Will Gore talks to David Suchet about his forthcoming West End role and his debt to the Belgian detective
The first thing I notice about David Suchet is his facial hair. It isn’t a stick-on Poirot tash, unfortunately, but a grey beard that he has grown for his latest role, James Tyrone, in the West End revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night.
The second thing is his smile. He greets me with a broad grin, and beams amiably throughout our time together. He has rehearsals to be getting on with, but is happy to let our scheduled 30 minutes stretch to an hour. Suchet is the most cheerful interviewee I’ve ever encountered.
He’s unpretentious, too. Some actors, mentioning no names except Richard E. Grant, hate to discuss the role that made them famous. But Suchet is more than willing to talk at length about Poirot, the TV character who has turned him into — it is no exaggeration to say — one of the most recognisable actors on earth. ‘I’ve been told by ITV Global that if everybody watched the show at the same time then the worldwide audience could be as big as 750 million,’ he says.
Suchet, 65, has landed a number of great stage parts over the years, including George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Salieri in Amadeus. Most recently he won acclaim and awards for his portrayal of Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and he knows that he has Hercule to thank for attracting theatre producers.
‘If Poirot hadn’t brought my name into the public arena to such a great extent then I probably wouldn’t be any sort of draw, and everyone who puts me in a play hopes the Poirot audience comes with me,’ he says.
‘For All My Sons they flew in from South Africa, they flew in from Australia, and we ended up hanging a map of the world by the stage door and every time someone from a new part of the world came to see us we put a pin in it. By the end of the run nearly every country in the world was represented.’
The fact that Suchet’s career has thrived thanks to his Poirot-powered fame provides an obvious contrast to his new character Tyrone, an actor who has seen his reputation destroyed by his close association with one role. In this most autobiographical of plays, Tyrone is a version of the playwright’s father, James O’Neill, who in the latter part of the 19th century was a rising star of the American stage. His potential and spirit were crushed by playing the same part — the lead role in a touring production of The Count of Monte Cristo — more than 6,000 times.
‘Tyrone’s line in the play is that “they associated me with that one part and they didn’t want me to be anything else”, which is not my situation,’ says Suchet.
‘I can see similarities and easily put myself in his position, because the same might have happened to me, and it happened in a sense to dear John Thaw, who was a great classical actor and maybe missed out on that because he was so associated with Morse.
‘The difference is that although I may have been associated with Poirot I have had the good fortune to have been given some huge, blockbusting theatre roles to play as well.’
It is unfair to suggest Suchet has won those roles purely because of his box-office potential. His adaptability as a performer is one of his key strengths and the fact that he has never had the looks or the stature of a leading man has counted in his favour. He is a character actor and proud of it.
‘I was and still am 5 feet 8 inches tall, stocky and deep-voiced, and you don’t get many ingénues looking like that,’ he says, laughing. ‘I’ve always been a character actor. It is where I was put when I started in rep in 1969 and I was cast as one from birth, I think.’
For Suchet, theatre has never been all- consuming (‘I’m not the kind of actor who would die if he doesn’t act’). He likes spending time on his Dutch barge and, quite unlike the Tyrones, his family is a happy one.
He has been married to Sheila Ferris, herself a former actor, since 1976, and they have two grown-up children who have both resisted following their parents on to the stage.
‘Funnily enough, I’ve always said that I wouldn’t have minded my son or daughter being in the business. I’ve never put them off ever; if anything I have slightly encouraged them but they didn’t want to know and that’s all right.
‘Maybe it will come through another generation but I don’t think that there is a Suchet dynasty there or anything like that. I think the old man is the only one.’
At one point in the play Tyrone remarks that it is ‘a late day for regrets’, and I assume this must also apply to Suchet, who has been acting since he joined the National Youth Theatre at the age of 18. He does reveal one niggle, however. Suchet has never had the opportunity to go back to the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he worked in the 1970s and early 1980s.
‘It’s a regret that I have never been back, but I was there for 13 years and played so many great roles that there was a period when, in my age group, there wasn’t much left for me to play,’ he says.
‘Poirot will get going again in October, as I’ve been given the last five to do so I can leave the complete works behind, and once that is out of the way maybe the roles I’m growing into like Prospero and Lear may raise their head.’
The completion of Poirot has been a long-held ambition of his and perhaps once the fat suit and moustache have been put away for good, a return to the RSC might be possible. It is unlikely Suchet will waste too much time worrying about this, though.
‘Actors don’t retire, their phones simply stop ringing,’ he says, lightly. ‘I live my life a day and a moment at a time and whatever happens will happen.’
Long Day’s Journey into Night runs at the Apollo Theatre from 3 April to 18 August.
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