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Doctor in Love. Is It happiness at last
for Dangerfield?
Radio
Times 14 - 20 October 1995
After a total of seven-and-a-half years on the dole,
you could forgive an actor for clinging to a hit like ‘Casualty’. But
Nigel Le Vail/tint opted to take a risk with ‘Dangerfield’ — and the gamble
has paid off
I’ve always been insecure about my future
From dole-queue depressive to TV
heart throb is an exhilarating but potentially dangerous road for a
well-brought-up thespian of 38 with intellectual aspirations. Nigel Le
Vaillant struggles, over a long dinner at London’s Dorchester hotel, to tell
it like it is. A man of integrity, conviction and some idealism — he walked
away from his lucrative starring role as Dr Julian Chapman in Casualty at
the height of his popularity — he eschews cozily languid answers in favour
of convoluted, tortured sentences, a soufflé of thoughts rising almost to a
point and then deflating. He is aware that when actors talk in anything more
than clichés, they can be derided easily for pretension. He asks constantly,
“Is this all right?” or “Have I done wrong?”, adding, “Honesty is so easily
misconstrued.”
“I’m a very anxious man,” he
explains, perhaps unnecessarily. "It has been a hard few months — overwork,
deep personal tragedy and difficult adjustment after marriage in January to
actress Nicola Jeffries, who played a receptionist in Casualty. He is not
afraid to bite the hand that feeds him as he discusses the new series of
Dangerfield, in which he plays a widowed police doctor with two teenage
children. ‘I know we ‘artistes’ can become sensitive and precious, but they
squeezed two extra episodes into the schedule and it caused untold havoc. I
am a perfectionist and will work till I drop — and have done, literally —
but I get upset if I feel I can’t do my job properly because there isn’t
enough time. They say, ‘You can do it.’ Well, yes. If you give me a gun I
can shoot myself in the foot, but I don’t really want to. There comes a time
when you say, ‘This is too distressing, people are unhappy and I’ve lost
sight of the pleasure of my
work.’ I’ve come close to that recently. “Everything is money these days and
there’s a large
element of fear. Five million
unemployed is a way of reminding people they should just get on with the
job. The message that we’re expendable has taken root. I’ve always been
insecure about my future and my work, but
I’ve faced the dole queue so many times
(he’s been unemployed for a total of seven-and-a-half
years in his career). I’m
not having anyone threaten me with it or dictate to me. I’m like Samson— if
you push me too far I’ll pull the temple down round my ears and yours. I’d
rather choose failure than allow myself to be bought by what’s on offer if
it’s tacky or not done properly.”
Dangerfield he adds, is not tacky
- and, no, he doesn’t worry about being typecast as a doctor. “It’s easy to
put on a white coat and a stethoscope. The hardest thing is learning to play
human being. I loved the part of Chapman (in Casualty) but felt after three
years I couldn’t lend any more to it and would have been dishonest to
continue. I’d had a Lucky break, cleared my debts [£24,000] and didn’t want
to fall into the age-old trap of going for security. In this profession,
more than any other, fortune favours the brave. If you say, ‘This is a cushy
number and the money’s coming in,’ it won’t pay dividends in the long run. I
also wanted to send a message to other actors: have confidence in yourself.
I hope one day someone will say I had balls. I have other images I want to
hammer out, many parts I want to mould. The ongoing series can be
frustrating because if you want it to run you have to dilute your part.
Dramatic tension has to be left dangling and can never be allowed to be
resolved. I’d like to tell a story, with a beginning, middle and end.”
Meanwhile there is Dangerfield. “You
never see him administering so much as an aspirin, let alone going in for
major surgery, thank goodness. Everyone he deals with is dead. He’s really a
detective in disguise. I’m anxious to preserve an interest in the man
outside his work He’s very much a late-20th-century character, rushed off
his feet and slightly lost. His wife has been killed in a car crash, for
which he blames himself, and there’s a gap in his life, so he’s bought this
package—mobile phone, always on call, I must be a human being because I’m so
busy — as away of avoiding what’s really happening to him. I understand
that. I look at my own life in the past few years and find I’ve been
reacting to circumstances and don’t actually know what the hell goes on
underneath.”
His personality was shaped in
Pakistan, he says, where
he was born and spent his first seven years
(his father worked for Brooke Bond, eventually becoming chairman). ‘Emotionally,”
he says, “it was the epicentre of my life.” He
remembers particularly the family bearer ,John Sebastian. “He’d
dress me, take me to kindergarten, play games, spoil me rotten. He was tall,
a good cricketer, a great womaniser, loved by everyone. I was aware of the
difference in our social status from an early age. I felt tremendous sorrow
and couldn’t stand the fact that they had so little when I had so much. It
troubled me to such an extent I’d divide my pocket money between the cook
and others. But one grows older, adapts accordingly.”
How? “I
hesitate to say these things because some will say I’m sentimentalizing
poverty, which I’m not. It’s ghastly, but I have a great joy when I return
to India. It’s thrilling, life-fulfilling in a way we’ve lost in this
country. I crave it. Indians have a vast amount to teach us in their
poverty. Humility, for one thing
— we have such arrogance in the west — and. . .“
he pauses. “I’m getting into trouble now because I
don’t entirely know what it is, but it’s a sort of joy. If you stand on
London’s Victoria station at 5.3Opm you’ll see tremendous activity, but if
they turn off the bloody awful Muzak all you’ll hear is the sound of leather
on concrete. No one talks, or looks you in the eye. You’re an object to be
avoided in the rush for the 5.31 to Surbiton. Step on to the streets of
Bombay and there is 75 times the chaos, every kind of transport, every
creature on God’s earth, pulling every sort of cart. Buses break down, the
roads aren’t big enough. But the one thing people don’t do is shut you out,
ignore you, or treat you as an object that’s in the way.”
He was sent to prep
school in England when he was seven. “It was
traumatic, not something I recommend at that age. I must let my parents off
the hook because it was difficult circumstances and they felt they were
doing their best by us, but pre-pubescent children need their family. Home
sickness was a terrible experience and my school was not a loving one, to
say the least. I craved a more Kiplingesque upbringing. I would love to have
gone to Karachi Grammar School because I was heart and soul in love with the
country.” He enjoyed public school, Bryanston in Dorset, far more and it
kindled his ambition to act. Alan Ayckbourn, the father of two fellow
pupils, gave him a job at his Scarborough theatre. “It was a baptism of
fire. I wasn’t robust and had to do a lot of scene-shifting. I ended up with
a hole in my lung, but it taught me a hell of a lot.”
At 23 he was accepted by
the Royal Shakespeare Company. “I felt so privileged.
But I was very young, part of the star system, although
they lie and pretend it’s not. They want the
accolade of being the last bastion of dramatic culture in this country,
but they’ve long since sold out to television and film. If you’ve done a
series on the telly they’ll cast you as soon as dammit. Am I making sense?
The
RSC
is snobbish and only has itself to blame for
not having a more widespread appeal. It’s clearly designed for Japanese and
American tourists, who don’t understand it anyway.” When he left, his boss
telephoned him, on Christmas Day, to predict he’d give up acting by the time
he was 28. Many times, during the next 18 months of unemployment, he thought
it might be true.
“The
acting wasn’t working. I think the RSC punched the hell out of me and my
confidence went I got in a
bad state, drank too much
and had terrible bouts of depression. I was thrown out of my flat because I
couldn’t pay the rent, but during all that time I knew I’d be all right. I
had something to offer, something that had to come out It still has to. I’m
not there yet, but I’m paving
my way.
I’ve no idea what for. I fall about laughing when directors ask, ‘What are
your plans?’ I want to reply, ‘After seeing you, I’m nipping down to the
dole office.’ I’m not in a position to have plans. My career has come
through what’s been available, although in my
days at the RSC I’d have thought doing a TV series was selling out. It’s not
sour grapes—I think I could work at the RSC again — but I now understand
that popular culture is often decried in its lifetime. I see myself as first
and foremost an entertainer, no different to a footballer. I’m very grateful
for serial television. It’s incredibly important. One of the few things
we’ve got as a nation is that people from all walks of life ask, Did you see
that play on telly last night?’ I’m proud of that, because the public is the
most important aspect of our business. At the moment they’re very
sophisticated, although there’s a danger of educating a generation to watch
any old pap.”
Earlier this year, his older brother, Simon,
died after a long illness. It has aged him, he says, by several years. “The
appalling circumstances made me grow up very fast. Without that situation I
think I’d have taken longer to marry Nicky [she is ten years his junior],
because I’ll only do it once and am very anxious to get it right. I’ve been
through an awful lot of pain in relationships because I won’t compromise.
Make an effort, yes. But not compromise. We’ve been under a lot of
strain because of my commitment to Simon over the past two years. When I
finished work my priority was to him, not her. Potentially we have a happy
marriage, but if I say to you, ‘Couple, just married, have only seen each
other seven times in the past seven months,’ you wouldn’t say a relationship
flourishes under those circumstances. It’s been hard, but when Simon died I
was released to devote myself properly to marriage. We’re strong enough to
have ridden that period and now the light is at the end of the tunnel. We’re
planning a second honeymoon in India at the end of this month and I suspect
she will fall in love with it.”
In a strange way, he adds, his brother’s
illness was a liberating experience. “If you feel
you’re a David against Goliath, suddenly the facts of life come whizzing
through and level the playing field. When someone tries to pull a fast one,
you think, ‘Hold on a minute, pal. I’ve seen real sadness. I know what life
and death are about. So stuff the lot of you.’ We all become duped into
thinking someone else holds the reins of our own security. It’s empowering
to realise they didn’t. The only person who holds them is yourself.”
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Doctor
in Love. Is It happiness at last for Dangerfield? radio Times 14 - 20
October 1995