Talk about moving from the ridiculous to the sublime. One of our greatest classical actors, Derek Jacobi, has just returned from Vancouver, where he has been filming the vampire versus werewolves sequel, Underworld: Evolution. He's not happy about it. "My character was the daddy of all the werewolves," he sighs, but it wasn't the subject matter that irritated him. It was, as usual, the script editing. "Any line that for me was characterful was cut. So my part ended up being completely plot and cipher." Did he at least get to wear some monster prosthetics, I ask encouragingly. Another sigh. "No, but I did at least get a hideous death."
Jacobi, his habitual dignified appearance only slightly marred by a white jumper bearing the legend "Grand Balloon Flights", is taking a break from rehearsing Don Carlos, Schiller's epic history play, for its London opening. He's playing the emotionally draining role of King Philip, and he's much happier.
Jacobi is a creature of the stage. His big break came when Laurence Olivier invited him to join the National Theatre, and despite finding widespread fame in the 1976 television series I, Claudius, and more recent screen credits including Gladiator and Gosford Park, the actor has never felt at home in front of the cameras. "You have no control," he says. "One of an actor's great strengths is timing. In an editing suite they can change your timing completely, and ruin your performance." They can also hack out chunks of your role, as happened in 2000's Gladiator. Jacobi played a conspiratorial senator, but any hopes that the film might give as much space to its fascinating political subplot as it did to Russell Crowe's muscles was dashed when three entire scenes, and almost all the politics, hit the cutting-room floor. "It was disappointing," says Jacobi with measured understatement.
He gets plenty of room to explore his character over Don Carlos's spacious yet utterly compelling three hours. I saw the production in Sheffield and found it one of the most exciting theatrical events of last year. With Jacobi giving one of the performances of his career, the main storyline of the king's wife and son's mutual passion becomes almost secondary. The focus is shifted on to Philip's titanic struggle with his own nature as the ruthless king allows his once icy heart to thaw, only to discover that caring brings with it pain and weakness.
In the past Jacobi has described himself as "weak and wishy-washy". I wonder whether he infuses some of his own gentler nature into Philip as his journey progresses? "Well certainly the middle bit of the role, as Philip discovers his emotions, was the bit I knew I could do," he says. "I wasn't sure I could be as glacial as this man has to be at the beginning and again at the end." In fact, Jacobi explains, he underestimated the role when he first took it on: "I thought it was all very cold, and wanted to do something pyrotechnical with it. The director Michael Grandage wouldn't let me, and he was right. Because as I discovered the character, I found that his cathartic journey is terribly emotional, one fears for his sanity by the end."
Jacobi is leaning forward, his face lit by a boyish excitement that, despite the lines around his eyes, makes him look younger than his 66 years. His voice, as mellifluous as an oboe, is eager. He clearly loves his work, so it comes as a surprise when he says he starts each performance in a state of terror. "I was waiting in the wings on opening night in Sheffield," he says. "Philip's first entrance must be very authoritative, and all I could think was: 'I hope they don't see my legs shaking.'"
He has seen stage fright in many great actors. When he was performing in The Merchant Of Venice opposite Olivier, the great man - nearly paralysed by the condition - summoned his young protégé to his dressing-room and instructed him not to look him in the eye on stage. It hit Jacobi on the last week of a Hamlet world tour in 1979. "We were in Sydney, Australia," he shudders. "I'd played the part nearly 400 times. And after the interval my first appearance was for the 'To be or not to be' speech. I waited backstage and idly wondered what would happen if I forgot those famous lines. As I wondered, I put a worm of doubt into my head. I talked myself into terror. Then I went on, and I forgot the line. From then on, I questioned my ability to act, my enjoyment of acting, my need to act."
He did not set foot on stage for another three years, and was enticed back only by the Royal Shakespeare Company's too-good-to-refuse offer of four great roles in one season (Cyrano De Bergerac, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Prospero in The Tempest and Peer Gynt). Ever since, he has had to force himself in front of the footlights: "Maggie Smith, who sometimes suffers from stage fright, described the sensation very well. Above the waist, you seem relaxed. But from your legs down, you're incredibly tense. Your toes become like talons, gripping the stage to stop you from falling over." He digs his fingers into the table to illustrate.
He does not want to analyse the condition further, "because I don't want it to happen so badly again". I change the subject, noting that one of Jacobi's traits in performance is his gift for seizing a phrase, even a single word, and giving it an unusual emphasis to shed new light on a character or situation. When, for instance, his Hamlet said to Ophelia, "It hath made me mad" - usually shouted as part of Hamlet's feigned insanity - Jacobi paused and, astonished, murmured, "It hath made me mad." Similarly, in Don Carlos, Philip's first word, "Alone?", hangs in the air. It is a rebuke to his wife but, in Jacobi's pointed rendition, stands almost as a comment on Philip's own state and the play's main theme.
He's delighted by the observation. "That sort of pinpointing the text somehow lets me new-mint the words as though they're spoken thought rather than lines I've learnt. It keeps them fresh and accessible."
Having tasted celebrity after I, Claudius, when he would routinely have "Hail, Caesar!" yelled at him across supermarkets, he insists that he does not envy the fame that his contemporary Ian McKellen has belatedly found. "These days fame is so invasive. Everyone wants to know everything about you. I wouldn't like that." He chuckles at a sudden memory: "I was in a crowded railway carriage once with Olivier. Here was the most famous actor in the world, and nobody recognised him. That's classy fame, when you are globally famous, but nobody knows who you are."
