Poirot and Me

There is no competition between us as actors, just the pleasure of seeing one

actor’s performance bringing out the best in all of us. It certainly did on ABC.

Poirot cares about people too much for that. He sympathises with them, and shows that he does so, in story after story.

We had become so close that the pain of losing him would be almost too much to bear.

In fact, The Adventure of the Clapham Cook encapsulated much of what would develop in the years to come. Poirot’s fussiness; his pride in his ‘little grey cells’ and in being Belgian not French; his capacity for generosity of spirit, especially towards servants; his respect for Miss Lemon; his delight in Hastings’ loyalty; his fondness for Japp; and, perhaps most of all, his ability to laugh at himself – for example, by framing the cheque for one guinea that Mrs Todd sent him after dispensing with his services.

I realised that what I really wanted to do was to become different people, to transform myself into them. I wanted to be a character actor, not a star. That was what I enjoyed, that was what acting really meant to me.

the more I read about him, the more convinced I became that he was a character that demanded to be taken seriously. He wasn’t a silly little man with a funny accent, any more than Sherlock Holmes was just a morphine addict with a taste for playing the violin. There was a depth and quality to the Poirot that Dame Agatha had created – and that was what I desperately wanted to bring to the screen.

‘I listen to what you say, but I hear what you mean.’

had exactly the same appetite for order, method and symmetry that he did. And, like Poirot, I was not prepared to compromise what I believed in. That certainly applied to his clothes.

brother John, my younger brother Peter and me to read, but had also told us: ‘Read the greats, never forget Shakespeare, challenge yourselves.’ We’d all taken his advice, and it was one reason why I’d loved playing Tolstoy’s poor Pozdnyshev in The Kreutzer Sonata.
‘Well, to be honest, Brian, I haven’t read any,’ I said rather meekly. ‘She’s really not my style. But I know she has a great many fans.’
Brian seemed untroubled. ‘Have you seen any of the Poirot films?’ he asked, putting his spoon into the pilau rice.
I’d done more than that. I’d actually appeared in one.
‘I appeared with Peter Ustinov in the CBS film Thirteen at Dinner in 1985, just before I did Iago,’ I