| Robert Powell's arrival is signalled by the staccato tattoo of some very insistent heels. Stacked heels, I notice, as they clip peremptorily down the theatre corridor, bearing his swishing stage presence out of view. Ten minutes later another set appear. This time courtesy of a pair of cowboy boots. And emerging from this new footwear is a whole new person. Denim- clad, smiling, and really without the smallest resemblance to Jesus Christ. You must remember. That bone structure more finely chiselled than a Vatican canity unit, the Golgotha gaze from those storm-grey eyes, the captvating drape of that loincloth... It may be over 20 years since Robert Powell's eight-hour depiction of Jesus of Nazareth returned Easter to its proper place on the Christian calendar, wich thorn-free diadem in the television ratings, but this is still the role with which most people identify him. Even a fifth series of The Detectives can't deliver that sort of clout. Not that Robert Powell laments this at all. We, his audience, may have clung to which ever performance of his 30- year career we found most affecting. He, the pro, has naturally progressed. And he looks back like an indulgent grandfather on our little loyalties. But playing Jesus had no more lasting effect on his psyche than playing Richard Hannay in the remake of The 39 Steps, he insists. "I don't mean it was unimportant," he smiles. "It was seminal in beginning another phase of my career. When I did Jesus I had been at the sharp end of film and television for seven or eight years; so I was not an unkown actor. What it did was turn my career in a different direction by making me internationallh known." By this he does not mean Hollywood because, almost uniquely among British film actos, Robert Powell is delighted to voice his dismay and irratation with the American film industry. "Americans are so literal as a people- they see me playing Jesus and they really can't envisage anything else. They even seem surprised I don't have a beard and long hair. It is an extraordinary thing but the country that speaks- at least tehcnically- the same language we do, is more foreign to me that Moscow. I mean that genuinely. I find language is not the crucial barrier, many other things are. Attitude. History. I lived in Lost Angeles for a while and just couldn't cope iwth it, while I lived in Rome and it seemed like a second home." He is equally definite about his opinions of Britain. Born in Salford 53 years ago, the younger of two sons, he still feels very much a northerner. "That, too, is an attitude rather than a geographical accident. I like northerners. I like their what you see what you get mentality. And though I've lived in London for 30 years, the North is where my roots are and always will be. Sadly, I rarely get back now because both my parents are dead and I have no family there any more." If this might suggext in idyllic childhood spent in the rosy glow of firelit family bliss, Powell is swift to admit the contrary. The family was not close. "There was an odd, undemonstrative relationship between us all. I knew my parents loved me, but there was no cuddles or heart-to-heart talks that I remember. That just was not the done thing." Ye he has spoken movingly and at lenth of how deeply his parents came to live with him in their eighties, in the last frail stretch of their lives. "We did get closer then. A lot closer, and I suppose that was due to the dependence which ilness creates. But I'm glad it happened." Has this made him consider his own mortality, I wonder. "Oh, constantly," he replies breezily. "I think it must. You know you're next, it's as simple as that. While your parents are alive, you're not next." He grimaces, but does not choose to change the subject. "There are other things, too. Stupid things. Twinges of arthritis. Damaged kneews from playing too much cricket that now suddenly seize up in the car. Irritating things..." And only then, much later thatn I would ever expect from an actor, does his ego assert itself over his hyonesty, and promt him to add: "I'm in pretty good shape, though." Which is true. Even though one can unkindly remark that his legs seem a big on the spindly side and his torso very square, which, in his own words, makes him look "a bit like a haunted parking meter." But we are back on the upbeat now, talking of his starring role in Kind Hearts and Coronets which opens at the King's Theatre in Edinburgh on Monday. Powell plays Mazzini, the sauve, acerbic murderer who killed off six separate Alec Guinesses in the 1949 film. "It's a huge part to learn. Mazzini never leaves the stage for the whole play and he's speaking for most of that time. To put that into my head and remember it, well...I can walk away from this quietly proud that senile dementia is still many years away." Mazzini's great gift, Powell pronounces enthusiastically, is that he is completely free of conscience. "Utterly, gloriously egocentric." He says this with such gleeful vigour that I am forced to ask if he considers these traits enviable. "They're certainly entertaining," he begins, then stops himself. "But only in fiction of course." What about his own admission that he is extremely difficult to live with? "It's true," he sighs "I am difficult to live with. But I'm blessed with an extraordinarily patient wife." She is Babs Lord, formerly of Pan's People, the female dance troupe who graced Top of the Pops and a million or more male fantasies in the late Sixties. They have been married for over 20 years. "Babs is very tolerant. She has to be...Well, she doesn't have to be but if she wasn't, we wouldn't be married. People say to me, 'you're lucky' and I say, 'hang on a minute, I asked her to marry me so maybe there was something I recognised in this woman- qualities that I knew were right for me. It wasn't accidental." If this sounds a trifle arrogant, the details of their courtship add a rather different perspective. After adrmiring Babs on television, Powell eventually met her in the BBC, but was so shy about asking her out, he decided to ask all of the six dancers to join him for dinner. He thought this would look less pushy. However, he did arrange that she sat next to him and plucked enough courage to ask her for a subsequent date. Three months later, they were living together. But the shyness, he claimes, has never really left him. Even his heart-throb days in the pioneering television science serial Doomwatch, which delivered him as big a postbag of breathy female fan letters as any young actor could wish, did not entirely dismantle his anxieties. "It was lovely, though," he laughs. "Probably because it was so unexpected. As a teenager, I was never the one who got the girl. Never." What was it, then, which promoted him to abandon his law degree at Manchester University and hazard all that was dependable for the theatre? [Next] [Main] |