Skip to main content

One Knight Only: what we learned about Judi, Maggie, Ian and Derek in their Zoom knees-up

In an event for the theatrical charity Acting for Others, Dench, Smith, McKellen and Jacobi spoke about their highs and lows, superstitions and acting tips

They are, according to their pal Kenneth Branagh, the “greatest quartet of Shakespearean actors on the planet”. And on Sunday evening, for the charity get-together One Knight Only, hosted by Branagh on Zoom, Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench joined Sirs Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi to share acting anecdotes, tell Christmas cracker jokes and speak a bit of verse. It was pure thespian gold – here’s a handful of revelations.

Ian McKellen shared the stage with a ghost …
At least, that’s what Patrick Stewart told him. When they were midway through Waiting for Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket 10 years ago, Stewart turned to look at McKellen and “his face was ashen and he stopped acting”, remembered McKellen. “He said afterwards he had seen a man standing next to me in a brown overall jacket.” They decided it was a deceased stage manager. Apparently, Stewart often sees ghosts and before he does he always smells bacon. (Perhaps it’s ham, suggests Dench.)

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/36iuyXg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One giant leap: meet the new generation of male ballet stars

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise ‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top. I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dita Von Teese: ‘Even when I was a bondage model, I had big-time boundaries’

As the star dives into a giant glass of fizz for her first online extravaganza, she talks about this new golden age for burlesque, why the French Strictly gives her costume problems – and how #MeToo has changed her Dita Von Teese is looking divine. Her lips are that signature red, she’s wearing 1950s cat eye glasses, and her black hair falls in a thick wave across a Snow White skin – and all this on the unglamorous stage of a glitchy Zoom call. Only knowing Von Teese from her femme fatale image, her teasingly aloof burlesque performances, and her time in the tabloids as former wife of goth rocker Marilyn Manson , you might expect an icy demeanour, an impermeable mystique. So it’s surprising to discover quite how normal she is: chatty, self-deprecating, not very vampish. It’s easy to see traces of Heather Sweet, the “super shy” girl from small-town Michigan who transformed into Von Teese. The reason for our conversation is a new film, Night of the Teese, made with director Quinn Wils...
Post a Comment
Read more