Dirk Bogarde, 78 (1921-1999), UK actor

[Music] the idol of the audience was how they described Dirk Bogarde handsome charming and stylish in Britain of the mid fifties he was the nation's biggest box of his draw his popularity outstripping that of any star from Hollywood under contract with the rank organisation started out playing villains and films like the Blue Lamp but his star soared after he was cast as dr. Simon sparrow in the hugely successful doctor series and from that moment on pinup status was assured in the early 60s Bogart had just left rank and he went to Hollywood to play the composer Franz Liszt in song without end the film was not a success but the role earned him a Golden Globe nomination and it's the starting point for this conversation with Robert Robinson from the program picture parade you're one of the few English screen actors who command attention in America commandery of attention which is underwritten with real money and I wonder what it is over and above your capacity to act which singles a person out for that kind of attention I don't know you said international stardom but I don't know what that means I'm not an international attention with that in view I suppose with you I don't really know what you mean there Robert because I've only done two films in America one day what to be desperate it obviously couldnt get anybody else I'm sure you're being well they were they want special time no they wanted a special type of actor which had to be an actor it sort of known in Europe in the Commonwealth for that market and who spoke English with an English an accented accent for lists you know because they didn't think it'd be acceptable if he came from Milwaukee but they could have picked almost did it work for that yet they picked you I think what I'm really referring to is that the quality of watchable nice which allows an actor to walk into a room and read that phone directory and somehow it's it's exciting just that it's it's this quality that I'd be interested to ask you about IP officer you tell me what it was because I know exactly what you mean I have the same compulsion for myself and I see something on a screen or in the theater I don't know why I'm looking at them very often I suppose it's this extraordinary an ill-used and much overworked phrase star quality which I don't believe anybody's ever been able to define I know that when I was in Hollywood I was absolutely amazed to see how many of the great and lasting stars were in fact not frankly handsome people or beautiful women but had quite qualities of ordinariness now maybe it's something to do with that quality of ordinariness of high sophistication if you can go as that means high simplicity doesn't it sophistication or if I go they're quite wrong well I think it's a quality of relaxed miss perhaps and and some something to do too with runners and I suppose sincerity for a film actor you live a rather retired and private life we seldom read of you in the show columns is this do you avoid publicity is it distasteful no no no no no I don't avoid publicity that makes it sound like something really hard and unpleasant I don't think published is always necessary I think sometimes publicity is ugly and I think it's vulgar and I think then you should avoid it and I think sometimes it's wiser prop perhaps to to leave it all alone than to dabble with a little of it I think that to publicize your film is absolutely splendid you should go to a premiere if you have to I don't like it because I don't like crowds and you should go and talk about it to the press if they wish to see you and you should speak to you on picture parade as we're doing no but I don't think it's of any concern to anybody but me whether I take my dog for a walk on my head on my head or in a basket or what I had for breakfast or how I go to bed you must teach some of your colleagues I know but they trouble because there are other people who absolutely love everybody knowing exactly what they do with it Heather go for a walk and how they do we can't all be exactly the same dull world if we were I was always brought up which sounds very pompous I can't help it two even had a old saying little boy seen and not heard it was very deeply drilled into me as a child and indeed to all my my brows and sisters and I'm afraid it kind of sticks now I can't put it any better than that do you think though that the public should do you think there's anything against the public getting to know the actual man behind the behind the illusion which appears on the screen it's a terribly tough one to answer you know that one because I don't agree anyway and I'm quite alone on this I think the excitement of the cinema and the theater is its quality evolution of magic of not quite of this world and I think that if you know that your favorite actors bawled all that he's got spots or he's shorter than you were you know it's gone but if it's a good at use and it wouldn't depend no I'm never gonna do mechanics would you great mistake to know about in the Canada's and if you know your fellow film actors very well and I imagine this doesn't spoil your enjoyment of the films they make it's a tricky one isn't it really um I think it away I think in a way truly it does not destroy it but I think it does harm it a little my enjoyment of their work I remember with Kate Kendell who was one of my greatest and dearest friends I was never absolutely convinced that Kate I was never quite satisfied with science conceded and impertinence but you wonder what I mean I never quite satisfied that Kate had done the best possible job in the film because I knew her far too well I knew every trick every moon and I was able therefore not always to see the work that she really was doing so he did kind of familiarity did that kind of blunt the the brilliance of her work for me a little you do little stage work now and I think I read somewhere that the last on the last three occasions you appear in the theater you became ill and as a consequence you decided that you do no more stage work is this resolution holding good yes it is it's a great temptation I probably I met everybody promised faith if looks as I was moving towards a stage door they had to shoot me the thing about it really was that that I've been off the stage for far too long and too long a gap I mean it to be off the stage for three years and do say twelve pictures which is what I easily have been doing three and year or nine pictures what is my mathematics it's too long a time to go suddenly straight into a play with all the intensity and the work and the necessary motion you're tired before you start then you want to go on tour and click the play into straight and it's a tremendous concentration and if you are a bit rundown at the time you know you're you're liable to pick up a bug and then you get this panic oh gosh if I'm off you know what'll happen so it's not worth it I do I must confess to I am appalled at the length of time the player has to run I think this year's run or you know Moyes absolutely point but isn't this part of an actor's the roughest green for an actor it is but you're not talking to one of the great dedicated axes it is indeed part of an actor's trade but I don't think it's ever a part of an actor's tread to play one part without any break or any relief for over a year or more loot Lee Seine I think to do what Peter Hall is doing now with Stratford switching over to the orange is terribly exciting and the actors get arrested get a break in between they can prepare the next production and there Emile was always because they're constantly being entertained themselves by the newest of the part but to stamp on night after night in my fair lady I don't have anybody ever does you you've been successful for a long time now apart from talent has luck played a part in it as well as all talent yes III think luck plays a tremendous amount in everybody's life but particularly in in our life in the in the movies it's the sort of mixture of all the things but it's being in the right place at the right time maybe even a silly thing is meeting the right man at the right party you know he said he says my god job just what I wanted why didn't I think of you luck has a tremendous part of our job I mean you can plan it all ahead very carefully say I'll do this kind of picture and then that Canon very the roles but at the end of it all you know there's this awful element of luck which still comes in a few months after that interview came the reefs of a film that arguably changed Bogart's career forever victim I played oh gods wife it was directed by Basil Deardon and the first movie to ever use the word homosexual many now say victim helped change attitudes to homosexuality in Britain Mogens part was a sympathetic gay character a successful married barrister who risked his career fighting array of blackmailers here he talks to Mary Norman about what drove him to tackle such a controversial role I thought when I was a point of state that you could make in this thing you might as well use the cinema to make a statement as opposed to just flopping around with the writer you know a less profile for every shot your permanent hair permed and your teeth capped and oh it was self discussed I think I was too old you see it started 18 I started to trend 270 it should always look very young of course well unfortunately it's been the family but then you will walk to about 40 playing 30 year olds and that most guys about 40 41 I was always playing 30 30 then they say well you can get away with 25 maybe even feel more disgusting than little kids writing letters saying we love you we love them to marry well as sort of a pop singer well anyway all that was beginning to change when I decided that the wind of change was coming with this pop thing when Bill Haley starving I mean I realized that the film stars are going to go out so at least I was absolutely right on that school yes indeed you when I teared off into the right kind of movies before the bottom fell out and popular cinema because all the fan adoration that I had had for years years and years from the girls and teenyboppers important things like that now and the people like make a lot quit and sir gradually had before me they disappeared they went into a mist after four little boys from local called meeting about that time that time I cleared yes because you'd made victim by their I had met all the nice offensive and victim of course was a was a considerable breakthrough as a film it was a big break it breaks was the film is very brave film it's only the basil deardons never been respected or rewarded sufficiently for our well basil died and he got that a bit Rosser shames with him bother say it he actually alter the course of Indra cinema as much as Lucy do because of the first it was the first film actually to take homosexuality as a serious subject was yes it was the first film to take it seriously subject and presented as a serious and rape to presented as a problem that was solvable and that everybody had you know it wasn't sort of like having some dreadful unknown disease lots of people had it was a reasonable thing to have you can't help to keep this out of the press it's not as though you can go into quarters mr. extra - well no I don't want to I believe that if I go into quarters myself I can draw attention to the fault in the existing law no you destroy you utterly yes we're going to need each other very much aren't we no nope I'm going to go through this alone I don't want you here when it happens I started this thing I've hurt you terribly I know that but I can just get through it to the end of you are not here to face the final humiliations they got to call me filthy names my friends are going to lower their eyes and my enemy say they always guessed I don't want you a part of that Roman holiday but it was particularly bold for you I would have thought because you had had this sort of following of little girls and then to appear in a film as a homosexual you didn't - guys I didn't mind me being homosexual at all because you know most people think that being queer means that you got flu they didn't know anything about that at all I didn't bother what did bother them very much was anyway it was all beginning to break away that pop thing because I said because the boys are care the kids are coming in a new form of of adoration was coming in through the pop singers and to rock and runs from music but what they did get upset because I had grey temples as being a 45 year old man I was only 40 and that really bugged and frankly so I thought well now here it comes I've got the lines here and all the wrinkles coming in here and the makeup going on the white temple stuck in a bit because I was too old and then they wrote and said you're older than my dad I knew that I was out was Bogart homosexual himself he always denied it from the 1960s onwards he lived with Tony forward a man he always described as his partner and manager and he insisted the relationship was platonic after victim Bogart never had a conventional leading man role again which he considered a blessing from that point on he'd appear in more challenging films winning Best Actor BAFTAs in two seminal 60s movies the servant and darling here he is discussing the change in direction in an interview from 1967 and was a romantic typing it was a great great mistake I was a character actor who got diverted at a time of national drought just after the war and I fitted somebody else's pants and played their part that's literally I'd started I was lucky and having a good left profile and is that meant I'm being shot on my right which is quite the worst one that's doesn't matter anymore but this side was very good and they built all the sets of Pinewood to this profile and I was like you ready young nobody ever saw my right side what stage did you decide that you didn't want to play romantic leads anymore I did a film some years ago which nobody's ever seen my doctors dilemma by George Burns raw with Leslie Caron cessful beaten doing the costumes and a wonderful part and a super scriptwriter scriptwriter rather and a wonderful director got asked what the scriptwriter of course the furniture and the director was mr. Asquith and it suddenly dawned on me that movies had something more to say than just them well you know frolicking songs in Spain and all the stuff I've been doing before and funny pictures like the doctors which had great value but we're not satisfying their only extensions of myself and I wasn't actually doing the job that I'd started out to do when I thought you could really speak good dialogue on the screen and sounded good that sounded the break had to be made were there any satisfactions from working on the ranked films oh yes of course there were the first the first doctor one of the most satisfying things I've ever done anything because more people went to hospital after that because they were less frightened I'm not being sarcastic because they were less frightened of hospitals than ever before and and people used to come both to Kenny and I anymore and sort of sort of thanked us rather than unit laugh that is they're thanking us for making it easy to get granny into a hospital or a child in the hospital and so now he's a recent in the hospital myself there's reasons of my own and the the child you know care doctor was called dr. Simon sparrow they used to stick that on the door which meant okay no matter that's all gone ma'am and the films I think - do you do much research when you're preparing a film into the background the type of job or character does not it's about people no there's no need to I know no you know seven or seven years of the army and four to six years of living with people I think of torture taught me a good deal about people research I said in Taiwan all the things I find it is out in particular I can drive up a special kind of car turned into that research on a special specialized subject certain or any question do you have technical advice at sunset always if it's needed of course in all the doctors I had a doctor on the set every day always because I never touched a thing that a doctor would touch from this I knew exactly how to use it because dr. Sam's Barrett in the doctor films is the only straight guy in the pictures and an audience had to absolutely believe that he was right and safe and secure and good for them and then all the other people you know can be funny around it but he never made a mistake as a doctor basically as I always had a doctor there to tell me what to do I'm not there well they won doctor did along if I take out an appendix on the left hand side so they do do they're happy a year after that interview Bogart moved with Tony forward abroad to France and there began a new phase in his career with acclaimed performances and artistic films like Visconti's Death in Venice seeing him become a major star of European cinema Bogart always put his success down to the fact he was continuously pushing himself he never lost the feeling that there was more to be learnt about acting as he told the programme omnibus one day we were changing magazines and I looked up and there was the camera operator Bob Thompson leaning over the top of the camera he was quite short and he had glasses and he was very experienced and he was very nice and I was just standing waiting and and I said hi Bob you know very well you think about he said well I'm just thinking he's I don't know how the hell you stuck oh I thought that's that's not quite what I meant sir said y'see well you know a bloody thing about this business do you now I've been in it for five years so I said well what don't I know he said it'd take too long to tell you and I said will you tell me and so Bob Thompson tell me he tell me how the film went through the gate he told me how the bull went he tell me where the lights were he tell me about a2k and inky dink he told me every damn thing I had to know about the movie my own technicians minds my mates not my directors because they didn't know I never found an English director that did you're an actor who you I think you said doesn't require an audience and in the strict sense no no god forbid that in a way cinema is much more preferable medium for you well cinema is much more exciting because I've said before you may it's something you're making technically together and the thing I have emphasized very strongly in my last book as you know is that most actors do not realize it that little beast and that little beast photograph your mind and if there is nothing in your mind at the time that that is working or that is working then no one is at home and you can just as well play it doesn't matter how do you mean photograph your mind if Ed revs thought for the camera is capable of photographing thought the best example of all apart from me because I have suddenly discovered that ideal have some kind of thought in the end you know is Marilyn who had no thought whatsoever in a month she had a way down there at the bottom miss Monroe was quite well I mean she has become the legend of the of the century when West and the camera found what she was doing and what she was thinking watching her on the floor you would inch yourself away with misery and grief because you thought I get what she's doing she's doing nothing and she's dreadful she's playing as she's got spots and where's the magic and the magic was there the next day on film and you'll just drain blood when you saw it was internal it's an internal thing and this is the essence of concentration of course and without concentration without the absolute tightness of concentration here in your head nothing works on the screen you can walk through a park near Lee everybody of us he does sometimes there's a magical moment when you find some actor who is not walking through and the camera picks him but that's capricious and says that one they're both capricious the camera is precious because they can hate you and you can do your nuts and they don't want to record it but if you can establish her up or a love affair between yourself and the lens and I'm flattering myself perhaps that I do I don't know maybe I know they will do everything in their power to help you but you've got to be thinking and you've got to know what you're thinking about and if you go to pieces forget it doesn't work the earlier films so there were some that were accomplished you're famous for having shot Jack Warner and then you moved to a very successful series of films but for the doctor films mm-hmm when you were working in what many people might consider unremarkable cinema where you were striving to do your best within those circumstances or did you were you not all that conscious that it was unremarkable cinema look here let's get one thing absolutely straight all I've ever been in the cinema or in the theatre or in my books is an entertainer nothing more and nothing less that's all I am and anything I do I do to the depths of my gut I would never as I said cheat anyone I never considered those films as crappy or stupid or whatever they were they were they were there to pleasure people who were there to pleasure people who came to see us you don't you dare betray that faith you don't betray people that was staggered miles in the snowstorm as I'm going to get to the movie to see you you you do everything you can and people met and married in movies that I made there dated a whole world I have three or four generations of people that I am directly responsible to I couldn't possibly say that III did anything more than do the best of you know the best thing I could do the highest point of my ability and never wants to look down on it I never I couldn't do but and I loved the cinema too much anyway that was another thing was growing growing right when I found crew was working at that was working and that was working and how it worked and this was working the boom then gradually all these wonderful thing it came in and I was being taken in again into a force like I had been in the army and producing something at the end of it but I was very very proud of those films I mean some of them were rubbish I admit but people like rubbish you know people don't want always to be educated acting success and European stardom wasn't enough for Bogart the 70s saw him also branch out into a new career as a writer by 1983 three volumes of memoirs and two novels had all earned rave reviews and become international bestsellers but how he started writing was a story in itself as he explains here to interview a Tony Bilbo one day I got a fan letter so-called from a woman in America who'd been sitting under a hairdryer in her hair dresses in a small town in America and she had read a magazine to pass the time which she found rather distasteful it was a woman's magazine and it was an English one and rather achievement but in it to her astonishment she saw a picture of a house that once had belonged to her this is a hell of a long preamble and in front of the house grinning like an idiot was I myself there and she didn't who I was who she never went to the movies and it wasn't that kind of person but she did recognize the house and she saw pictures inside she read the rather sorry little article about me and realized I was an actor of something and lived in England and lived in this house which she'd lived into ten years she had found with her husband in 1929 and lived there until 1939 when the war broke out they had to go back to America instead of her long story short she written a letter very pathetic very polite very tiny very neat no great deal and sent inside a very small bronze sepia picture of the house as it had been in 1929 covered in brambles and nettles and she wrote and simply said it's a great impertinence to write to I don't know who you are what you do but I do know the house has it changed pretty much that was all and I don't know why I I know I never replied to letters because it's impossible anyway there isn't time and I can't do with so much room but I did write to her read her back we wrote to each other for the next five years I think I'm right yeah next five years she wrote in the end every single day of her life a letter to me on onion skin which if you know what that is it's that very very light airmail paper I wrote three or four times a week but when I began to put her all together and realized that she was dying I read a postcard at least the postcard every single there until 1962 not 75 when she died I never saw her we never spoke have no idea where she was but she was determined that I should write all I did glean amongst many things was that she was the head librarian as far as I can put us together and I could be inaccurate here I had a very important university in America and that she knew a great deal about literature and about writing and she'd seen somewhere in what I wrote her in all the years of junk I sent her which is only right rarely written to try and to keep her alive to keep she lived alone to the tirely learn to keep her alive to keep her going he must strength if she thought that I could write or should be forced to so what be fair said if it hadn't been for her you would never written I mean not not professionally in the in the final analysis that is true yeah it's quite extraordinary writing occupied most of boggles time during the 80s but in 1991 he was back with a new film a French movie called daddy nostalgy directed by Bertrand Tavernier it coincided with Bogart turning 70 a significant enough event to merit another encounter with Barry Norman your first film in 12 years that why I mean Weiss why such a long time away what I really got out of the habit of doing it I hadn't I'm often accused overhand retired I just retreated it's a I don't terribly enjoy making movies I never have what's coming for a man who's made about 65 is yeah I know well there it is I mean it not now you get to a certain age it's it's a house or it's a drag you know and then I found I could write and people want my books it was easy to sit on my butt on my farm and write and do chores of the day on the land and and it was easier and it was pleasanter and I'd I done one film which I thought was a miracle film with Fassbender crawl despair I think it's 76 y'all had put me right I don't remember it was about 76 and is made it in East Germany on the edge of East Germany the wall and oil it was an extraordinary experience and wonderful and extraordinary we were picked for Canton but the film was finished about oh I don't know seven months before count and instead of I'd seen the rough cut and done the dubbing in Paris and instead of just leaving it as it was Rhino Fassbender got bored with it and cut it to shreds over the weeks and when I went to cam to see the damn film Michael Ball House who now works for Martin Scorsese in New York Martin Michael came up and said don't come near the movie don't don't see it in his tears are pouring right he said he's absolutely ruined it so I went see the movie at can cuz I had to you know do my duty and I directed I didn't know what the film is about totally devastated it so I thought after that that's it I leave and I know so why what did bet run to Vernie adieu when we was it simply because it was bit front of only atheon came back yep I'd seen nearly all the work the best one had done and and he is I always say if I'm asked and I'm saying this to you we haven't asked me what I'm telling you Visconti is as far as I'm concerned the emperor of the cinema Lucy is the king but Bella is the genius and he's a genius only because he absolutely knows every inch of cinema every angle every technical trick but he also knows about people hmm and that's terribly rare because I was brought up in the cinema when the director would say oh do let's hurry Donnie there's a picture in the back and that was the way we made movies but to find someone who actually really wants to scoop the the yolk out of your egg and savor it is a fairly exciting so what happened I mean did you put a lot into the script it was a lot of rewriting going on because I know you weren't happy with the script even when you agreed to do it with tavern EA where you well there was a rewrite which I got and came to London to see me and I said I'd do it because he was doing it and there was a rewrite which was still a bit cutesy by there are awful lot of kids and daddykins kind of night you know and that was he and we've both been through some fairly grown-up experiences in our life like death and life and all those things and he just was experiencing it through the death of his father it was dying at that point and we kind of put it in turn around I'm just very careful what I say here because he let me alter the my stuff and my conception of who I was the daddy I was and and he assisted me greatly and we wrote a lot of it together you know I'd like to take a plane and go somewhere like Hong Kong Singapore see him for the last time Mexico mmm the light in the East is it's the colours I didn't want to get old playing a man who was dying and you had I mean you'd had a stroke which thank God you appear to recover from fully about what about four years ago that must be an experience you could have used journey was at the memory of that do you used in playing the part or do you not believe in that kind of thing I mean well I mean you know you Barry come on every actives you know even having a terrible row or burst into floods of tears what if there's a mirror near look at the and that's what I look like when I do that other one of course you do you squirrel everything away for some use some later projection of whatever you're doing but I be I've been doing work classes recently in London and and a lot of the act as young actors they're all between sort of 18 and 25 want to know why I so mistrust the method my point is that I don't see any point in in being shoved into a dark room for three months and told you you've got to come out as a tin of condensed milk because that is not acting it's not screen technique it is not screen acting you know most people do sort of cornflake packet performance and what I find so exciting about working people actor venue and in Europe I have made a movie in you know in English since 66 now I know that and then they were always for a foreign company as a paramount or MGM but they don't ask you pursue the cover they want to know suck an onion they want to know peel the skin off bit by bit and come right down to the little tiny bit in the middle which is the the heart of it and so giving in in daily nostalgia giving daddy a different bad-tempered very selfish mother who car salesmen the wrong kind of matching handkerchief and tiny so not quite right he's like a politician but those things I found perfectly exciting to make him because you know for his marriage to a woman who who no longer speaks her language to him or his yep they said they're absolutely lost and there's nothing to talk about and he's retired he's dying and they're living in this dreadful little town in the South of France and all she's got is her bridge and what he's got is listening to her playing bridge you know I mean it's it could be very gloomy I don't think it is because they an herb is touched indeed there is another nerve that that perhaps you touch I don't know whether this was inadvertent but there's a scene in which you talk about the zenyk xenophobic middle class Britain which your character left I just wondered if that came from the heart yes it came from me anyway and you know when I think that I could have ended up like those thousands of retired businessman who live in those dreary little bungalows outside Brighton or ugly salted and poaching about in their rain drenched gnome ridden gardens sipping the Sharia or their Horlicks waiting for the nine o'clock news on television loathing or bloody foreigners hating and mistrusting anything beyond their sceptered Isle it when I think of that it makes me really ill you've left xenophobic move across Britain for all the best part of 20 years why did you do that oh gosh oh why did I do but there's no reason to stay I mean the last thing I did here as I've said so many times before the last thing I was asked to do here was a voice over for a television for the Forestry Commission really about felling pine trees in the north of Scotland I mean what if it's come to that and I've never been asked to come back well that's not quite true David partner asked me to come back but I mean nobody's asked me to work here I mean I think I'd run my limit Barry you know he's in the movies where I started in 47 hmm about the title right I I think people got awfully used to me and then a new group came in in the beginning of the 60s and they didn't want my kind of work or indeed my kind of name they wanted the new boys you know the ten stamps but Phineas the Tom Courtney's and they got them and quite rightly too but we were we were pushed we were out and I realized that in time the Beatles are making a new sound the movies were taken but movies were becoming gritty and grainy and a lot of people are not growing up with that fact in this country but they were in Europe and they had always been that way and that's why I went back to Europe and in fact from the professional point of view that was the best thing that could have happened only garish didn't last 22 years of my life was the greatest ever critically and I mean not crazy about I mean from the point of view of film oh yeah sure because the curious thing now is that you are much more I think revered is the word in in Europe as an actor than you are in this country well revered is very strong word but yes goodbye better known yes I mean yes of course I'm I'm big big fishing in a very large pond in Europe I'm European player yeah well you could you realize there's something extraordinary any rails coming to see you today that all the time I've been working abroad I've only once played an Englishman they've all been Germans yes yes you're good as a German in the wrong country I tell you what though I mean for all that you are saying you are a marvelous survivor aren't you I mean 44 years now with a name above the title name is still above the title no means that won't come down over and you insist on that don't you yeah why because I still believe one of the earliest things I was ever told when I first joined the business in 47 was you realize what's happened to you don't you this isn't the rank organisation you are unknown and you are going to carry a movie do you run Sam well that means I didn't know what it meant I learnt sure as hell I learnt I thought right if it's gonna cost this to carry a movie I'm going to do it all for the rest of my life and I have and I'm not going under the title that's why I don't do those cameo parts that me I'd rather write a book or a review a book for a newspaper or whatever but I won't go underneath I still carry a movie and I still do daddy nostalgia in Italy for example is one of the biggest box-office hits ever known there it really yeah it's made millions not million but millions of lira no I don't know well that's the question I was going to ask I mean it's marvelous that you know 44 years ago you started as a star now there you are aged 17 many happy returns of the great day still a star have you managed them I think it's I don't know really learning my trade being taught and being very selective and choosing the right people to teach me and never being greedy because I never earned what we call cane Connery money at all I don't denigrate either of those transplant I mean I just did not earn that kind of money the most money I ever made in my life was some despair I got $200,000 for that and that was the biggest sum of money I ever earned in one lump I didn't want more as long as I had a small portfolio and I knew you know I kept my money in an oxygen your back you was that and that suited me very well but I'd rather do the job well and have a decent job to do I'm not interested in doing 3-day bits in you know a warehouse at Wapping in a cutaway coat and handmade buttons who cares it literally really true that you haven't been offered anything at all or anything worthwhile in the cinema or in this country no not not entirely true David Patten who I respect greatly did ask me to do a film called the mission but I really couldn't get away and I thought that I was very much too old to go clamoring up and down waterfalls I was in my mid 60's which rules that the German well it was later played by a younger man no and but but yes indeed David did not but no but no no I'm not does that make you feel at all bitter no no not at all because I don't want to work John Bowman indeed here's another one he's asked me to work here but but I am a European and the way we work in Europe is totally different to the way we were okay why then did you come back to Britain I came back because I was forced to come back through ill health of my partner manager who's living out there and he had terminal cancer and when we knew that it was terminal he wanted to die with his family and that made his his immediate family and his son and his grandson so we came back and I just hadn't done I had a stroke after I'd packed on you know packing up something I thought I'd live in for the rest of my life in three weeks was quite quite difficult you feel you belong here now no does that mean you're unhappy no no no I'm not a donor happy I mean I I'm back living in Chelsea which is where I started I'm full circle because I started there at 16 at art school in Manresa Road so I know everywhere my father was a student there my mother was a student there too you know I'm back where I was I remember Peter Jones being built that does get back a few years this it goes back few years I saw Judy Garland's a semi life at the what was then called the Royal Court cinema yes but but you know I'm alright but I mean every morning I wake up and think well you still here and that means that they are alive and be here you are in the end daddy nostalgia was his final film in 1992 he became Sir Dirk Bogarde knighted for services to acting and in 1999 at the age of 78 he died in London from a heart attack amongst the tributes was one describing him as Britain's first homegrown movie star they don't make them like that anymore [Music]

Channel: George Pollen

Views: 134,674

Rating: 4.8168497 out of 5

Keywords: Dirk Bogarde

Id: 9z86W68XMhQ

Length: 42min 48sec (2568 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2017