Only days away from facing the critics on his debut as a director at the age of 65, the award-winning actor seems comfortably in control of his own destiny

Nigel, the natural leader

Michael Owen, Evening Standard, November 25 1994

Nigel Hawthorne was strolling around a neo-Georgian pile near Bath one afternoon this week, not quite with the noblesse oblige of the authentically Georgian stage role he has been playing for the last three years but very much a man in command of his own fortunes.

It was not always thus. Hawthorne endured one of the worst cases of career blight ever suffered by a leading actor waiting for the chance to prove his worth.

For two decades he had to tolerate the abuses of unemployment, rejection and denial before Yes, Minister arrived to make Sir Humphrey a national icon and Mr Hawthorne a box office star with enough clout to dictate his own destiny.

Stage success arrived at its fullest as he approached his sixties and he confirmed his commanding position in the theatrical firmament with the long running successes of Shadowlands and The Madness of George III.

For all the professional reversals visited on him he remains a thorough gentleman, offering an almost old world courtesy, though the odd chiding remark about his peers like Richard Eyre and Nicholas Hytner has crept into his conversation.

He also cuts an unexpectedly imposing physical presence, standing tall and robust as he paused on a walk through the sculpted gardens of a hotel on the outskirts of Bath, where he has been brought by the latest addition to his distinguished career credits.

Mr Hawthorne was on the last leg of a tour which will bring him to town as a director as well as star of a production of his own choosing, where casting, design and costume were all conducted on his sole approval. This is Nigel the natural-born leader, and it suits him.

He was all beaming benevolence itself, without a sign of nerves that his debut as a director was just over a week away from going in front of the London critics.

The show he has chosen is the post-Restoration farce The Clandestine Marriage, written by David Garrick and the manager of his Drury Lane company in the 1770s. It tends to surface once a decade: Quayle played it in the 1980s and there was Sim in the 1970s, but Hawthorne's introduction came earlier when he saw it with Wolfit leading. It now opens at the Queen's Theatre on 5 December.

"I suppose the thought of directing something had been lurking for some time. I just needed the push. I've had a marvellous company to work with; no temperament and no argument. It's been plain sailing and very pleasurable."

Despite the fact that it was created by Garrick and occupied by Wolfit, the leading role of the grotesquely decrepit Lord Ogleby is less than a monster part, which pleased Hawthorne.

"I really didn't want one of those emotionally draining roles like the last two I've done. It's a good part with four main scenes, which means I get plenty of time off in the dressing room - and it made it easier to direct."

Hawthorne spent the summer filming his stage hit, The Madness of George III, with Nicholas Hytner directing. The film is being rushed for a pre-Christmas release in America and will open here in the New Year. But he spent long months on tenterhooks waiting to know if he was going to get the film version.

"It was very curious and to this day I have not actually signed a contract. Alan Bennett said it could go ahead only with myself and Nick. For ages, I didn't hear anything. Then Nick invited me to Shepperton, I met the designer, and they said they were going to start in three weeks' time but no one actually told me I had the part. Very odd."

Now 65 and with his career holding at its high peak, we talked about the early lean years and how he was rescued by the least likely of people, Joan Littlewood.

"I fell into her world at Stratford East but all that improvisation and other stuff was totally alien to me. They were setting up a tour of Oh What A Lovely War. Joan was away directing it in America and I got off to a very bad start. The stage director took against me and I had virtually nothing to do in the show."

"Then Joan came on the phone and asked me how much more I could take. She gave me more and more to do until I was virtually the lead. That brought me to the attention of the Royal Court lot and I went on from there."

But I had a monumental falling out with Joan, sadly. She misunderstood something I said about her on the radio and wrote me a sniffy letter. I was enraged that she couldn't see our relationship was so much deeper than anything that could be said and wrote her a furious letter. We've never actually made it up and that is one of my very few regrets."