Website migrated.

Take a look: David-Suchet.ru!

 d-suchet.narod.ru

David Suchet (known to millions as TV's 'Hercule Poirot')

By Phil Penfold

Poirot is back. And no-one could be happier than David Suchet.

The much-loved British actor stars in two films based on two of Agatha Christie's most famous novels, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Lord Edgware Dies, which will arrive on screens as a pair of two-hour specials. The productions team David with his original team, Philip Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp, Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings, and Pauline Moran as Miss Lemon.

"When I was told that they'd decided after all that time that they wanted to bring him back, I couldn't have been more delighted" reveals David. "But there was a lot of revision work to do - it's quite some time since I put on all that padding, and donned the little moustache. I said 'Get it going, and I'm with you all the way'. There was a complete misquote in the papers a while ago, saying that I never wanted to play him again, and that's nonsense. I love the little man.

"When I was first asked to play Hercule Poirot ten years and more ago, I did a vast amount of research. I read all the books and the short stories, for a start, and I also watched how other people had portrayed him on screen. In some of the productions, I'm sorry to say, he appeared as something of a buffoon, a clownish character who was little more than one-dimensional. A bit of a Music-Hall joke.

"But then, on reading the books, you find that Miss Christie described him rather well. Or other characters in her books did - 'a dear little man', 'a clever little man', 'an odd little man'. And so I was able to build on his eccentricities, and I found that he was endearingly funny - vain, too, but he's not just a silly voice and a silly moustache - d'you know that there are no less than twenty-four descriptions of that alone? He thinks of his moustache as 'the perfect thing of beauty', and believe me, it took some selecting to make it look right on my face!

"It wasn't exactly a line-up, and me saying 'I pick that one!', but it had to sit properly, and Poirot always had it perfectly symmetrical.

"So when these two new productions came up, I went back to the earlier ones we'd made, six series in all, of forty-seven of the stories, and saw where I'd got to. I'd already got the glove earlier, all I wanted to do was make it fit flexibly again. But it did in fact take rather more time to 'find' him over again than I anticipated. And, maybe, this time round, he's maybe a little bit darker than before."

And the padding? David sighs: "Well, after five years, you'd have thought that they'd have developed something a little bit newer than several layers of cloth, wouldn't you? But no. We still haven't moved on. It's exactly the same suit. But, it worked, and the shape is right. It's not that bad, truth to tell, but I'm lucky that I don't get claustrophobic, because I can only feel my arms and legs when it's on. If someone comes and taps me on my shoulder without speaking to me, I can't feel a thing, it's so thick.

"I'm a 34" waist, and Poirot is about a 43", and he must be at least sixteen or seventeen stones, and no way am I going to do a Robert de Niro, and put that weight on my own frame. I once actually did do something like that, in a film called Sunday, and I played a New Yorker who was supposed to weight 27 stones. I just ate and ate and ate - everything that I shouldn't have done. I find it very easy to pile it on - but God, it was the best part of a year in getting it all off again, and it was agony. Never again!

"The face thing is a bit different, because I've got no neck anyway, and with a wing collar on, it sort of pushes your face up, and you just look a bit over-plump. The great comfort is that I once went to lunch with Ms. Christie's daughter Rosalind and her husband Anthony Hicks, and she revealed that she never thought that Dame Agatha had never thought that any previous Poirot was right, that most of them had all been too jokey. But that Mrs. Hicks thought that she would have approved wholeheartedly of what I do. The whole point is to serve Agatha Christie, and to get it right. And Mr. Hicks, bless him, gave me another vital clue. He said 'Never forget, we can laugh with Poirot, but never at him', and I think that's so true"

There are twenty-five more titles in Christie's prolific output on Poirot which David and his producer Brian Eastman would like to bring to the screen, in order to complete the canon. David muses: "The last story, Curtains, is different from all the rest, and I'd love to do that eventually. He's in retirement, as thin as a rake, and he's crippled with arthritis - Dame Agatha REALLY wanted to kill off her creation, but her publishers wouldn't allow her to bring out the book until after her own death. And when he was killed off, the event made the front page of the New York Times - now you tell me which other fictional character has ever achieved that? Remarkable, isn't it! It IS somewhat daunting to know that you are creating, in the flesh, one of literature's most popular characters......... I've filmed all over the world, and you know, if you go into a bookshop, whether it is in Tunisia, Morocco, The Far East or where-ever, there's a Poirot mystery on the shelf somewhere.

"I'm not so sure of the Poirot stories being a 'Christmas event', because then you're placed up against so many other things in the schedules, a lot of other 'potboilers' but yes, he certainly does suit a winter night's television. The last series bowed out on ten and a half million viewers, and I'm certainly not ashamed or embarrassed about figures like those!

"If all goes to plan, I'll be filming that one in about another six years! I don't, I think, look any older that when we finished the last lot, so time will tell if I'm any different then!".

David observes: "I like him, because there's something odd and quirky about the man. He's right in the middle of a murder investigation, and he'll stop and comb his moustache. Then the next moment he's being nice to a serving girl, and rather pointed to the 'upper classes'. I wonder if Dame Agatha actually liked them very much? I always carry around a list of ninety-three things to remember about him. As mundane as how many lumps of sugar he puts in his tea, and how many in his coffee. Because, you know, people WILL notice these things if you make a mistake. And they do write in about my accuracy. One of the nicest descriptions of him is that 'his eyes twinkle' and I've had some lovely fan mail in from some ladies who love him purely because of that. I wanted him to have.....charm. 

"Actually, when I was a lot younger, he was never my type of reading. Detective fiction in general wasn't. I read about two of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Conan Doyle, and I enjoyed them, but that was that. I far rather prefer reading biography - and I have actually played some real-life characters, like Sigmund Freud and Edward Teller".

And the composer Salieri, is the awards-laden and much-acclaimed National Theatre revival of Amadeus. "Waiting five years to re-create Poirot is nothing " says David. "I've waited twenty years to play Salieri, Mozart's rival and nemesis, and I also waited ten years to appear in David Mamet's Oleanna. I think it was twenty-five years before they let me have a crack at George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. All comes to he who waits!".

Not that David sits around twiddling his thumbs. As one of THE in demand actors of his generation, he's been in Spain filming Sabotage, opposite Stephen Fry (early autumn) which is all about Wellington and Napoleon. "Guess which one I play? It was always one of my dreams to play Boney - a Corsican who ended up Emperor. And no slouch when it came to artillery. But this is a very humorous script, and so none of my usual background research was needed at all! While I was there I was carefully going over my lines for Amadeus, which opens in Los Angeles for a short season before going to Broadway for Christmas and New year. I'll be in New York for the Millennium, and I'm contracted to the play until July next year.......so if anyone sees me wandering around London in February, we'll have had some dreadful notices and something will have gone horribly wrong!..

"I love playing Salieri, even though it is physically exhausting, because he is the ultimate villain, but also a man for whom you can feel sympathy. He's driven by jealousy and envy, and he needs to be understood. You can give sympathy to someone unpleasant you know - but you don't have to give them approval - which is what makes him fascinating.

"I'm hardly ever off-stage in that role, so on matinees, that's six hours in total, so I have to go to the gym a lot to keep in shape, and doing eight performances a week really means that there is little time for anything else. I actually like to keep fit, but I believe I owe it to myself - as an actor, my body, my voice and my mind are all that I have to offer. So, if one of those goes.......

"I believe that they've given us a matinee on Millennium eve, and another on January 1, so there won't be any heavy partying for Sheila (his wife) and myself. Back to the hotel, a modest celebration, and bed! And no, the children (Robert, 18, and Katherine, 16) won't be celebrating with us. They plan to come for Christmas and to fly back to be with their friends for the big night - the availability of return flights at that time was a total nightmare.

"Katherine is a very good dancer, and is wondering if that's the career she should take up, while Robert is rather keen on a career in the Royal marines. Well, I shocked my father, rather, when I told him that I wanted to become an actor - he was a Harley Street specialist, and always wore pin-stripe tail suits. Very grand. And it wasn't until he saw me in my first season at Stratford, with the RSC, when I took over two leading roles at a moment's notice when the leading man was taken ill, that he understood what it was all about and what my ambitions were. Perfectly understandable. For me, it was the biggest stroke of luck ever - taking over as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, and then as Orlando in As You Like It, for Bernard Lloyd, who I replaced, not so good. I started off understudying and had dressing room 12, and I ended up in the lead in dressing room 1A, and I never went back to 12 all season".

David laughs: "I've told the children 'Just do what makes you happy, and something that doesn't do any harm'. And Robert wants to become a Marine! So, in a sense, he's doing what I did to my dad, in turn. But I mean it, genuinely. As long as they get fulfilment out of their careers, that's what ultimately matters."

Having a movie-star (a term that David rejects completely, "Am I a star? I don't think so. I'm always surprised if people recognise me. I am a character actor, if anything" he says) dad means that the children have been able to accompany him all over the world on location. "Having a 'normal' life is impossible in this business, as far as family is concerned", he says. "The one thing that I'm sorry about is that I've never, as a dad, been able to offer the type of family holidays that other people have. But on the other hand, if I've had twenty weeks of filming in, say, Tunisia, I've been able to say 'come out and join me'. They had THE most wonderful time once in Los Angeles - and they must be the most-travelled children I know!".

But the star of hit Hollywood films like A Perfect Murder, Deadly Voyage and Executive Decision ("there is nothing like the feeling when you drive through those studio gates and realise what a tradition you're carrying on. Let's face it, Americans are best at making films, that's what they DO!") Also admits that he can come down to earth with a bump.

"Oh, yes, I've made a few wrong decisions, played in a few things that I'm not so happy with. I was in an earlier version of Lord Edgware Dies (it was called Thirteen for Dinner in the USA), with dear Peter Ustinov, and it was one of the worst performances I've ever given in my life. I didn't know what to do, I was playing his sidekick playing Japp, so all I did was eat - whenever I'm in a scene, there I am, munching away! I cringe when I watch it, with the silly hat and the suede jacket, I look like a bookie.

"Oh, and there was a thing on television the other night called Iron Eagle, a film I was in. Playing an Arab Villain? Have you ever seen it? Count yourself lucky if you've missed it. The children sat watching it and ribbed me mercilessly. It was most humiliating......but you've got to learn to laugh at yourself, haven't you?".

And, after July, 2000, what next? "I shall definitely be taking a whole month off to rest and recuperate" says David, taking another sip of his tea. "Yes, I know! Famous last words!".

[Back]