Mad About Nigel

British television's astringent political satire Yes, Minister made Nigel Hawthorne a favorite of Mrs. Thatcher s. Now, as LYNN BARBER reports, his starring role in the film version of Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III should bring him international acclaim

hen Nigel Hawthorne first played the King in The Madness of George III three years ago, London's Sunday Telegraph hailed it as "the kind of performance that is going to be talked about for It has been talked about for years— years. right from its debut at the Royal National Theatre through its American tour in the fall of 1993. The big imponderable question was: Would it ever be filmed? Could it be? Hollywood producers might have felt safer with a big-name star. But Alan Bennett, who wrote the play (and adapted it for the screen), and Nicholas Hytner, who directed it, insisted on Nigel Hawthorne. Bennett wrote in the play's preface: "Without Nigel's transcendent performance, the King could have been just a gabbling bore and his fate a matter of indifference."

Discussions about the film went on and on and on. Hawthorne learned the project was certain only last May when Nicholas Hytner summoned him to Shepperton Studios to show him the production designs. One month later they were filming the movie, which was shot in nine weeks, on a shoestring budget of $8 million. When I asked Hawthorne if he got star treatment, he laughed and said, "No, no, no—in any case I don't behave like one. I had my own little trailer with bits falling off; I nicknamed it my Winnebago. But everyone was very nice to me—they knew they had to be, because there is so much physical action in the picture my survival was rather important!"

Few actors can be said to have "arrived" so dramatically so late in their careers (Hawthorne is 65). Born in England but raised in South Africa, he barely worked till he was 40, and didn't, he says, know for certain he was in the right profession till he was 50. His fame came primarily from television roles—as the incandescent Archdeacon Grantly in The Barchester Chronicles, as the effete, endearing Georgie in Mapp and Lucia, and as the uptight civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby in the political satire Yes, Minister, which was so unaccountably loved by Mrs. Thatcher that she once demanded to perform in it herself. Hawthorne seemed then to be a master of subtle, small-screen effects—the cynically raised eyebrow, the pursed lips of disapproval, the barely perceptible sneer. Only the very observant would have noticed that Sir Humphrey Appleby was to all intents and purposes his Malvolio, just as George III would be his King Lear.

But then came the astonishing play Shadowlands. No one was surprised that Hawthorne could play C. S. Lewis, the crotchety Oxford don; the surprise came in the scene when he learned that his wife (played by Jane Lapotaire) had cancer, and his racking sobs and devastating grief left not a dry eye in the house. A rather light comic actor was suddenly transformed into a great tragedian.

So what happened to him? How did this hitherto cool, controlled, somewhat reticent actor learn to unleash such wells of emotion? Passion is not what strikes you when you meet him. He is kind, courteous, intelligent, but never emotional. It would be easy to believe that he was, say, a retired doctor or the chairman of some useful body like a water board. Passion surfaces only when he offers to show you his greatest achievement—and points to the garden he created from a bare paddock in just 10 years. Somewhere upstairs in his 440-yearold Hertfordshire manor house there are Olivier and BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and Tony awards, but it is the garden he wants to show off.

All Hawthorne will say about acting is "Some people act to parade their vanities, and others do it to hide from themselves—that's probably me." As a young man he felt that his gift was for comedy, but "I suppose I've become more serious as I've grown older." A few years ago he witnessed the long death of a close friend from AIDS, and perhaps it was this experience that unleashed his tragic potential. Alan Bennett believes that "what's happened with Nigel is that he's discovered another area of his personality—he's a more powerful actor than anyone imagined."

"Some people act to parade their vanities."