Jonathan Pryce
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In a career that has embraced leading roles in both plays and musicals on both sides of the Atlantic—not to mention as starring roles in film and television—Jonathan Pryce has carved out a place as one of our most versatile and most consistently interesting actors. The Welsh-born performer began his acting career in regional theatre at the Liverpool Everyman and Nottingham Playhouse, subsequently returning to Liverpool for a season as artistic director. He won Tony Awards for his appearances on Broadway in Trevor Griffiths’ Comedians and the musical Miss Saigon, while the latter also secured him an Olivier Award win for Outstanding Performance in a Musical. The actor’s versatility is also demonstrated by an earlier Olivier Award win for playing Hamlet at the Royal Court. He has also done seasons with the RSC and has appeared at the National Theatre, playing Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady that transferred to the West End’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. His film credits have stretched from regularly working with director Terry Gilliam (including starring roles in Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brothers Grimm) to his Evening Standard and Cannes Film Festival wins for playing Lytton Strachey in the 1994 film Carrington. In 1992, he appeared in the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross as milquetoast client James Lingk. Now Pryce has returned to David Mamet’s play about a highly competitive group of real estate brokers at the West End’s Apollo Theatre to lead the cast of a revival of Mamet’s play. This time, however, he is playing the role of the older Shelley Levene, a salesman down on his luck, even as Pryce is on a personal roll.
You’ve done a lot since you were last onstage here at the Apollo Theatre in Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? You filmed two Pirates of the Caribbean films, took over the lead role in Broadway’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels from John Lithgow and have just made two more movies amongst other things. How do you manage to do so much?
In terms of being able to juggle things, this year has been one of my best. Towards the end of last year, I got an offer to go work with George Clooney for three months in North Carolina on a film called Leatherheads that he directed, starred, wrote and co-produced. He’s delightful, and it was as lovely time. And then I went on to My Zinc Bed, the film version of David Hare’s play for HBO with Uma Thurman and Paddy Considine. And then I had a seven-week break over the summer, but knowing I had this job to come to was bliss. It doesn’t always work out like that
Are we sitting in the same dressing room that you had for The Goat?
Yes. It’s comfortable to be back in the same place. There’s even the same smell of urine on the streets. But it’s a good theatre for a straight play, because it seats a decent number of people but is still fairly intimate, unless they’re right on the very, very top shelf.
Jonathan Pryce in Glengarry Glen Ross
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That’s only if you’re doing very well…
And they’re really poor!
What’s it like coming back to Glengarry Glen Ross, 15 years on from doing the movie?
I don’t really remember much about it from then, other than shooting it. We rehearsed it like a play, but the involvement of the character I played then, James Lingk, is very different to Shelley Levene’s. But I have very good memories of it. I was doing Miss Saigon at night and shooting Glengarry by day, and the location for the Chinese restaurant was also in the Theatre District, so it was not far from the theatre. My strongest memories of making the film were of being with Pacino. We shot the opening scene over a couple of days. I had met him when I was in New York in 1976 doing Comedians, and we got on very well. I like him a lot. I think that Glengarry has one of his very best performances on film. It was great for everyone.
Like Pacino, you also straddle the divide between film and theatre a lot.
I don’t see myself differentiating between them. I’m just an actor, so I go where the work is. Fortunately, I still enjoy theatre, and I think I enjoy the process of the work in theatre more than in film. Everyone says this, but with film, you’re in so many other people’s hands. You can do what you think is pretty good work, and then it ends up on the floor. But it’s great when you’re with good directors who you can trust in film, which is why I enjoy working with Terry Gilliam, because he likes the whole acting process. Acting is celebrated in his films.
Jonathan Pryce, Rachel York and
Norbert Leo Butz in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
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You also inhabit both the worlds of plays and musicals.
I discovered I wanted to do a musical after seeing Les Miserables. I had hardly seen any big-scale musicals before that and only went because Patti LuPone was a friend, and I wanted to see her do her stuff. I was completely blown away by it and thought I’d quite like to have a go at this kind of thing. It was really dramatic, and I could see how you could act singing. So my agent put the word out and Miss Saigon came around. Just prior to it, I’d been doing Macbeth and Uncle Vanya, so learning a new discipline was hard. I’m not a great student and and rather resent having to learn things. Even when I’d done Shakespeare in the past, I have tried to make it my own, but I found that with musicals that isn’t always possible: you couldn’t change the timings, because the conductor wasn’t having any of it. But instead of being a restricting thing, it turned out to be liberating. I knew I always had the security of the conductor, the orchestra and the music. And on top of that, you can then go and have fun.
Are you having fun with Glengarry?
Yes, here are some wonderful laughs to be had. It’s character driven and the narrative is quite slender, but the relish of language is huge. I’m surrounded by it all the time, so I didn’t acknowledge the use of four letter words in it, but some people have asked if the bad language is the same as in the film. I think it’s even more actually, but it has a different resonance when it is used constantly. The night before last, we had an audience in where it was like a Jerry Springer show. They were cheering along with it. When I said, “Fuck you, kiss my ass,” cheers erupted! Saying, It was very Googie Withers. The play is an event—it’s 90 minutes and goes very fast.
The Goat was also a huge event—a dangerous play that explored dark areas of sexuality and tolerance.
It was a wonderful experience doing The Goat. It starts out as drawing-room comedy, but then it just descends, going deeper and deeper.
Was it difficult playing it with your real-life wife, Kate Fahy?
No, that was a very easy thing for me. I read it in one sitting, which I don’t normally do—I usually fall asleep and pick it up the next day—and turned to Kate and said this is fantastic, and there’s a wonderful part in it for you. Do you want to be the wife of a goat fucker? I put her name forward to [director] Anthony Page, and she and I went to New York to meet Edward Albee. We worked on it for half a day, and then Edward gave us his blessing. The four of us, Matthew Marsh, who is now in Glengarry as well, and Eddie Redmayne, were a good family.
You and Kate have been together for 35 years. That’s a long time in this business!
It is—they tell me!
And no temptations from goats?
No, I’m Welsh, so it’s sheep.