by Angela Levin
Daily Mail
1995
Derek Jacobi was contentedly waiting in the wings, about to
start Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy.
Suddenly he was caught in a mind-gripping panic.
"Although
I'd done the play about 376 times, the thought flashed through my head that I
might forget the words," he remembers,
"Then, to
my horror, my mind when blank and I started to sweat until I was wet through.
Although I didn't know what was coming next, I forced my mouth to open,
and somehow the words came out as thought they were on automatic pilot."
This incident,
which occurred in Sydney Australia in 1980, was the start of what he now sees as
a nervous breakdown. It took him
more than four years to recover, and the recollection is still so painful that
he regularly covers his face with his hands as he speaks.
Jacobi is not a
man who regularly pours his heart out. He
wants to be judged for his acting rather than himself; he is shy, self-effacing,
and reticent. "I'm personally
as dull as ditchwater," but he draws the line at being called bland.
"I can be very rude, and I'm told a look comes into my eye when I'm
bored. I have a very low boredom threshold, which is one reason I don't like
socializing."
Sir Derek (he
was knighted in 1994) is an actor very much admired (especially by his peers)
for his stage performances in Hamlet, Cyrano and Richard II, and his
award-winning 1976 portrayal of the Roman emperor Claudius, whom he presented as
a stammering tyrant. More recently,
he has portrayed Cadfael, the medieval monk detective, on television.
His performances
have passion, intensity and perception. Off-stage, however, all the passion
seems to be spent. "I'm rather placid, tend to avoid confrontation, and
don't go out of my way to make people either love or loathe me."
He has avoided
personal commitment and lives alone. "I
have close friendships, but never an exclusive relationship with anyone, nor do
let myself be hurt. I enjoy my own
company, and am never lonely." He did, however, tell me with the
coyest of smiles, that he "apparently" has some sex appeal.
"I don't see myself as a sexy man, but I seem to inspire a sort of
devotion in unattached ladies." Several
have formed themselves into a group and follow him around the country, watching
him perform the same role over and over again.
Real life, it seems, is a source of material for
the characters he plays, and he admits to storing up his feelings to use
professionally. Life without acting
is unthinkable. "I need to act
as much as I need to breathe."
His breakdown threw his whole existence into
doubt. "I had never questioned
my ability or desire to act before, but the panic caused a horrific worm of
doubt in my brain. One I started to ask "how" and "why" I
stopped being able to do it at all."
"After that
first time in Hamlet, the panic began to grip me more and more.
When I was on stage, I became so giddy that my toes felt like talons,
gripping the stage to stop me from falling over.
It wasn't the sort of fear I could use for my performance.
It was a gut-wrenching terror."
He decided to
quit the theatre, his first love, and concentrate on film and television.
"I thought it might be easier.
If you make a mistake, you can do it again."
In practice, it was only marginally better. "I felt I had a
permanent concrete yoke around my shoulders."
The panic
attacks gradually enveloped his whole life, until he became terrified even when
crossing the street. Looking back,
he sees it as part of a mid-life crisis. "I
was 41 and perhaps had repressed too much inside me."
His doctor gave him some little blue pills, but true to his innate sense
of privacy, he refused therapy.
He did, however,
talk to other actors, who proved to be a great source of comfort.
"I remembered Laurence Olivier going through a bout of terrible
stage fright when we were both in Merchant of Venice.
At one point, I had to scream and shout at him and he took me to one side
and requested that I didn't look him in the eye when I did so, but focus instead
on his forehead or his chin. He was
feeling so terrified, he said, he wouldn’t have been able to respond."
Jacobi avoided
the theatre for two years. In 1982,
however, he was invited to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford to
play several leading roles. "It
was something I had longed to do. I
realized that if I didn't accept their fantastic offer, I never go on stage
again, and my life would be ruined. I
had to face it."
"The first
play was Much Ado About Nothing. Somehow
I got through it and gradually the panic wore off.
It was four years, however, before I'd felt I'd got the worm out of my
head." It has never come back
to the same degree, although he admits he still gets "tiny twinges"
when he works.
There has been a
more permanent effect on his personality. "I'm more timid and vulnerable
and get very flustered…I'm a permanent worrier and immediately panic and come
out in a hot sweat when something unexpected happens."
He smiles. "I'm very
uncool."
Sir Derek,
57, has a refined and remarkably unlined face which gives no obvious clues to
his character- and which can be the perfect blank canvas for his emotions.
He has wanted to act as far back as he can
remember. Born in the East End of London in October 1938, he was an only child.
His father Alfred worked as a tobacconist's, his mother Daisy in a
greengrocer's shop. Because of the
war, Derek hardly knew either parent for the first five years of his life.
"My father
was away fighting. My only
connections with him were little Bakelight planes he sent home. I cannot
remember how I reacted when he returned, but he said I accepted him
immediately.."
Derek was
evacuated to a small village near Bletchley, Bucks, where he was looked after by
an aunt. His mother continued to
work in London, visiting him when she could.
His interesting in acting was nurtured by a
sympathetic master at Leyton County High School.
By the age of 18, he was playing Hamlet in a schools production at the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He won a
scholarship to Cambridge, where he studied History and Drama alongside Trevor
Nunn, Corin Redgrave, and Ian McKellan.
Laurence Olivier
saw him playing Henry VIII on television in 1963 and adopted him as his protégé.
They worked together a great deal.
In turn, Jacobi inspired the schoolboy Kenneth
Branagh. "He apparently saw my performance of Hamlet and decided he wanted
to act." Years later Branagh
asked Jacobi to direct him when he first played the role, and Branagh has cast
Jacobi in his own productions, including the film Dead Again.
They will be working together again in January,
when Jacobi plays Claudius in Branagh's film of Hamlet.
"I adore Branagh," he says enthusiastically, pushing
sensitively shaped fingers through his peach-colored hair.
"He is feeling fine now (after splitting with Emma Thompson) and is
into the film. I love his energy
and his ability to lead from the front."
Jacobi is
branching out, too, and earlier this year became the artistic director of the
Chichester Festival Theatre. "I
love the challenge of directing, but of course I love acting more."
He has just
finished staring in "Playing the Wife", based on August Strindberg's
biography at the Richmond Theatre, and is preparing to film Hugh Whitemore's
Braking The Code, in which he starred in the West End in 1986.
It is about the homosexual mathematical genius
Alan Turing, who broke the German's Enigma Code, and thereby enabled the Allies
and Britain to win World War II.
Sir Derek needs to keep busy.
"I'm a workaholic, and when I'm not
actually working, I'm thinking about work.
The minute that I stop, I worry that I'll never work again. "
Is this a residual of his breakdown?
"Although I feel that what happened to me
has made me a better actor, I constantly worry that I have lost my touch, that
someone is going to find me out and that it has all been a fluke somehow."
"Acting has both caused and cured my breakdown.
It's always given me the fire in my belly."