#beverly cross

Trama: Perseo deve combattere Medusa e il Kraken per salvare la principessa Andromeda.

Regia: Desmond Davis.

Sceneggiatura: Beverley Cross.

Star: Laurence Olivier, Harry Hamlin, Claire Bloom.

Clash of the Titans (1981)

My rating: 5/10

Making a Monkey… (Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, 1977)

Prince Kassim has been transformed by his stepmother into a Baboon.  She wants her own son, Rafi, to inherit the throne. For help, his sister, the Princess Farah calls on her beloved Sinbad for help.  They go on a quest to save Kassim from his cruel fate. After finding out that the only cure can be found in a magical region of the Arctic, Sinbad races against the evil Zenobia and Rafi, who use…

The Dean’s List: Sam O’Bryant

Welcome to The Dean’s List!  The Dean’s List will profile up-and-comers in Memphis who are certain to be the next group of leaders in the nonprofit, corporate, government, and faith communities.  The Dean’s List is curated by Kevin Dean, the Executive Director of Literacy Mid-South.

You’ll recognize Sam O’Bryant, 36, by his bow ties and his smile as he weaves his way between meetings about…

TOBY ON TOBY

“I’m not naturally competitive. I wasn’t great at sport at school. I don’t understand the idea of going up against someone and trying to annihilate them. It’s just not me. I am very ambitious for myself, though.”

“Illness is like a shadow.  My mother had cancer a while back.  She is of that generation that won’t burden other people with worry.  On one level it was extremely admirable but on another it made me anxious because I wasn’t sure I was getting the whole story.  I’ve lost my father and my stepfather and several friends to illness so you think, ‘oh God here we go again’.  Thankfully she’s in the clear and fingers crossed will remain so.”

“I haven’t been hospitalised for 20 years.  On that occasion it was self inflicted.  I lost my temper after an argument with a girlfriend and punched a door.  I thought it was hollow, but it was solid.  I broke knuckles and fingers and had to have pins inserted.”

“I was bullied at school.  I had red hair and freckles, so it was inevitable.  I moved schools a fair bit as well and I became very adept at fitting in.  I made friends easily.  Everyone gets the piss taken out of them in some way at school  You learn to roll with it.”

“I don’t understand therapy.  If people could learn to be more objective about themselves it would be of huge benefit.  If you can detach yourself and think hard you can alter your behaviour.  Too often we employ someone to do it for us.  Clearly there are some people who need help desperately, but for most why not try and work out what the issue is?”

“Lying awake worrying is awful and like most of Britain it’s money worries that are usually responsible.  Half of the country is writhing around wondering how to pay the mortgage and its draining.  That the only time I reach for pills - herbal or chemical sedatives I don’t care as long as I can knock myself out.”

“My wife swears by manuka honey.  If I’m coming down with something she reaches for a pot.  Apparently it has strong antibiotic properties.”  

“I like to run with nothing in my head but if I need a boost it has to be heavy with lots of power chords.”

“I can’t live without sugar.  Since I stopped drinking I have developed a sweet tooth.  Before Id only have savoury things, now I love cakes and sweets.”

Source: ‘The inside track’,  Mike Pattenden.

"Yes, there was.  The first time I thought I might have something; might be able to express myself this way was in a school poetry competition. All the other kids were just reading out the longest and most complicated poems they knew. I chose “Dulce et Decorum Est” and, rather than recite it, I just instinctively performed it. I didn’t understand exactly what it was about, but I felt it. The teachers seemed almost shocked and I won the competition. They made me do it again the next day.’ 

Source: ‘The Seriously Handsome Toby Stephens’, Spectator,  Mary Wakefield

"I think we all as human beings go through periods of disillusionment with life, with humanity”

“I suppose I would like to be remembered as a decent human being who represented humanity truthfully. In a nutshell!” 

“Death’s an abstracted idea until a certain point where it begins to become more focused and more real and more concrete. I think the older you get, certainly in our civilisation here, the more people you experience dying. It's just the way it is. And so it makes it much more real.” 

Source: ‘The Big Interview: Toby Stephens’, Official London Theatre, 

"I blub all the time, in the most weird situations – not in the ones that should make me cry. Music makes me very emotional. I think I cried yesterday, in fact." 

Source: ‘This Much I Know, Toby Stephens’, Guardian, July 2010

"Well, I turned 40 recently and I can understand how the confidence of one's youth disappears. There's a Talking Heads song called ‘Once in a Lifetime’ that has the line: 'Where is my beautiful car?' It communicates a lot of those feelings. Luckily, I spent my 40th birthday at a lovely dinner with very good friends – no dramas!" 

Source: ‘Keeping It Real’, Lucillehowe.com, 2010

"I wish I could do something else, I really do, but this is the only thing I've ever been any good at." 

Source: ‘Of Course I'd Act with My Mother’, London Times, 2010

“My wife did it once [googled his name] and it freaked us out so much that I don’t any more.  I have a friend who does it a lot and he’s just constantly being upset.  Ignorance is total bliss.  I like going around pretending everybody loves me.”

Source: ‘A Big Ask’, Gabriel Tate 

“I’m pathetic and I’ll cry anywhere, any time.  Its the cause of great embarrassment.”

“Most afraid of not working.”

“My big hatred is littering so I would impose an one the spot punishment and make litterers wear a sign saying I am a lazy slob.”

Last listened to:

“Brian Eno’s ‘Plateaux of Mirror’, which I put on when I’ve drunk too much coffee.  Its very mellow.”

Save from a fire: 

“My heavily pregnant wife Anna-Louise and my two kids.”

Most like wearing:

“My double breasted navy coat from Tin House in Norfolk.”

“I’m in Norfolk at the moment and we’re staying in an old lighthouse.  I recently took my wife to Paris for a romantic break and we spent last Christmas in Venice, which is so atmospheric when the sea mists are rolling in.”

“I was recently in a lift with a mother and her daughter and they were complimenting me on my work.  Just before we got out they said, ‘And what’s your wife Helen doing’.  They thought I was Damian Lewis who is married to Helen McCrory.  In the end I went along with it and just said ‘She’s very busy at the moment’”.

“Got arrested in LA for stealing bubble gum when I was about six.”

Source: ‘My London’ : Toby Stephens, Hannah Nathanson, 

“I try to avoid travelling with my children.  They’re at that age when it’s a nightmare.  My wife and I are good at creating time away - even if its just a weekend - we have to for our own sanity.  Venice is our favourite destination.  We spent our honeymoon at the Hotel Cipriani.”

“I am obsessed with really good colognes and scents.  I like to smell nice after a long flight.  I love anything by Comme des Garcons.”

“I don’t have a huge skin regime but I do like Aesop facial oil, because its natural.  The older you get the rougher you look so you need to take care of yourself.”

“Running is great because you can do it anywhere.  So I always pack my new balance trainers.  The only place I didn’t manage a run was India - everyone thinks your insane.” 

“My wife gave me a Bell and Ross watch for my 40th birthday.  I’m never without it.  It’s made by the same company that creates dials for French fighter jets.” 

“On a flight I catch up on my reading.  It’s mainly fiction - I loved the ‘Line of Beauty’ by Alan Hollinghurst but I’m very selective.”

Source: BA In flight magazine

"If I ever read that actors know what they're doing, they are either immensely successful movie stars or they are just lying."

Source: Western Mail

“I absolutely support the Standard's campaign [Dispossessed Fund]. I live in Tower Hamlets, which is one of the poorest boroughs in London, and it is also very near Hackney, where there is knife and gun crime. Anything that remedies it, or seeks to remedy it, is a good thing.

“I've never been in court. My father-in-law is a criminal barrister and I've been to watch him once but that's the only experience of it so it was fascinating to act in front of the great and the good of the legal profession.”

Source: Evening Standard

TOBY ON LONDON:

“Home is East London near Spitalfields.  Earliest memory is being taken for walks by my nanny in Battersea Park and looking up at the huge blue gas towers and smelling the malt from the brewery that used to be there.”

“Walk as much as possible to avoid the Tube which is terrible and overpriced.”

“I go to John Sa doe in Chelsea for books because it’s like something out of a Dickens novel with its little corridors.  Folk, in the Old Truman Brewery, for unusual but well made shirts.  A lovely perfumery in Belgravia called Les Senteurs for unique colognes and perfumes that don’t take your head off.  St John Bread and Wine for Eccles cakes and brownies.  I like to browse the records in Rough Trade East.”

“Galvin La Chapelle, off Bishopsgate.  During the week its filled with obnoxious bankers, but its lovely and quiet at the weekend.”

“Triple shot lattes in small cups from Nude Espresson on Hanbury Street E1”

“Cheshire Street off Brick Lane.  I go window shopping there with my son and we stand outside the toy shop and fantasise over which mechanical robot wed like to take home.”

Most romantic place:

“Two temple place by the Inns of Court.  Its where we had our wedding reception.”

Best kept secret:

“Bunhill Fields Cemetery, off Old Street,where William Blake is buried.  Its an oasis of peace.”

Little known fact:

“My neighbour, the historian Dan Cruickshank told me that the Shakespearean actor Richard Burbage is buried in a vault in a church on Shoreditch Hight Street.”

Source: ‘’My London : Toby Stephens, Hannah Nathanson, 

TOBY ON HIS FAMILY

“At the moment, I’m working and she’s working and we have 2 children so it’s complicated but often one of us isn’t working.”

“My parents didn’t actively discourage me, but that was a different time.  If my children showed an interest I’d push them towards university so they’d have a back-up.  Acting is overpopulated now and everything is precarious.”  

Source: ‘Acting the part’

“I don’t live life in the public eye.   That’s why I’ll never act with my mother.  I’d maybe do a film, but not a play, because much as I’d love to work with Mum - she’s an amazing actress - it would become about something other than acting and I find all that a bit naff.”

“I didn’t really know her at drama school.  I mean, she’s six foot one with curly hair so you couldn’t exactly miss her, but I had my head up my own arse then.  I only cared about what I was cast in, whether I’d get an agent and so on.”

“There are worse things, and it forced me to watch my mother as a performer and understand that she is two people, the mother I know in a domestic situation and the one who does what I do now, who is somebody else.  Any child who goes into a parent’s workplace has to realise that.”

Source: ‘Toby or not Toby’, Metropolitan Magazine, Eurostar

On take his son Eli to the Old Vic Theatre where Stephens was playing in ‘The Real Thing’:

“He was totally mystified. He thinks work is digging holes." 

"I was obsessed by the fact that she was dressed up in odd outfits, kissing some strange man. It was embarrassing, very disconcerting.”

“It's not very healthy, as I'm sure my mother would testify." 

"I would hate to feel that I had some sort of innate right to belong. My parents' world, that old school hierarchy, has gone. Everyone's all mixed up now, and, because of that, theatre is finally exciting again. People want to see something real. As an actor, you take your humanity and you put it on stage. You make people look at themselves and say, 'Thank God I'm not alone.'" 

"Sir Laurence Olivier was sweet to me, but later he was struggling and couldn't remember who anybody was. He had been close to my mother and my father, then got fed up with them both. He was frightened of people coming up behind him or stealing his limelight. He saw both my parents as a threat." 

"We occasionally visited the Oliviers on a Sunday. There'd be loads of people there. I was always so terrified, I would just clam up. I wasn't swanning around being precocious, I was hunkering in the corner. People would have thought, 'Who's the spotty kid with the red hair?' I wasn't doing myself any favours." 

"People talk about my family as if it were a dynasty. But it was never like something out of a Noel Coward play, with everyone going, 'Oh, dahling!' and serving up theatrical anecdotes for breakfast." 

"I don't worry about not being as good as them. All I can aspire to do is to have the same incredible drive as my mother, never sitting back on great reviews, always seeking to improve. All people tell me about my father is how amazing he was in things they saw, but that's not a pressure. It's lovely never to hear anyone say a bad word about him.”

"I told him it was fine for an older, more sophisticated actor, but in our production Coriolanus had to be a young man. He did accept it in the end, after a bit of harrumphing." 

Source: ‘Home and Dry’, London Times, July 2010

"Now I have children I live the most domestic mundane life." 

"I sort of dread them doing it. I guess my parents must have been the same about me; there's no guarantee you're going to be any good at it or that the industry is going to be kind to you. My instinct is to protect them and say, do something else. But then if that's what they want to do I'm not going to stop them.” 

"Naff. She really is amazing. I'm so immensely proud of her as an actress, she is extraordinary. Also what I love is that I have two separate lives. I have my professional life and I have my personal life and I really like that separation.” 

"My brother only took a stage name because there was a male stripper in Holland who was a member of Equity who had the name Chris Stephens, so he was forced into choosing another name. No, I didn't. I certainly didn't want to hide away from it.” 

"When we found out about it, it was . . . I mean obviously you immediately go 'oh my God, that could mean, you know . . .' Luckily it wasn't, she is in the clear. But obviously you go, that death is one of the possibilities and she must have gone through that process as well.”

Source: ‘The Big Interview: Toby Stephens’, Official London Theatre, 

"I've learnt an enormous amount from my children. Mostly that my agenda isn't the most important thing in the world. For a while I was trying to squeeze them into my life. And it was such torment! It makes you realise how selfish you are." 

"The smallest audience I've ever performed to is my three-year-old son on the way to nursery. I'll be babbling to myself in the car and he'll suddenly say: 'Daddy, are you running lines again?'" 

"I didn't know my blood father that well, but my parents taught me that what I do is a job. It's a craft, something you have to work at. My mother taught me that you never deliver a perfect performance. I'm constantly tweaking and fiddling with roles.”

Source: ‘This Much I Know’, Toby Stephens, Guardian, July 2010

"It's not something you'd do lightly. It would be a ... situation. I'd love to learn from her. I also would be very seriously intimidated. I wouldn't flatter myself that it would be enough, but if that's what got her back on the stage, I'd do it in an instant." 

I'd be going, 'Why is she talking like that, why is she dressed up, who is she kissing?' Looking back I am as amazed by her as everybody else. She had the most incredible, rarefied time of it on stage.” 

"It was terrifying for all of us. Your foundations go.” 

“I was completely lost. Having lost two fathers I kept saying: 'Oh God, please, not yet, just a little more time.'" 

"I was very lucky. Beverley was my mother's sweetheart from an earlier time and a wonderful father in ways that Robert, bless him, just could not be.” 

"Robert was very ill, it's no secret, with alcohol. I watched him die in the most ... the most gradual ... I mean it was not an easy process. But his legacy is sometimes incredibly reductive. Actors come up to me going: 'God, your father could drink.' And I say – 'I am aware. Yet you neglect to say that he did things nobody else can do with Shakespeare.' He was extraordinary. He was many things, and he influenced me enormously." 

Source: ‘Of Course I'd Act with My Mother’, London Times, 

"Having kids certainly means you can't obsess about your career the way you used to, which I think is healthy. But inevitably, when you become a father, you reference your own past. What makes me really sad is that neither Eli nor Tallulah will have an experience of their grandfather. And a lot of what I know about Robert is apocryphal, because I was four when he left and I didn't see him for a long time. And inevitably, people are very reductive about him: 'Oh, he was a great actor but he liked a drink!' Whenever I have any dealings with my son, I am aware that he walked away from us. I look at my situation and know I couldn't even dream of doing that. But those were choices that Robert made in a context I can't know. I'm incredibly lucky: I'm in a different place to where he was. I'm a different person.”

"To look at my mother with an objective eye and see how incredible it is what she does. Because purely selfishly I'd like to see her in something new, and also because I know it makes her happy." 

Source: ‘It’ll Be Weird to Be Here with My Family History,’ Evening Standard

 "No, not really, I wasn’t an extrovert. My brother did try to put on plays, but I didn’t like the limelight. He’d be the director, and he’d try to get me to perform, but I’d be paralysed with stage fright and refuse to come on." 

Source: ‘The Seriously Handsome Toby Stephens’, Spectator, 

"My parents would read almost anything -- from trashy novels to highbrow ones. But I tend to be a bit of a snob, so I don't do anything too trashy." 

Source: ‘My Life in Books, Toby Stephens’, Easy Living, 

"My mother’s an amazing role model. Having famous parents can put a lot of pressure on kids, but she taught me that, underneath it all, it's just a job, a way of earning a crust, and it's not about fame and notoriety, it's about craft and practice." 

"I was waiting for a plane in Johannesburg, and a Scots woman came up to me and asked if my mum was all right. She was a stranger, but she felt this empathy with her because she's moved people – it's not a showbiz thing, it's a deeper connection than that." 

"I was only three or four at the time, so I didn't know what was going on. But looking back, they were hailed as the new Olivier and Leigh, and it must have been so hard for them in that goldfish bowl. I'm just relieved that I don't have to live that way.”

Source: ‘In a Taxi with...Toby Stephens’, Daily Mail, 

“I would probably get something to eat.  Screw the National Gallery and all that!  I get so little time because of the kids that I love those moments when you can just have breakfast, read the paper….”

Source: ‘A big Ask'

TOBY ON HIS CAREER & THEATRE

“Filming is rotten for your health. If you’re on set all day, you’re not going to get home at 9pm and go for a jog. When I go home I try and clean up and be a bit fascistic about my diet for a couple of weeks. Lose the pounds, go to the gym.”

“I hate hanging around. The big joke as an actor is you’re “resting between parts”. It’s not funny if you’re an out-of-work actor. You want to work and I love work.  Each job is a little pod in itself and very fulfilling, then you move on to another one which is completely different.”

Source: ‘Inside Track’

"I went through periods of wanting to be a doctor or a pilot, but I was too thick to become any of them." 

“Seaford College was full of farmer's children. You didn't really go round saying you wanted to be an actor." 

"Anyway, if they made a film of ‘Jane Eyre’, they'd want Russell Crowe, not me.”

"I enjoy that moment when I come off stage and don't go for a drink. The drinking after a show is about trying to keep something alive that is gone. Actually, I love the fact that it has gone."

Source: ‘Home and Dry’, London Times, July 2010

"I'm totally cool with it. I chose this profession. I think I entered into it naively, thinking it wasn't going to be a preoccupation, but inevitably it is because they are in it and my mother is very much evident in this industry and I can't hide from it. Turning up to interviews and saying 'yeah you know what, I'm not talking about my parents' it makes it into some sort of issue like I'm embarrassed about it or ashamed. I'm not, I'm immensely proud of iit.” 

"It was basically the only thing I could do. It was also the way I, strangely, could express myself, through other people's writing. Giving voice to these characters, making these characters into human beings that are believable, that was what I was fascinated in doing and I still am; I love doing it.” 

"There's a lot of theatre I really like at the moment, and there's a lot that I don't like. If you don't like that kind of theatre, take responsibility rather than just moan about it.”

"Performing at the Donmar allowed me to develop as an actor. I think before working at the Donmar I was a different type of actor and I think what happened to me when I worked at the Donmar was revelatory really. Because there you can't hide, the audience is on top of you. I think a lot of actors hide behind various smokescreens of affectation and there you can't. The difficult thing is letting go of it, and the Donmar is the perfect venue to do that.” 

Source: ‘The Big Interview: Toby Stephens’, Official London Theatre,

"Most actors do stuff they're not proud of to pay the bills – and the good thing is that they do the best they can on it. You know: I'm going to polish this turd and I'm going to make it as shiny as I possibly can." 

"It's not out of choice that I play so many historical characters. After 'Pride & Prejudice' happened, anyone who looked or spoke in a certain way was shunted into doing that sort of stuff." 

"Actors don't listen to each other. You're so obsessed with what you're saying or doing that the other person could be talking in Swahili and you wouldn't know."  

Source: ‘This Much I Know, Toby Stephens’, Guardian, July 2010

"I don't want to do the same thing over and over again,”

Source: Leicester Mercury

“Every job you go on is with a new character, a new group of people and a new script, which is wonderful.  You create these relationships and then move on.  But it’s also the worst thing because you never low what’s round the corner.  Very insecure, but extremely exciting.”

“I auditioned for Neil LaBute, and the casting director said, ‘Neil has a problem with British people playing American parts, so can you pretend that you’re American?’  So I spent this sleepless night thinking: where the fuck do I come from?  So I made-up this story about coming from Pittsburgh where my family made shoes or something.  I worked with Neil later on, and he told me that he’d known all along because he’d seen me in a play.  So there was this ridiculous double-bluff going on.  But it taught me a great lesson.”

Source: ‘A Big Ask’

"I'm not nearly that titanically brilliant off-script.  What I love about acting is that it allows you to articulate things you couldn't readily say in normal life. In Coriolanus, I could be this eternally confrontational character, for instance. I'm not saying it's therapy. It's a strange, instinctive understanding of human behaviour that can be quite manipulative.”

Source: ‘Talking to...Toby Stephens’, London Times, April 2010

"We all want to stop the voices in our heads, don’t we, the ones that criticise and question us? Well, when you get a perfect moment on stage, the voices in your head are silenced, which is what we all want really, isn’t it?" 

"The reason I do it, the heart of it all, is that every so often, during some rare performances on stage, there’s a moment when you lose yourself completely. It’s amazing. The audience feel it too — well, it’s their focus that takes you there. And those moments are sublime. I can’t explain it very well, but it’s as if everything suddenly comes together and you’re able to pour yourself completely into the part as if it’s a vessel. It’s a very strange thing to do, but it’s...well, it’s my function, it’s what I love, it’s what I do." 

"It's amazing. The audience feel it too - well it's their focus that takes you there. And those moments are sublime. I can't explain it very well, but it's as if everything comes together and you're able to pour yourself completely into the part as if it's a vessel. It's a very strange thing to do, but it's...well, it's my function, it's what I love, it's what I love, it's what I do."

Source: ‘The Seriously Handsome Toby Stephens’, Spectator,

"Theatre does not pay well, and sometimes I think, 'God, forget art, I just want to earn enough money not to lie awake at nights going 'shit' all the time'. But I keep telling myself I am happy, and I don't think super successful Hollywood types are. They end up living a monstrous, monomaniacal life.” 

“Great daredevil act that you'll get too constipated with terror to do anything." 

"I mean these people trying to sell you 3-D TVs. Imagine it: sitting, eating your TV dinner with your f***ing 3-D glasses on. What insanity are we talking? ‘Avatar’ says quite literally nothing to me. Theatre is experiencing a really exciting, energetic time now, because it's so satisfying to see real human beings in front of you and not some 3-D virtual sh**.”

"Yes and no. A lot of theatre felt quite tired then. It had this atmosphere of being a bit fusty, musty and middle class. My mother started in revue, a child of vaudeville, and was taken on by Olivier. When she came in it was all Noël Coward, everybody smoking cigarettes and isn't it marvellous darling. The National and the Old Vic shook things up with these experimental productions — people like Ingmar Bergman, Franco Zeffirelli, Bill Gaskill and a 24-year-old Peter Hall opening ‘Waiting for Godot'. Extraordinary times.” 

"I love what I do. I absolutely love being here." 

Source: ‘Of Course I'd Act with My Mother’, London Times, 2010

"A lot of people see going to the theatre like rocking up at the cinema, and it's not. They have mobile phones they leave on, they arrive late and want to get a drink in too. But at least people are coming to see us." 

"The theatre is much more challenging than film, where casting is really unimaginative. Filming is tedious . . . it's a grind. You have to maintain focus all day in case you're suddenly called to set, so it's not like you can switch off. In the theatre your day begins at about 4pm, which is a bit difficult when you've got kids. Then, it's about being in the moment and remembering everything you've rehearsed." 

Source: ‘Keeping It Real’, Lucillehowe.com, 2010

"There's a twinge of course, but it's in my pocket more than anything – a job like that would pay the mortgage or the school fees. No, I'd like to keep it at the 'I've seen you in something, not sure what' level. Having a life and being grounded is really important to me. In this business, especially for guys, you can become so obsessed with where you're at and where you think you should be that you get angry and screwed-up, and forget to value what you have.”

"I guess theatre's my creative engine. Television doesn't really stimulate me in the same way, plus there's such a circus surrounding all of that – what premieres or parties you're seen at, what magazines you can bag the cover of. I feel I can't live up to any of that. I get embarrassed by myself. I can't actually watch ‘Britain's Got Talent’. I'm hiding behind the sofa; I can't cope with people humiliating themselves in that way. And that's what the exposure of myself feels like to me." 

"In this business you can become so obsessed with where you think you should be that you forget to value what you have"

Source: ‘In a Taxi with...Toby Stephens’, Daily Mail, 2010

"That's the difference between stage and film, or rather TV, given that we don't have much of a film industry in Britain, or at least one I'm involved in. On TV a lot of stuff isn't well written. You spend a lot of time trying to polish a turd. Whereas in theatre you usually don't have to expend all that energy selling the thing, because the writing is superior." 

Source: ‘It’ll Be Weird to Be Here with My Family History’, Evening Standard

“I’m not nearly that titanically brilliant off-script.  What I love about acting is that it allows you to articulate things you couldn’t readily say in normal life.  In 'Coriolanus' I could be this eternally confrontational character, for instance.  I’m not saying it’s therapy.  It’s a strange instinctive understanding of human behaviour that can be quite manipulatively.”  

“Try as I might, I seem unable to get out of theatre.  I’ve never played the Old Vic before.  I was literally a baby when my parents were here under Olivier, but that’s part of the reason I’m hoping we pull it off.  I hope we do the theatre proud because it’s a magical building, and when you see that right product and the hairs on the back of your neck go up it’s an incredible feeling.  You can’t get it anywhere else.  It’s irreducible.”

Source: Lucy Powell talking to Toby Stephens

“That’s what acting is, playing different parts”

“I want to be on stage, serve a play well, try to replicate human behaviour.  Theatre is a learning process.  It’s about trying to fool people into believing they're watching a real situation, a real person.  Film is more about personalities, which is also difficult but different.  You don’t ask Jack Nicholson to be anything other than Jack Nicholson.”

Source: ‘Toby or not Toby’, Metropolitan Magazine, Eurostar

“What I find bizarre is that the theatre is always there for me.  20 years ago I thought people were moving away from that.  If someone has said that to me ten years ago, that it would the be the bedrock for me, I would have laughed at them because I thought it was on the way out - but ironically people arc coming back to that.”

Source: ‘Acting the part’

TOBY ON THE IAN CHARLESON AWARD

"At the risk of sounding crass, the best thing about this prize is the cash. As a young actor - or certainly as a young stage actor, which is what this prize rewards - you're not earning much, so a cheque for £5,000 really does make a huge difference. I remember that, beforehand, I had been getting quite desperate: after winning, I subsisted on it for quite a while."

TOBY ON HOLLYWOOD

"The strangest thing about Hollywood is that you actually have to lie! When someone asks what you’ve been doing, you can’t just say, 'Well, I’ve been dossing around for six months.' You have to say, 'I’ve been making this really interesting little movie.' The whole town is run by producers who are just in it for the money. And they make bad movies because they don’t want to risk anything. They won’t risk losing money so they end up making boring films. The whole thing is a fiction, I mean the whole town! It shouldn’t even be there, it’s built on a desert!" 

"Trying to crack Hollywood nearly killed me. It’s such a strange world full of phony people. You have to pretend to be really hot shit all the time. You’re constantly in this weird state where the end of the rainbow keeps receding. There’s success all around you — fancy cars, posters of big-budget movies — but you can’t get at it. And you learn the language of false hope. It means that when people say, 'You’re in the mix for this one,' that actually translates as: 'You’ve got no chance.'"

Source: ‘The Seriously Handsome Toby Stephens’, Spectator, July 2010

There was a time when I thought, yeah I want to go out to LA and do a big TV series or get into movies, but now I’ve got kids and Im a homebody, I like bing in London.  But don’t hold me to that, because if I was offered something….:”

Source:’Cop duo wont let crime get in the way’

TOBY ON JAMES BOND

"Every schoolboy’s secret longing! You can’t turn down the chance to be in a Bond movie, can you? And I do love playing baddies, they’re more...interesting." 

Source: ‘The Seriously Handsome Toby Stephens’, Spectator, July 2010

“Too unlikely to take seriously — a baddie and Bond? I think not." 

“Exceedingly silly but great fun; the movie industry has so little imagination. I'd just end up replicating the same English cad. So I backed away from it.” 

Source: ‘Of Course I'd Act with My Mother’, London Times, 2010

“A bit of an aberration”

Source: Daily Mail

“It was a blast, like a strange holiday, and then I went back to my normal life.”

Source: ‘Cop duo wont let crime get in the way’

TOBY ON HERO’S

"If I was to meet Lou Reed or Bob Dylan, I would be totally helpless. Writers and musicians make me feel completely starstruck. Once I did a read-through in front of Ted Hughes and mauled his text so much I could see him twitching." 

Source: ‘This Much I Know - Toby Stephens’, Guardian, July 2010

“Brilliant musicians or songwriters.  Someone like Miles Davis or Bob Dylan.  I’d probably come away hating them - never meet your heroes.”

Source: ‘A Big Ask’

TOBY ON BOOKS

"I absolutely loved ‘Wolf Hall’. I'm intrigued by Henry VIII. He was an utter selfish shit, but you can see why everyone wanted to be around him – people were magnetised. I'm fascinated by those kinds of characters." 

Source: ‘This Much I Know - Toby Stephens’, Guardian, July 2010

"My reading has ground to a halt of late, because we have two small children and I'm so tired I can't focus on anything past seven o'clock in the evening. But, recently, I was filming in South Africa, which afforded me time to read. I gobbled this up; it totally grabbed me. Mantel is brilliant at being able to give real texture to the past; you feel you're there; that you understand these people. It was a present, together with one of her earlier novels, ‘A Place of Greater Safety’, about the French Revolution, which could not be more apposite, as after ‘The Real Thing’, I'm doing ‘Danton's Death’, the play, at the National Theatre. So it's become slightly 'set text,' but I am managing to fit it in between changing nappies." 

‘American Pastoral’ by Philip Roth 

“It’s not a big book, but it's huge in its themes, and I think it's my favourite Roth. I've read all of his novels, and I find him hit or miss, but when he hits, he really hits home. I think this articulates everything Roth had been trying to say about his sense of identity, his Jewishness, the American Dream and how it goes so wrong for the protagonist: it's utterly tragic and compelling. It's one of the greatest modern American novels. I couldn't put it down, and when I did, I felt it had moved me on somewhere beyond where I was before.” 

‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ by Hunter S. Thompson

“This came to me in my twenties, out of the blue, and knocked me sideways. I remember reading it on trains and thinking other passengers must think me insane as I was laughing so much. I love Thompson's visceral, funny writing style and how it really captures a time in history. I was evangelical about this book for a while and kept insisting people read it." 

“'Moby Dick’ is a big guy's book. It's like the Old Testament in scope, but there's a simplicity to the plot, and the irrevocable, tragic path that this man is on- his monomania is a very male thing. I found it totally compelling - aside from the very, very boring bit in the middle, about what the whales look like! Skip that, because this is an amazing read and has at its heart a very human tale. You know it's an old classic, but when you're in the midst of it, it feels present, fresh, and so real."  

‘Tom Jones’ by Henry Fielding 

"My stepfather told me I should read this because it's wonderful, and I remember thinking, 'But it's such an old book.' I was just blown away by the humour - it’s hilarious - and its sauciness and bawdiness. I read it in my teenage years, when I was becoming obsessed by sex and women, so it was perfect because it's so hand-on-hip and has such thigh-slapping gusto. It is a satire, there is a Hogarthian element to it, but it has this jovial goodness of spirit that is so engaging. It has a lust for life in all its glory; it says, 'This is life - and it's wonderful.' I love it still."  

‘The Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Graham

"This is one of those books that become part of you. Ratty, Toad, and Mole became so entrenched in my imagination that, no matter how many times I see it on stage or an animation, it never fulfills how I perceive them in my mind. It changes the way I saw rivers and big old country houses. It's so much of its time, and there's this innocence to it, which I love, this idyll of a past England; in later life we can be cynical about it, but in childhood, it's so lovely to believe in it."  

‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

"I was five when this was read to me, but it wasn't until I was 11 that I came to love it - when I claimed it for myself. It's so wonderfully imaginative and weird. I long to read it to my children, but I have to hold myself back. I think it's important to pass on your literary heritage, but if they don't like it, that's fine - getting on with a book is a chemical thing. The number of times I've tried to read Dickens...I just can't get on with him. I'm really keen for them to read it for themselves. It might be great for me to do these finely wrought performances, but they might not enjoy them as much as I do!" 

“A sense of humanity. All the great plays and novels remind us who we are, and that we're not alone. As an audience or reader, I respond to art that makes me say, 'You know how I feel. You've revealed to me what I already know in my heart of hearts.' And I want to give that to the audience." 

Source: ‘My Life in Books, Toby Stephens’, Easy Living, June 2010

“Christopher Hitchen’s autobiograhy, ‘Hitch-22’ .  I’m fascinated by him - I admire him but I’m not sure that I like him.”

Source: ‘A Big ask’

TOBY ON DRINKING

"It was awful, there was no excuse for it. I had to buy her [Dame Diana Rigg] flowers and crawl down to her dressing room, literally on my hands and knees. It was the beginning of knowing I couldn't go on like that. I had this sense of my father not having achieved what he might have done because of drinking, and I didn't want it for me. I didn't want it for him, either." 

"I look at actors now and they're all totally ripped - the young guys in my cast are all incredibly fit. It's so tough to get on in this job. People have to look after themselves and be sharp. You can't turn up half-cut to do a performance."  

"All that romantic, living-on-the-edge stuff is a load of crap. People talk about Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole - imagine how much better they would have been if they hadn't had a bottle of vodka." 

Source: ‘Home and Dry’, London Times, July 2010

"A big drinker ever since I started. I had given up for a year, but when Robert died I stupidly thought: 'Sod it, I might as well.' I can't have just one. It's a chemical thing. It's such agony to stop I'd rather not start. It's hard enough in this profession without sabotaging yourself. There's this stupid romantic notion about it, but I guarantee, drinking does not make good acting.” 

Source: ‘Of Course I'd Act with My Mother’, London Times, 2010

“Raises its head in the most banal situations. But I don't obsess about it like I used to. It's a choice not to drink. I know I don't want to go down that route again. I've got too much to lose." 

Source: ‘It’ll Be Weird to Be Here with My Family History’, Evening Standard,

“In the old days I used to stay agents in a restaurant ordering bottles of wine and brandy but because I couldn’t do that any more it was all a bit functional.  I’d eat and say, right bill please, so my wife, who drinks like a normal person was constantly getting indigestion.  I was very jumpy, it’s a wonder she stuck around.”

Source: ‘Toby or not Toby’, Metropolitan Magazine, Eurostar

“I used to be of the type who takes a vice to the hilt.  I was a heavy drinker.  It got to the point of being very scary.  It was mainly drink but also anything that was going, one thing leads to another and so on.  I was quite robust then fortunately but there was a point where my liver blew up and I knew I had to do something about it.”  

“Im very dogged, I do something totally or I don’t.  When I gave up booze it was intensely hard for a few weeks and tough for a year, but I’d made up my mind.”

“I haven’t drunk for ten years now.  Once I make a decision its like flicking a switch.” 

“My only vice now is coffee.  Lots of it.  I’d rather do that than anything else.  Every morning I go to a local cafe that does a mean espresso and I drink triple shots often two back to back.  They think it’s hilarious there.  My wife has suffused I cut down because I can get a bit jumpy.”

“It can be a bummer not opening a bottle of wine.  I don’t have that stress reliever choice that most people reach for.  Exercise is good, unleashing all those endorphins.  You have to have something.”

  “There were things about playing Hamlet that can never be replaced by any other part.”

“I was in New York playing Hippolytus in 'Phaedre', and I was rather heavy at the time. The New York Times wrote: "Toby Stephens' Hippolytus needs to get on the Stairmaster."'

“We have the best theatre in the world. We cover every area, we're innovative and we have the best writing, past and present, as well as these great organs like the National and the Royal Court. It's sad that it's not invested in as it could be. Perhaps the fact we have to struggle is one of the things that make us good, though I wish we didn't have to struggle so hard - American acting doesn't have the same depth - only a tiny fraction of the work there is in theatre. However, a lot of British actors are now going straight into TV and doing Hollyoaks, and that's very sad.”

His inspiration:  “Paul Scofield. Because he has enormous soul and depth, as well as being incredibly humorous.”

His big break:  “Being cast as Coriolanus at the RSC aged 24. I was very young for it. The director David Thacker and Adrian Noble, who ran the RSC, took a huge gamble.”

His favourite play: “Macbeth.  It's beautifully wrought and packs an enormous punch.”

His favourite theatre: “The Swan in Stratford. It's a very beautiful theatre and you feel very close to the audience. You can pitch a performance anywhere between very intimate and very full-on.”

Source: ‘Why Britannia still rules the stage’, Sunday June 10 2007, The Observer 

On Reality TV: "I think if you discuss theatre or expose its workings or try to talk about it it's boring," he tells us at the launch of the West End production of "The Country Wife". So he won't appear in one? "If I do, I'll wonder what went wrong." We will remember that...............

Source: Times, 2007

“I think we’re living in a particularly vapid moment in history. The fact that you have a TV series to cast Joseph… It’s sort of appallingly ingenious on the part of Cameron Macintosh, but to me it’s just banal. Then again I’m a ‘serious’ actor and I’m probably being an old fart about it! If you ask me, I am disgusted that there are so few serious plays on. It’s not all doom and gloom though. I think the whole £10 a season at the National Theatre is great and it’s getting young people in.” 

Source: ‘Charming chameleon’, Angel & North, 2007 

On playing Bond: “I didn’t expect to ever play him in a visual sense, but to play him on radio was a great opportunity, because Hugh Whitemore had gone back to the original story and the original character, which I think was an interesting challenge to me, because I had so many preconceptions of what I’d seen – we all know the movies. In fact, until I did this I’d never actually read any of the books, so reading Dr No was a real experience for me, because I realised how far it had come from the original conception of Bond. And also I think the radio adaptation is very faithful to the original book. It seems very dated in a way, very post war, with the whole idea of MI6 being still very much a wartime thing. I think nowadays the whole idea of Bond is very postmodern.” 

Source: ‘Meet the New James Bond’, SFX, 2007

“I really wasn’t planning on being in a Bond movie. When I heard that they wanted me to do it I was completely shocked because, prior to that, I didn’t really have a track record on movies. But of course working on a Bond film is, for us in the UK, about as big as it gets.” 

Source: ‘Charming Chameleon’, Angel & North, 2007

“It was a blip. Great fun, but I avoided roles like that after. I didn’t want to end up as he Brit who always plays the Hollywood baddie.” 

Source: ‘Mr. Rochester Takes a Bow’, The Times, 2007

"I don't know where that came from. I mean, Christ, there was enough fuss about Craig being blond. Can you imagine if they'd given it to a ginger? There'd be assassination plots."

  Source: ‘Prodigal Son’, Guardian, May 2007

On being a Dad: “What is great about having a kid is that it stops you being so self-obsessed. I think that it has grounded me. That’s a really good thing because one can lose perspective sometimes. It’s just really nice having somebody else to worry about and not just myself!” 

Source: ‘Charming Chameleon’, Angel & North, 2007

"I have reached a point in my life where I need to start worrying about someone other than myself. It's so wonderful having this person that you can say: 'I care more about you than I do about anything else, including my career.'" 

Source: ‘Restoring His Humour’, London Evening Standard, 2007

“I think I’ll make him go through every other option before getting into this business. My parents  tried to make sure that it was what I wanted to do. When you’ve been in the profession you wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It is incredibly creative, the hours are fantastic, but it is becoming such a hard place to be in.” 

  “After months of negotiations we came up with Elijah or Eli. It became an obsession. We were in a maternity-wear shop in LA and they had a book of boys’ names, and while my wife was trying on jeans I was going: ‘Darling, what do you think of Orion?’ I lost any sense of direction.” 

Source: ‘Mr. Rochester Takes His Bow’, The Times, 2007

On living in London: “I have lived in London for about 21 years. I have been north, west and east, but for me when we moved to the East End it was sort of like coming home. I love it there – it just feels right for me.” 

On fandom: “I’m not mobbed or anything like that! Rochester was such a great character. He’s a complex man who ostensibly seems to be a rather depressed, grumpy and brooding person, but he’s exposed to be this very damaged, sensitive and vulnerable man.” 

“Physically I have looked different from part to part. For example, in Jane Eyre I had all these black hair extensions and they dyed me darker so most people don’t actually recognize me on the street." 

On his parentage: “People assume that if you come from one of those acting families, then it’s somehow easier for you. . . . I actually posit that it’s harder because you have all of that to carry as well. I’m extremely proud of them, but it’s taken me a long time to create my own career rather than being seen in relation to them.” 

Source: ‘Charming Chameleon’, Angel & North, 2007

"There was a time when I was obsessed with my father  and that wasn't healthy because he wasn't around for a lot of the time. . . . He had an enormously successful career but he also did himself out of a lot of work, which isn't the case for me any more. Just recently, in terms of my work, I think I can finally stand independently of my father." 

  Source: ‘Restoring His Humour’, London Evening Standard, 2007

“It’s such a tricky thing. I’m blown away by what she does so I just don’t know whether I have the chops. And to me above everything she’s my mother. I really value that intimacy. I’m immensely proud to be her son, but at the same time I don’t want to be defined purely by that. It took a huge effort to get out of the gravity of that orbit. I’d learn so much, but another part of me is frightened of it.” 

  “My parents were actually very private people. It was not a house with actors coming and going like in a Noël Coward play. But I did see a lot of theatre when I was a child and that must have seeped into me. By the time I was about 15 I’d seen a huge amount of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Chekhov.” 

  Source: ‘Mr. Rochester Takes His Bow’, The Times, 2007

"They tried quite hard to make sure it was what I wanted to do. It wasn't, 'Oh great, he's going into the biz as well.' It was more, 'If this really is what you want to do, why? How many plays have you actually seen?" 

"I find it easier now. I'm as objective as I'll ever be and can appreciate what mum is doing. I can look with technical admiration at how she does something, like going from a big laugh to deep pain in a moment. But, when I was young, it was embarrassing, to be honest. She'd walk on and I'd be like, 'Oh God, what's she doing? Why's she dressed like that? And, oh God, she's got to kiss that man.' I mean, I remember going to see Oedipus. And that completely f***ed my head up." 

Source: ‘Prodigal Son’, The Guardian, May 2007

On his Mum: “She is incredibly, incredibly pleased. I know the way people see her it might seem odd, but she is very good. And parenthood is terribly moving for me. Having lost both my father and stepfather, our family was dwindling, so it is really lovely to see it expand.”

  Source: ‘Mr. Rochester Takes His Bow’, The Times, 2007

  "She can be tricky. She's a very bright, very strong person. By and large, she gets away with it in the profession, because people know she's as hard on herself as anyone else. If she didn't deliver, people would be like, 'Do you mind?' But she can be ... I grew up around it. It's incredibly entertaining and sometimes quite nasty to be on the end of it. You just have to appreciate the wit behind it. I remember when she started to do it with my wife and my wife said, 'She was really rude to me.' And I said, 'Welcome to the family, you've been embraced into the bosom.'" 

Source: ‘Prodigal Son’, The Guardian, May 2007

On being an actor:  “I find it sad that one’s range is not fully used. You become a totem for some sort of aspect, whether it’s class or a look, which is boring. I’m known as the one who always plays the villain, that’s what I get even though I’ve done a lot of other things.”

  Source: ‘Mr. Rochester Takes His Bow’, The Times, 2007

“I genuinely have no idea. If I ever read that actors know what they’re doing, they are either immensely successful movie stars or they are just lying! I could go and do a big movie, or maybe TV, or even do another play. Then again, I could just sit around on my buns for months on end not doing anything!” 

"When I was at school, I discovered fairly early on that I was rubbish academically –I wasn’t going to go to university or anything like that. The one thing that I could do was take other people’s words and give them a voice. That was something I found very liberating. I knew where my talent was and I couldn’t really do anything else… Well, I probably could have, but I’d have been miserable. It wasn’t like running away to the circus – it was something that was very practical because my mum did it day in, day out.” 

Source: ‘Charming Chamelon’, Angel & North, 2007

"I never believe actors in interviews who, when they're asked what they're doing next, reel off a whole bunch of things. They must be lying because I never know if anything is coming next. . . . I have moments when I loathe what I do, generally when I'm not doing it. I get very nervous and I lose confidence and wonder why the hell I'm just sitting around watching daytime TV." 

"I don't get asked to do comedy very often. I think my upbringing doesn't help: the posh voice and looks means I'm often pigeonholed as a serious actor. To do straight-out comedy really liberates a side of me that people don't often see." 

Source: ‘Restoring His Humour’, London Evening Standard, 2007

“Parts of me would love to make huge movies and huge amounts of money. But these days so much is about what was the last thing you were in, and I don’t have that kind of track record. I’m sure if I chiselled away I’d get somewhere but I didn’t want to go down that route. Besides, Hollywood can be soulless.” 

“You meet the producers, then the network, then more suits. Brits are just cheap labour over there. But it can work out. Matthew Rhys was at the Royal Shakespeare Company with me and he’s fantastic in Brothers and Sisters. Hugh Laurie completely reinvented himself. I’d give my right arm to be in something like The Sopranos, but another part of me loves what I do here.” 

Source: ‘Mr. Rochester Takes His Bow’, The Times, 2007

"The longer I'm in this job, the more I realise how lucky I am because it's getting harder. It just seems to be diminishing. There seem to be no films at all and, in theatre, it's harder and harder to get audiences in." 

Source: ‘Prodigal Son’, The Guardian, May 2007

“I took five months off to go to New Zealand with my wife. When I came back I stupidly assumed I’d get offers and there was complete silence,. For a while things looked bad. Then Betrayal at the Donmar came up, then this. Relief all round. My agent said, ‘Please don’t do that again.’ ” 

  Source: ‘Mr Rochester takes his bow’, Bruce Dessau, 

“Physically I have looked different from part to part. For example, in Jane Eyre I had all these black hair extensions and they dyed me darker so most people don’t actually recognize me on the street.  I’m not mobbed or anything like that! Rochester was such a great character. He’s a complex man who ostensibly seems to be a rather depressed, grumpy and brooding person, but he’s exposed to be this very damaged, sensitive and vulnerable man.” 

Source: ‘Charming Chameleon’, Angel & North,  Sept 2007

On alcohol:  "I think I've dealt with it. It's one of those things. I had his alcoholism. I have it. Luckily, I got out of it by the time I was 30. I'd watched Robert die from it but, stupidly, carried on drinking. I wish I could say it was some kind of psychological torture. But it's purely a physical need. I am designed to cope with huge quantities of alcohol and to want more. As soon as I have some, I want more. And my life is just much easier not having any, although I miss it sometimes."

"This whole romantic myth of Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton gliding through Hamlet on two bottles of vodka. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work. How fucking marvellous would they have been without it?"

"I think she may have guessed. She'd been through it all with Robert. I've talked to her about it since and she's been incredibly supportive."

2004 : In Toby’s Words

On life since Corialanus:

"It's really odd when someone tells me it's been ten years, it's quite a shock and I'm depressed because the time has just gone so quickly. It was also a shock to realise that it was ten years since I'd done any Shakespeare. So it felt right to me that I should get back to it."

"Doing a lot of TV, films, plays in London, what actors do"  

"I've done a lot of films in the past two years and I was itching to go back to the theatre. I'll be fine until I actually get into the theatre and then it will be terrifying."

Source: Happiness is a Part Called Hamlet, Conventry Evening Telegraph, July 2004

"They were seeing all the youngish British actors for the part and I met the director and that led to a screen test and after months of major wrangles with MGM, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, the producers, wanted me to do it but the financiers desperately didn't and were after some big American star. But it was completely unexpected and I certainly wasn't aiming to be in a Bond movie. I enjoyed it thoroughly, it was pretty hard not to.”

"MGM were incredibly graceless and that was hard because you were always aware at any moment that they could fire you. I remember talking to Pierce Brosnan about this and he remembers when he was cast as Bond nobody spoke to him about the rushes or his performance for 11 weeks. Normally, they'll come to you after the first session of rushes and say 'yeah we love what you're doing, you look great' or some bollocks complement to make you feel better."

"This will do for a while, I'm really glad I made the decision to come back and do this. For me doing theatre is soul-food because with film and TV you don't have editorial choice, your performance is governed by other people: directors, producers, editors, cameramen. While on stage no one is going to stop you in full flow and say 'no I don't like that'."

"I think after doing this I'll have to make some money and also get my hand back in with some film and TV."

Source: ‘Prince for a play’, Northern Echo, Thursday 28th Oct 2004.

"I was quite shocked to find out that it was 10 years - where did all that time go? But I was also shocked to find it was 10 years since I'd done any Shakespeare so it felt right to me that I should go back to it "

Source: Toby Pays Respect to Outrageous Fortune, The Journal, Oct 2004

“If success happens big early on and you’re a huge star, you will get messed up. Not that I was a huge star, but I did have some success when I was young.”

“In television and film, it’s not about whether you can act but whether you can look the part. So many directors come from commercials and pop videos; they’re wonderful technicians who are great behind the camera, but they have no idea what it takes to get a performance out of an actor.”

“But instead of carrying on drinking and feeling sorry for myself, I had to ask myself: do I want to be a dumb actor who just goes out and looks pretty or do I want to be somebody who is genuinely creative? And I’m glad I chose the latter.”

“Alcoholism is never over; if I went back to drinking it would rapidly take control of my life. I’m very glad I stopped doing it. I think Robert was unfairly stamped as purely an alcoholic; he had mental problems as well. When I was younger, I saw that devil-may-care attitude as heroic and appealing.” 

“But the older you get, the more you realise it’s pretty horrible. If you carry on down that road, it’s a pretty dismal, small tunnel that you’re in.”

Source: Coventry Evening Telegraph July 2004

"It got really bad when I was regularly drinking alone . . . I wasn't an unpleasant drunk, but I realised my relationship with booze is all or nothing. . . . All I will say is that alcohol makes you lose all sense of moral as well as physical perspective. . . . Giving up alcohol was partly a pragmatic decision . . . I was too young to play character parts but I was starting to look like a character actor - I was fat, red like a tomato."

Source: My Father Was a Big Personality, Evening Standard, Nov 2004

On Hollywood:

"They can accept me as a villain, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life playing villains.”

Source: From Smiling Villain to Sweet Prince, Maureen Paton, London Times, Nov 2004

Toby’s Reflections on his father, Sir Robert Stephens, and step-father, Beverly Cross:

"I didn't think about what he would have done with Hamlet, he'd have done it wonderfully but in a very different way from me. No, obviously, being here I think about him a lot."

Source: ‘Prince for a play’, Northern Echo, Thursday 28th Oct 2004.

"It certainly was helpful having his input. But it's also lovely being here without all that. You know, 'You're on your own, pal.'"

Source: Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times

Sir Robert was always offering advice “which I couldn't use, because it was always about how he would do the part". 

"Robert was a big personality and, when you're young, there's something very appealing about the image he had as a roisterdoister.  I'd grown up with the stability of this wonderful stepfather, but that meant I could see my real father as a romantic figure." 

“Bev was a brilliant person to talk to during the rehearsals of a play, and Robert was very hands-on, very good at the technical aspects. I was in the dressing room Robert had used in Stratford, and I was really moved to see how many of the crew remembered him fondly.”

Source: Evening Standard Nov 2004

"A huge prop is knocked away and leaves you to reassess the world,"

"With Robert it was always very confusing, because it felt like a betrayal to my stepfather.  After they'd both died, I thought I'd be a fool to not get to know my sister better. And now I have a niece and nephew."

“It’s been lovely; I now have a nephew and niece through her who were desperate to know me, and I felt incredibly moved by that.” 

Source: From Smiling Villain to Sweet Prince, Maureen Paton, London Times, Nov 2004

"I think Robert was unfairly stamped as purely an alcoholic; he had mental problems as well. When I was younger, I saw that devil-may-care attitude as heroic and appealing. . . . But the older you get, the more you realise it’s pretty horrible. If you carry on down that road, it’s a pretty dismal, small tunnel that you’re in.”

Source: From Smiling Villain to Sweet Prince, Maureen Paton, London Times, Nov 2004

Toby on his Mum, Dame Maggie Smith:

"I wouldn't mind doing a scene in a film, but I want to retain that compartmentalisation.  I'm not comfortable about people prying into my private life and I don't think anyone's particularly interested... and also it would be incredibly boring for them." 

Source: ‘Prince for a play’, Northern Echo, Thursday 28th Oct 2004.

"I think there'd be something a bit naff about that  . . . I wouldn't mind a short scene in a film but not a play." 

Source: ‘Toby Pays Respect to Outrageous Fortune’, The Journal, Oct 2004

“It’s not something I’m particularly worried about because I’m not trying to be better than my mother; and I will never be directly compared with her because of my gender. But we are all individuals.  In many ways this is a ridiculous profession to be in; it’s a very superficial world. If you want to get on in the business in terms of TV and film, you have to go to parties and be seen at premieres. But I would rather walk on broken glass. When I’m just being myself, I don’t want to have to perform. Otherwise you are performing all the time.” 

Source: ‘From Smiling Villain to Sweet Prince’, Maureen Paton, Times Nov 2004

"It's from her that I inherited my very practical sense of what acting is," he says. "You know, it's not some hocus-pocus spiritual thing. It's fundamentally about doing what you do to earn a buck, and if you can move people along the way and make them understand something, then great."

Source: Sunday Times

"My mother wasn't one of those divorced women who pour poison into their children.  The thing is, it's not something I want to run away from.”

"I'm incredibly proud of them, and, if you try to fight that kind of association, you will destroy yourself. As I get older, it's easier to separate the personal from the professional with my mum.  If it's any sort of burden to me that my parents are in the same profession, it's a burden for them too. Suppose I had turned out to be dreadful. It would have been really embarrassing for them.”

Source: Evening Standard Nov 04

Toby on ‘The Rising’:

"It's a Bollywood film in the fact that half the cast are Indian and half are English but I think it's the biggest film they've ever done, the highest budget and a huge undertaking. They've done two versions, one in Hindi and the other one is in English. So I had to learn huge tracts of dialogue in Hindi which was very time-consuming, but I loved the experience."

Source: ‘Prince for a play’, Northern Echo, Thursday 28th Oct 2004.

“'It’s great fun but sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. It can be complete madness. . . . It can be frustrating.  And it's been exhausting. Like, ‘Toby, here’s another page of Hindi to learn by 5 o’clock’ . . . oh, and by the way, you’ve got to spend the rest of the day on horseback’.” 

Source: ‘Colonel Wheeler Gets His Five Seconds’, screenindia.com, April 2004

"Their actors are treated like gods - it's frightening. I like being able to rove around."

"I think it's the highest budget film they've ever done in India." 

Source: The Journal Oct 04

Toby on marriage:

“I’m very lucky because my wife is incredibly supportive with no sense of competitiveness between us, which can happen when actors marry. But it’s also difficult to marry people outside the business who will understand what a weird job it is when you have to do love scenes and achieve instant simulated intimacy.   The crew on a film will actually ask you, how you stop getting an erection if the actress in a love scene is particularly good-looking. I say it’s because there are 20 people looking at me and it’s on camera! There’s something so unsexy about it; once you have done it, you’ll never think it’s appealing again.”

Source: Coventry Eve Telegraph Jul 2004

"I hope it will be soon, but you can never take these things for granted. We very deliberately decided that we wanted to be married for at least two years before the little people started coming along, so we've done that and now we want to get on with it."

"My mother is quietly looking forward to it. She's very good in that she hasn't pressured me, but I can tell she's longing for it to happen."

Well, we all know now it took a lot longer!

Toby on the RSC:

“The RSC had become very much a design theatre under Adrian Noble. If you’re not trusting the actors to do the play, you’re saying the audience needs scenery to hold their attention. The energy that the National now has needs to be pumped into the RSC”

"The RSC gave me my first big break in the theatre. It's like coming home again and it's great to be back here and part of the company again. Part of the decision to come here was to be part of this place again.” 

"I've done a lot of films in the past two years and I was itching to go back to the theatre. I'll be fine until I actually get into the theatre and then it will be terrifying." 

Source: Coventry Evening Telegraph July 2004

"It was quite creepy at first.  Because the building's the same, it all smells the same, but you're with a new bunch of people and you've moved on. You're not the same person."

Source:’Like Hamlet, he's part of a dynasty. But it won't paint Toby Stephens into a corner’, Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times, July 2004

Toby on Toby:

"I have one of those physiques that goes south extremely quickly,"

“Giving up alcohol was partly a pragmatic decision. I was too young to play character parts but I was starting to look like a character actor - I was fat, red like a tomato.  When I was younger, I thought there would come a time when I wouldn't have to audition, but now I realise that it's the nature of the business that I'll have to keep chasing parts. But I know now that I don't want to be a film star, or a celebrity. I just want to be an actor who people respect, and want to see.”

Source: Evening Standard Nov 2004

Toby’s bedtime reading:

“Bob Dylan's Chronicles, which I'm absolutely loving. He's got this writing style which, maybe I'm fooling myself, but I utterly believe is like him talking - kinda folksy, almost like a Jack Kerouac narrative. I'm also re-reading Birthday Letters. I'm not an enormous reader of poetry but it's one of the most stunning pieces I've ever read.”

In Toby’s mind : an art gallery or porn cinema?

“Or a sewer. Anyone who is asked this question has to answer, if they're being honest, it's a porn cinema. Although as I've been with my wife for a long time now it's become a sort of art-house porn cinema. With tasteful sepia-tinted films running. There's nothing really squalid going on in there at the moment.”

Toby’s musical choice:

“Maybe this is part of me getting old, or older, but I've started getting really into jazz. I've become one of those people who gets upset when people start talking in jazz clubs. I am beginning to understand it, you know, as a form.  I just bought all the software upgrades and downloaded this Chet Baker CD and then I thought, this is really unsatisfying. I can't unwrap it, look at the cover sleeve, pore through all those ridiculous details, you know. I'm a bit sad like that.”

Toby’s cultural passion at 14:

“I have to be honest: masturbation was my only obsession. I think that's true of any 14-year-old. I don't think that I had any cultural life. See, guys when they're 14 are really very sad people. It's all about self-gratification.  I'd love to say I was reading Yeats, but...”

Toby’s ideal job:

“A fantastic piano player. I have a friend who can go anywhere, sit down and play jazz, classical, whatever. To me that is a sort of magic, to be able to do that.”

The realistic alternative?

“Collecting trolleys in Sainsbury's car park!”

Which painting most corresponds with his vision of himself?

“This sounds a bit peculiar but it's a Lucian Freud painting and it's this guy who looks like he could have been a boxer. Very large chin, smaller cranium than chin. It's a distorted face, almost. With these tiny eyes. It's quite menacing, but also vulnerable. That's what I love about Freud. Other painters immortalise people but there's something mortal about what he paints.”

Does he feel like that when he looks in the mirror?

“Well, er, yes. You see the faults. I'm definitely one of those people who thinks "urgh" instead of thinking, "Oh, I look so loooovely".

Toby on parties:

“I loathe 'em. I rarely go to them. You just get by on chit chat, and I find that quite vapid. When I was young of course I used to love parties because I'd hopefully go and pull somebody. Or I'd show up and get completely plastered. But now I don't drink any more, and that brings its own problems because one finds there's almost a voyeuristic thing going on. If you stay at a party too long and people are getting plastered and saying things they really shouldn't be saying, you can remember it all the next day. That I find quite sinister.”

Toby on childhood:

“I think you never really shake your childhood. I still have the behaviour patterns. It shows a sort of lack of will to actually iron out the childish things. I get very impatient about things. If I make up my mind, I want it now. I've got a childish sense of humour. I'm incredibly scatological. Jokes about farts. It's pathetic. But it makes me laugh.”

Toby on being cool:

“Well. If I say, yes I am, I am patently uncool but if I say I am uncool I am obviously trying to be cool, which is deeply uncool. So that's a trick question.

Toby on who he’d like to have met:

“I would love to meet Bill Shakespeare. Obviously the first question I'd ask would be, "What can I buy you?" and then I'd just say, "Be honest, what did you think of my Hamlet?"

Source: Independent, Dec 2004

Toby on drinking and not drinking:

"But instead of carrying on drinking and feeling sorry for myself, I had to ask myself: do I want to be a dumb actor who just goes out and looks pretty or do I want to be somebody who is genuinely creative? And I’m glad I chose the latter. . . . Alcoholism is never over; if I went back to drinking it would rapidly take control of my life. I’m very glad I stopped doing it."