54-year-old Suchet�s theatre career certainly know what a versatile actor he can be. He was the youngest actor to play Shylock professionally � aged 24 at the Chester Gateway � and has since played varied classical roles (Timon, Caliban and Mercutio for the Royal Shakespeare Company) and contemporary parts (George in Who�s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the professor accused of sexual harassment in David Mamet�s Oleanna). 

But it was his role as Mozart�s jealous rival Salieri in Peter Shaffer�s Amadeus that earned him praise both in the West End and on Broadway. �I loved that role,� he enthuses. �It would have been so easy to have turned that character into a black villain. I never saw him as simply bad, but someone who, in spite of himself, had some form of conscience.� 

The production was so successful that Suchet ended up playing the role for nearly two years, including a nine-month tour of the United States. �I found it to be the loneliest role I have ever played in my career,� he confesses. �I came in to the theatre before anyone else to prepare. I never left the stage during the performance. In the interval I had costume changes, and then I was on straight away. By the time I had showered and changed, everyone else had gone home.� He smiles at the memory. 

Would he ever do anything that demanding again? �I�d now say no. Lear has an appeal but at least he has scenes off, where he can have a cup of coffee with someone backstage.� 

The middle son of a Harley Street gynaecologist and obstetrician (his elder brother is ITN newscaster John Suchet), David was actively encouraged by his father not to go into medicine (�John was very bright but I didn�t even try at school�). Instead he won a place in the National Youth Theatre while still at school, moving straight on to study at LAMDA, where he was awarded the best performance award for his graduating year. 

Since then, although he�s yet to match Anthony Hopkins�s Hollywood success despite roles in such big studio films as The Little Drummer Girl and A Perfect Murder, Suchet�s career has run pretty smoothly. It now happily straddles theatre, television, film and radio. 

Later this year he can be seen on TV in two new Poirot stories, in Victoria and Albert as the doctor who acted as matchmaker for the regal couple, as a murderous schoolteacher in Murder in Mind, and as a Victorian tycoon in a BBC1 adaptation of Anthony Trollope�s The Way We Live Now. 

�Success to me is a script on my desk from each of the media,� he says. And has he? �I am waiting for the offer of a film.� Yet along with the comedy parts, another kind of role has also eluded Suchet. �Once, when I was a young man in 1973,� he says, �the person I was understudying went ill and I took over as Orlando in As You Like It. That was my first and very last romantic lead.� 

He laughs. 

It will be interesting to see how viewers react to Suchet�s new TV detective incarnation, Inspector Borne, particularly as his Poirot mantle is being challenged by Alfred Molina in an updated version of Murder on the Orient Express. But Suchet doesn�t seem unduly bothered. 

�I really try to live life day to day. I feel very happy and very relaxed. But I am very aware that there are lots of other performers who haven�t had the opportunities that I have had. So I count myself lucky most days.� 

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