| From the Radio Times- June, 2003: City Dweller By Rupert Smith Fresh out of rehab and bouncing back into the operating theatre this week is consultant cardiothoratic surgeon Tom Campbell-Gore, played by Denis Lawson. "I had five weeks off, which I needed to recover from my first six months on Holby City," says Lawson. "It can be a bit of a strain. You're working with two different film units, shooting four hours' worth of episodes at a time, and it's pretty relentless." Unusually for the hyper-energetic Lawson, he spent his furlough quietlyreading and researching; he's developed a profitable sideline as a writer and director, and devotes his precious downtime to that. Last year saw the first screening on Channel 4 of Solid Geometry, a short film Lawson directed and co-wrote with Ian McEwan, starring Ewan McGregor-who just happens to be Lawson's nephew. It's an oblique, puzzling tale of madness and (possibly) time travel-and has obviously whetted Lawson's appetite for more. "I want to make a feature film now, and I've got a very strong idea for a TV series that I can't tell you about at the moment. I want to direct in the theatre, too. But as long as I'm doing Holby City, the most I can do is read and develop ideas. I can't even sit down and write, the shooting schedule is far too disruptive." It seems likely that Lawson won't be a permanent fixture in Holby City: as well as acting, directing and writing, he's a major jazz fan (he recently presented Radio 3's Jazz Album of the Year Award) and spends a good deal of his time in clubs. If he's going to realize his various ambitions, he'll have to take more than five weeks off from the day job-although he's understandably guarded about his future with the show. "Actors hate being tied down, because we feel we'll miss out on something. I'll take it six months at a time." Lawson wears his many hats with ease; unlike most actors, who are alternately guarded or gushing about their careers, he takes it all with a breezy lack of seriousness. He loves Holby City, principally because it gets a huge audiences, and has no pretensions to it being great art. He laughs like a drain and swears like a trooper; his cinversation is punctuated by "Oh no, you can't say that in Radio Times, can you?" "The big difference between doing Holby City and doing a film or a play is the recognition you get. Apart from that, the job's the same. I'll only do something if the scrips are good and the cast is good, which is certainly the case in Holby City. I've made alot of big films (including the original trio of Star Wars films and Local Hero), but nothing compares to the reaction I've got for Holby City. It was an immediate effect, as soon as I appeared on the show." Campbell-Gore came into Holby City to replace Anton Meyer (George Irving)-and, after a brief but bitter power struggle, emerged as the hospital's top dog. Lawson also inherited Irving's mantle as the show's senor sex symbol. "I can't say I'm overwhelmed with female attention," he says. "Certainly not in London, anyway. But in the provinces there's much more reaction. I was in a shopping centre in Bath a few months back, waiting for the lift to arrive. It turned up, the door opened and there were four women inside-and when they saw me they were stunned. They were like rabbits caught in headlights. Of course I just smiled benignly and carried on, but they couldn't move." "You certainly don't get that reaction after a film or a play, and it makes me realise that people in the provinces watch an awful lot of TV." Thanks King Kong for the article!!! |
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