Alan Dale
|
The New Zealand-born actor Alan Dale became a U.K. household face thanks to his successive stints in the long-running Aussie soaps
The Young Doctors and
Neighbours. He came to London to try for work in 1993, and “I couldn’t catch a cold,” he says now, swapping the lonely pub in Baker Street he sat in then for the star dressing room backstage at the West End’s Palace Theatre, where he has just taken over as King Arthur in Monty Python’s
Spamalot. In the years in between, his international profile has soared, as the actor—who now makes his home in Los Angeles—has had leading roles in such U.S. television shows as
The OC,
Lost and most recently
Ugly Betty. Returning to the theater is a return to his roots, as he tells Broadway.com. Read on!
Tell me about making your West End debut.
This is it, though I was part of the cast of Neighbours when we did the Royal Variety Show at the London Palladium in 1988, and we sang the theme to it there. So I suppose that was my debut, but this is it really it. It is very exciting. I chose not to think about it too much because if I had, I might have got terrified.
Theater hasn’t figured too much in your career…
No, but it’s where I started. I used to do it for free. My parents built a little 100-seat theatre, and I used to wind the wind machine around the back in between sneaking smokes. At that time, in the early 1960s, there were not any professional theaters in New Zealand. When one opened, they mostly hired English actors, since they had had training—there wasn’t any at home, and the only way to get it was to come to London and go to RADA, and that was a pretty big thing to do. So I never trained, but when I got to America in my 50s, I found a fine teacher and spent three years going to classes once a week and learning about the business of show. I may have done this for nothing to begin with, but now I get paid a lot of money to do it.
Alan Dale as King Arthur in Spamalot
|
How did doing this show come about for you, and what was the appeal of it?
I have a London agent now, and when the writers’ strike happened in Hollywood, she got a call asking if I’d be interested in doing Spamalot. I’d not seen it yet,
ut I was being flown to Melbourne to present an award at the Australian Film Institute Awards last year, and it had just opened there the week before I went. So I went to see it, and I was very impressed by the fact that I didn’t look at my watch once, which is the criteria I use for if I like a show. I laughed and laughed and laughed until I coughed up a lung, so things were in good shape. Not everyone agrees with this, but for me Monty Python is fine art—it is absolutely superb stuff. After seeing the show, I went to see the musical director, Peter Casey, who happened to be the MD of the only musical I’d ever done [Applause in 1984 in Australia], so I sang for him and they filmed it and sent it to London. And here I am.
You’ve had a busy few months.
Yes, I’ve finished Ugly Betty in the U.S., filmed Torchwood and Midnight Man over here, and 13 episodes of Sea Patrol back in Queensland in Australia—and did the new Indiana Jones, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, too. It’s been exhausting, but I’ve had a marvelous time.
That roundup proves how international your career has become.
I’ve had some lucky breaks all along. Silly things have happened. I was a milkman at one point in New Zealand, and would go around in shorts and singlet in the middle of the night delivering milk. It wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, but it paid well. Anyway, one night, I was listening to the radio, and the guy who was presenting the show walked off, cursing the station saying that they weren’t paying him enough and leaving the record running. The next morning I went into the station and ended up getting a job there. The same thing happened when I got to Australia; I got there at 1pm, and by 5pm that day, had a commercial, two weeks work on a radio station and an audition lined up for what turned out to be The Young Doctors and led to three-and-a-half years work. That, in turn, was followed by eight years on Neighbours. But I always decided that when things turn to shit and people give you a hard time, rather than turn around and go to a smaller place, I go to a bigger one. I don’t know what I can do now if that happens in America!
Alan Dale and Nina Söderquist
in Spamalot
|
How did you get to be an American TV star?
They had started to film a lot of American TV shows in Australia, and because most of us can do a passable American accent, all the lesser roles were played by local people. In 1999, I did a TV movie called First Daughter with Gregory Harrison, in which he played the President and I was his Chief of Security. One day I went to visit him in his trailer and asked him what the chances would be for me if I went to America. He said that there had to be some kind of work for someone like me, but he wasn’t too enthusiastic—but having started that question, it started rolling around in my mind. And then First Daughter was going to have a theater launch in Santa Monica, and I’d never been because everyone told me what a shithole L.A. was, and anytime I had gone overseas it would be to London. But I said to my wife Trace, let’s go for a holiday and see the premiere. We had to fly ourselves there and had to take a cab there, which had to stop two blocks away from the theater because of all the stretch limos. I was fourth in the credits but there was no limo for us. It was not very auspicious, and I didn’t have any contacts. But Gregory gave me his manager’s number, and I went to see him. He wouldn’t take me on, either, but I kept ringing him. Finally one night, we were driving to San Francisco and I rang him one last time, and it happened to be the day after First Daughter had gone to air and had rated its socks off. On the strength of that, he took me on. So I went home, packed everything up and rented the house out and came back to L.A. in January 2000. Then I had another three or four months with nothing happening, and I was thinking of upping stakes and going back home. But I met an actress who wasn’t working either, and when I told her I was thinking of giving up, she said, “That’s a good idea, because then the next guy in the line behind you would get the job instead and would be pleased.” I thought, “Fuck that!” So I stayed another few months, and then got the ER job, which led to all the ones you see on my CV!
Your persistence obviously paid off. But you’ve also been able to do a variety of roles, instead of becoming forever associated with just one like Jim Robertson in Neighbours.
I’m not unhappy with the two years I’ve done on each of these shows in America. I really didn’t want to end up being Bradford Meade forever, or Jim Robertson as I’d done in Australia. Jim was great—it was a marvelous opportunity to have had that regular job and be able to bring up my two boys on my own, even though they paid us fuck all. Most people don’t talk about money, but I do. I resented it terribly that they were so mean, and didn’t tell us that we were a hit in England for fear of us asking for more money. That burnt me, but when I had money, I started buying property in Melbourne, L.A. and New Zealand, so I don’t have to worry about it so much.
What’s lined up next?
Thanks for asking that—nothing! But I just love the fact that I don’t know. My wife just said to me that when I get into a series now, I get ratty, but when I’m not in a series, I cruise along quite happily because there’s always something new on the horizon.