by Justin Lewis
Rattigan’s hot streak lasted well into the 1950s, but the rise of the Angry Young Men playwrights such as John Osborne later in the decade, with more obviously confrontational works including 1956’s Look Back in Anger, made him somewhat unfashionable, even though he himself admired many of these new talents.
After Rattigan died of cancer in 1977, aged 66, his work began to be reappraised. ‘He was under a dark cloud,’ his biographer Michael Darlow remarked in 2011. ‘He wanted his reputation to survive, and he was hugely hurt, though he was much too reserved to say it. He said more than once that he would like to write a play that would be done 50 years later.’ Rattigan might have been pleasantly surprised to discover that After the Dance, a relatively obscure work, would be at the heart of the reappraisal.
Benedict Cumberbatch was cast as David Scott-Fowler, a historian tinkering with a project he was unlikely to finish. Feckless, hard-drinking and self-destructive but loyal, he was wealthy and made £7,000 a year, which in 1939 was around twelve times the earnings of an average British family. He was self-destructive but loyal. ‘He’s very charming and charismatic – people fall in love with him,’ said Cumberbatch, before adding, ‘He thinks in very predatory sexual terms. He is a child, like a lot of alpha men.’ But he felt a little uneasy about accepting the role of David. Might it be a little too predictable to take, being another upper-middle class part? Did he feel he was ‘too right’ for it? Finally, he caved in and agreed. Coincidentally, both he and the director of the production, Thea Sharrock, had seen the Karel Reisz stage revival of The Deep Blue Sea starring Penelope Wilton in 1993.
Armed with a reading list, Cumberbatch tried to find out as much as he could about Terence Rattigan. Part of his homework included a return visit to Harrow School for the making of The Rattigan Enigma, a BBC4 documentary to mark the centenary of the playwright’s birth. He had always felt passionately that Rattigan’s plays were far from outdated, and still had a profound validity and relevance in the twenty-first century. For the voice of David, he sought inspiration from the clipped tones of Trevor Howard, the stalwart of classic British films of the 1940s, among them Brief Encounter.
David Scott-Fowler was typical of Rattigan characters with deep emotional scars, where unspoken behaviour was just as revealing, if not more so, than the words they would utter. A perfect example occurs at the end of the play. David discovers that his wife has taken her own life, and alone on stage, steps out on to the balcony, leans over the edge, looks down, and pauses for a few seconds, seconds in which it is made clear that he knows what has happened is his own fault.
The revival of After the Dance opened at the National Theatre on London’s South Bank in June 2010. It was an emotional occasion for Cumberbatch’s whole family, especially dad Timothy. ‘He started to weep when he was telling me how proud he was. I didn’t know what to do. I just held on to him. I said, “You’re not crying out of relief that I got through it, are you?” And he said, “No, you stupid boy. I’m crying because you were so wonderful.”’ The acclaim went far beyond his own family, of course. Critics paid tribute to his performance. ‘While Cumberbatch’s physical pose is remarkable,’ wrote the London Evening Standard, ‘it’s his voice that is the real marvel: dense as treacle, but unerringly precise.’
After the Dance would be the biggest winner at the 2011 Olivier Awards the following March. It picked up four gongs, including Best Costume Design, Best Actress (for Nancy Carroll as David’s wife, Joan), and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Adrian Scarborough). If Cumberbatch was not recognised in an individual capacity, the production as a whole won the Best Revival category. It was an appropriate and deserved winner, in the year that marked the centenary of Rattigan’s birth.
Several other Rattigan plays enjoyed revivals that year – Flare Path (directed by Trevor Nunn), his final completed work, 1977’s Cause Célèbre – plus exhibitions and a season of his films at the British Film Institute. The director Terence Davies was working on a screen adaptation of The Deep Blue Sea. Nine Rattigan plays from the BBC Television archive – featuring Judi Dench, Sean Connery and Michael Gambon – were dusted off for a special DVD box set. But it was After the Dance, sidelined for decades, that got the ball rolling for the Rattigan centenary year.
It was during the rehearsals for After the Dance in early 2010 when Cumberbatch’s next film opportunity emerged. He was contacted by Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director of the vampire flick, Let the Right One In. Cumberbatch made it clear that he would not have time to read a script but was happy to meet up. When they did so, he had a bit of a shock. ‘The first thing that Tomas said to me was, “What did you think of the script?” I told him I hadn’t read it and he just looked at me, mouth agape. I felt awful.’ Cumberbatch’s charm rescued the situation, and he went away to bone up and sent a written apology to the director. He was duly hired and indeed made such an impression that he would work with Alfredson again in 2012 – this time on a TV commercial for Hiscox insurance.
The film role Alfredson offered him in 2010 was Peter Guillam, the MI6 protégé of George Smiley, in a big-screen version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The creation of the novelist John le Carré, previously it had been a BBC television series at the end of the 1970s, with Alec Guinness in the starring role. Born in 1931 as David John Moore Cornwell, le Carré had worked for MI5 and MI6 in his late twenties, during the Cold War, a period in which secret assassinations had been carried out by British intelligence. He quit MI6 in 1964 to become a full-time author of over 20 novels.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tells how MI6’s lugubrious George Smiley is brought out of retirement to identify the mole working at the heart of the Secret Intelligence Service. Smiley enlists the assistance of Guillam (Cumberbatch) to root out the enemy. Le Carré works have an abundance of figures with moral ambiguity, but Guillam was one character with a clear sense of right and wrong. ‘He sees what he is fighting for as the right and good cause,’ said Cumberbatch, ‘and, in a way, he wants to be part of something heroic, like the Hot War, where the lines were very clearly delineated and undivided.’
Ahead of filming, Cumberbatch undertook some typically unusual research in preparing for the part of Guillam. He flew to Morocco, his first holiday break alone. ‘I was in Essaouira. Because my character was a spy originally stationed in North Africa, I walked the streets alone at night, imagining what it was like for him – the oppressive doorways, the dark alleys.’
Alfredson had hired quite a cast: Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Kathy Burke. Cumberbatch was in awe of his co-stars – ‘That’s a call sheet I’m going to frame and keep for ever.’
Previewed at the Venice Film Festival in early September 2011, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opened in Britain two weeks later, and would subsequently win Best British Film at the 2012 BAFTA Awards. John le Carré gave the adaptation the warmest of blessings, calling it ‘a film that works superbly, and takes me back into byways of the characters that the series of 32 years ago didn’t enter.’ To those who believed that the remake was an act of heresy, especially in relation to Gary Oldman succeeding Alec Guinness’s masterly portrayal of George Smiley, le Carré insisted: ‘If Alec had witnessed Oldman’s performance, he would have been the first to give it a standing ovation.’
He also felt that the tougher remake of his original story was a vital decision. ‘The television version was made, in a curious way, as a love story to a fading British Establishment. It was done with great nostalgia. The Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy that has now been made is without sentiment, sexier, grittier and crueller. It had to be.’ Part of the reason for the blunter tone was simply down to time. The BBC series had been a six-part serial. This was a mere two hours, what Gary Oldman described as ‘a real tightening of the screw’.
* * *
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was not the only film role Cumberbatch accepted while performing in Rattigan’s After the Dance. As the play neared the end of its run at the National Theatre
, he was all set to take some time off. He told close friends that he was about to take a break, ‘unless Spielberg calls. A week later, I had to eat my words. Nobody will believe me, but there we are.’
On the day After the Dance closed, Cumberbatch met Steven Spielberg. The actor was late for their meeting, as he was unable to find a parking space for his motorbike, but this did not stop him landing a key role in the director’s next picture, War Horse. He couldn’t quite believe it. ‘It’s the standard actors’ joke – “What are you doing after this?” “Oh, if Spielberg doesn’t call then I’m going to go on holiday”. But a week after I’d said that, I got the call to say I had the job. It’s one of those moments you never forget – I just fell off my chair.’
To be hired by Spielberg was such a thrill – ‘It was the most grown-up moment of my life. I was told I couldn’t tell anyone. I was walking around with this huge grin on my face and couldn’t speak with excitement.’ But he did give the esteemed director some advice about his character. ‘I told him that the officers mustn’t look like doomed upper-class fools, there has to be something heroic about their charge, and he agreed.’ For the mixture of ‘doomed and heroic’ in his own character of Major Jamie Stewart, Cumberbatch sought inspiration from The Charge of the Light Brigade’s Trevor Howard, aka Lord Cardigan. The versatile Howard had also been his muse while preparing to play David Scott-Fowler. ‘I could not believe it was the same actor,’ Cumberbatch told The Sunday Times.
It would appear that the Spielberg opportunity put paid to the chances of After the Dance transferring to Broadway. Cumberbatch had been asked to be part of the American run but the film opportunities coming his way made it an impossibility and so he declined and the project was dropped. ‘It was a shame there was never any talk of finding anyone else,’ said the Olivier-winning Nancy Carroll, who had played opposite him as Joan. ‘We all missed it.’
Yet for his part, Cumberbatch felt that going to Broadway he might miss out on cinematic opportunities – ‘I’ve never really made a head-over-heart decision like that before, but there’s a bit of momentum and I’d like to keep myself available for films. Because I would like to sit at the big table.’ And it seemed a place had been set for him – by none other than Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg had been advised to see the National Theatre production of War Horse by his producer collaborator Kathleen Kennedy. It had been based on Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 book of the same name for children. He had written it after encountering veterans of the First World War in a pub. It tells the story from the viewpoint of Joey the colt, who is sold to the Army and used on the trenches as a packhorse.
On seeing the ambitious stage production, a dazzled Spielberg knew that it must be remade for cinema. The filmmaker had often used World War II as a backdrop to his projects (Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan), but had not yet done the same with World War I. War Horse would redress the balance, and for the first time since 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, a Spielberg film would be shot in the UK.
Spielberg did not want an ‘all-star cast’ for War Horse. He sought talented but relative unknowns, of the calibre of David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan and Benedict Cumberbatch. The central role of Albert Narracott, a farmhand in Devon who searches for his colt, Joey, in France’s killing fields and who pretends to be older in order to enlist for service, would be filled by a young actor called Jeremy Irvine. Much fêted for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Youth Theatre, Irvine was relatively unknown to most of the general public and the international film world. The film would reunite Cumberbatch with his old school friend Patrick Kennedy (for the first time since Atonement), but the real star of the film, in his opinion, was Joey the colt, ‘half a tonne of 35mph joy’.
After Spielberg had made visits to the Imperial War Museum in South London to conduct background research, shooting began on War Horse in the late summer of 2010. An adaptation was written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, the latter hired after Spielberg happened to watch a repeat of the TV series Blackadder Goes Forth, also set during the First World War.
As the moustachioed cavalry officer Major Jamie Stewart, Cumberbatch was playing a part which required him to ride a horse, something he had not done since the age of twelve. ‘I saw the storyboards, and nearly shat myself. Some extremely good horsemanship is going to be required, and I’m hoping they won’t be relying entirely on me.’ At least he wouldn’t be participating in the more hazardous sequences, though. For those, he would replaced by a stunt double.
His first day on the War Horse set took place in August 2010, just days after Sherlock debuted on television. The first scene shot was a battle sequence, of a cavalry charge against German troops. ‘It was a hell of a way to start. It was a screaming charge and not breathing for what felt like five minutes, though it was probably two and a half, and nearly fainting.’ Relations between the man and his horse mostly went well. ‘The trust forms through proximity… giving him his hay bag, washing him down, being close and touching. He’s so calm, he starts falling asleep on my sleeve.’
Working on War Horse made Cumberbatch understand a little better the experiences of British troops stationed in Afghanistan. ‘The First World War is obviously very different,’ he conceded, ‘but I did get an awareness of the sheer numbers of men on the ground fighting for a common purpose and for freedom, and although the mechanism of the two wars is different, the spirit is the same.’
It was while on the set of War Horse that Cumberbatch was to unwittingly stumble into the frame for a future television role. The veteran playwright Sir Tom Stoppard was returning to the medium for the first time in nearly 30 years, writing an adaptation of a long-forgotten series of novels from the 1920s. Stoppard saw him dressed as Major Stewart, and held back from saying a word – for now. ‘I was in First World War clobber,’ said Cumberbatch, ‘although I was thin and moustachioed and ginger for that part.’ What Stoppard had in mind for him was a role from the same time period, but a very different sort of character.
CHAPTER 13
TIETJENS
It was clear to Benedict Cumberbatch that a factor in his success was the perception that he was from a relatively privileged background, and had landed many roles of that type. ‘I was brought up in a world of privilege,’ he told the Radio Times in December 2011. ‘Being a posh actor in England, you can’t escape class-typing. I realised quite early on that, although I wasn’t trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.’ Proud as he was of his achievements, he maintained that typecasting was a hazard and a trap for the long-term career. ‘The further away you can get from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is such great fun.’
It was hard for Cumberbatch to shake off the ‘posh’ tag. His itinerary through the English public school system meant he had the posh accent to go with it, and he had spent some time trying to tone it down. ‘My voice is way too posh,’ he once protested. ‘We’re not even a very posh family.’
Many early roles that brought him to prominence did little to challenge the perception of him as posh, something he was happy to concede, at least to begin with. ‘I was a priggish shit in To the Ends of the Earth, and I was a priggish shit in Starter for 10,’ he chuckled disarmingly in 2007, ‘and who knows, that could be my lot. I can’t deny I lack knowledge of that type.’ After all, ‘I went to Harrow.’
Later, he would grow increasingly frustrated with the stereotype. He didn’t want to be complacent, nor to be typecast. ‘That’s the thing I’ve been kicking against,’ he said, ‘to try and shift class and period and perception all the time.’
If he wasn’t being cast as someone posh, it was as someone clever or creative: scientists, mathematicians, artists. With each part, he conducted extensive background research. ‘I suppose it’s flattering that you look like someone who could think this stuff. But it’s a confidence trick. You’re actually someone who, before shooting
begins, has desperately been mugging up on the books he half-finished during gap year.’
What he truly had no time for was a cultural world that was for the financially comfortable – ‘I don’t want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays. I’m interested in art for all.’ He was opposed to the coalition government’s proposed cuts on arts funding. ‘People are going to be shocked at how it will affect the volume of output and choice that they’re used to at the moment. The Arts provide a massive return of revenue, employment and hold national prestige.’
Given his public school background, it was only a matter of time before Cumberbatch would be drawn into the evergreen debate about the British class system. As cuts to the Arts sector were proposed, could it be that acting might only be a career option for those with moneyed backgrounds? It was striking that in the twenty-first century, many of the most prominent and in-demand British actors had been educated via the public school system. The Old Etonian Eddie Redmayne had been a contemporary of Prince William. Dominic West, another Eton boy, had been at school with Prime Minister David Cameron. Then there was Tom Hiddleston, Damian Lewis (both Eton), and so the list went on.
Cumberbatch also may have had a slight advantage over others, given that both his parents had been successful actors for many years. But what of opportunities for actors who had neither wealth, nor privileged education, nor family connections behind them? It is hard for many actors to make a living wage. Equity, the performers’ union, estimates that at any one time, some two-thirds of actors are unemployed. How can those with little or no money survive in such a precarious profession?