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Rufus Sewell |
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Ian Fleming's James Bond, the man with the license to thrill, is being brought into audiobook format. We talk exclusively to debonair actor Rufus Sewell about how it feels to read for our ears only as the voice of 007.
You've just finished recording thirteen of Ian Fleming's original James Bond titles, which means you've tackled not just 007 himself but all the Bond girls and villains. Which characters were your favourites to 'voice'?
I think I'd have to say the villains were always my favourites. I think that's partly because bad guys are always fun but you also get the feeling that Fleming loved writing them. They always have so much more to say and can never resist revealing their evil plans, even though it would probably be a little more astute to button it.
Were there any downsides to reading all those Bond books?
How do you differentiate between the voices of fourteen different Chinese/Russian/Jamaican/German people in the same room without resorting to lisps, falsettos and booming basses and nasal twangs? Answer: Don't.
Your career took off with lead roles in period dramas including Middlemarch, Cold Comfort Farm and The Woodlanders, yet your more recent roles - such as evil baddie Count Adhemar in A Knight's Tale and as a satanist in Bless the Child - inspired The Observer to call you 'the latest challenger in the malevolence stakes'. Is this change of direction a conscious effort?
No, not really. I can't really allow myself to play any more bad guys because it's getting a little boring; to do and to watch I'd say. I think the most sensible thing is merely to be popped into a new pigeonhole every couple of years and thereby keep working, and get a little variation in my life. I've always thought that versatility was my greatest - probably only - strength and it would be boring for me not to get the chance to show that over the years.
It's become a bit of a journalistic cliche to describe you as 'smouldering', 'Byronic' and 'saturnine' - but I'm guessing that's not how you'd describe yourself. What would your epitaph be?
'Please pour wine through funnel below.'
Last year you played the title role in John Osborne's Luther at the National Theatre. There's a good quote from The Independent which goes some way to describing the intensity, both physical and emotional, of this role: 'Rufus Sewell's charismatically haunted, hollow-cheeked Luther spits out his set-piece sermons like someone vomiting red-hot tin tacks'. How did you cope with such a role? Is filming any easier than theatre?
The role of Luther was frightening to undertake because when I read it I didn't really understand him as a person. I was not brought up under any religion and my knowledge of Catholicism was limited. Through the course of rehearsing the play, though, I just started to empathise more and more - to an extent that I could not have imagined before I started.
That to me is the real pleasure of doing any kind of role, be it in theatre, film or TV. The medium makes a difference in terms of technique and audience response, but the pleasure and frustration remain essentially the same.
Make those Rufus fact fans out there happy: tell us one little-known fact about yourself.
I've given up smoking (after nearly twenty years).
Does your celebrity ever freak you out?
My celebrity is Lionel Blair. And yes, he does sometimes freak me out.
You seem to be doing pretty well with this acting lark, but if you hadn't got into acting, what would have paid the bills?
Camden Council, hopefully.
Finally, a Bond film question: who's the best Bond?
Connery - because he always looked like he enjoyed killing people.
