Victoria Mary Clarke

Tom Conti interview

Tom Conti interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2002-08-13

Tom Conti played a handsome Greek who enticed Shirley Valentine away from her boring, disinterested husband to a life of passion, adventure and rekindled sexuality, in the movie of that name. All over the world he is known for this role, but I have to confess that beyond this, I know very little about him. And finding out things about him hasn’t been easy, he’s not an ‘OK’ magazine type of actor, and there hasn’t been any scandal. Once, Julia Roberts said at an awards ceremony that she hoped ‘That Tom Conti isn’t here!’ But unfortunately she had him confused with somebody else. So there isn’t even anything bad to say about him. He’s been married forever to his wife Kara and they have a beautiful daughter Nina, who’s a stand up comic. He’s never strayed with a supermodel and never been done for drugs and he’s not been known to thump photographers. We may have to resort to talking about acting, if I can’t think of anything else.
            Tom’s daughter Nina has just won an award at the Edinburgh Festival, the night before we meet. He himself is in Dublin, to launch the Dublin Theatre Festival and I am joining him for lunch at the Westbury, where we’ve ordered sandwiches in a conference room that’s tuned to arctic. He looks exactly the same as he did in ‘Shirley Valentine”, but he’s Scottish, not Greek. Because he’s a gentleman, he adjusts the air conditioning, to make me more comfortable. I congratulate him on Nina’s award.
She’s a ventriloquist, so she does her act with a doll.
“She’s brilliant at it,’ he says, glowing with pride. ‘And gloriously funny. She was in some of Ken Campbell’s productions. He said ‘Nina, you’re very funny and there aren’t many funny girls who look good.” He gave her a teach yourself ventriloquism book and a puppet, to try. And she said to me “Daddy, do you know anything about ventriloquism?” That line had been a family joke, for years. Before Nina was born, Kara and I were having lunch and the conversation had lulled and I said “Do you know anything about ventriloquism?” It was a serious question, but it became a standing joke, anytime there was a lull in the conversation. And now she gets rave reviews for it and it makes her dad very happy.”
Kara, his wife is an actress. But, he says, it’s a hard profession for women of a certain age. What about Helen Mirren?
‘That’s only one. And for years, Helen wasn’t doing well.”
You are a certain age too, I point out, delicately.
‘I certainly am.”
On the internet, he has three different ages. Which is correct?
“Take your pick! Look at me and decide.”
Fiftyish, I guess, politely. Has it got easier or more difficult to get parts?
“The parts change. You don’t get to bed the girl anymore and that’s a great sadness. I can’t remember the last time I got the girl.”
Older actors than you still bed the girl, I remind him. That other Scottish actor does.
“Sean Connery? Yes, he’s a lot older than me.”
But that’s not what acting is about is it?
‘It’s about the girls, yes. I joined for the girls.”
He started acting at College, but he was studying music at the time.
“I thought I was going to be a musician,”he says, simply.
He would look good as a lounge pianist, in a white tux.
“I would rather be an orchestral conductor. Conductors are hated on sight, generally. But that wasn’t to be.”
            Acting, he finds utterly fascinating, fortunately.
“When you talk about it, it always sounds batty. You can’t talk about anything creative, without it sounding nuts or pretentious. But acting is a knack that you either have or you don’t have, you can’t learn it. It’s very simple and highly complicated. If you don’t understand it innately, no amount of tuition will ever enlighten you.”
How do you know if you have it?
“It’s too complicated to explain.”
He orders a beer, with his sandwich and wine for me. He’s just about to play John Barrymore in a one man play called ‘One Helluva Life”. Barrymore was a notorious drinker. Is he practicing for the role, with that beer?
“I very rarely drink beer. But I’m not driving.”
The play is hugely entertaining, he promises. Barrymore’s life was highly successful and utterly tragic. He once said “I was happiest with Delores, my second wife. She made such a success of the marriage that I had to get out.”
Tom has a bit of Irish in him, too.
‘Yes, but my bit isn’t self destructive. The Italian coward in me stops me self destructing! It’s an awful gene to have though.”
            Despite having played numerous drunks, including Jeffrey Bernard, Tom isn’t a drunk and he isn’t self-destructive. So he really is acting. I ask him if he can improvise something for me. He says I would have to give him a situation to improvise. I say improvise something about a girl who is tormented because she is fighting with her boyfriend.
“How does it present itself, this problem? Is there something about how she dresses, the way she wears her hair that says what’s happening?”
She’s tense, I say.
“Would that tension only be there if the man was present? It wouldn’t necessarily be there with somebody that she was interviewing, like me? Because we will go our separate ways, at the end of the day, presumably! Of course it depends how great the torment is. You weren’t ever a nun, were you?”
A nun?!!No.
“I don’t know, a nice Irish girl.”
I would be tempted, though, I confess.
‘Would you?”
Oh, yes, I say. A peaceful life.
“Oh God, what a thing! What about sex?”
I hesitate. You could do without that, I decide.
“Could you?”
Couldn’t you?
“No.” He’s adamant, thankfully, being a sex-symbol. “I suppose sex does stop people having inner peace, it’s true. But then maybe it’s more fun to have the sex than the inner peace. Maybe the inner peace is a kind of death, anti-life.”
Ah, yes, but you are very happy, with your wife, I say. So you probably don’t have torment.
“No, that’s true. What was your relationship with your father like? If a girl has trouble with men, it has to do with the relationship with her father.”
Not so good, I tell him.
“It is a curious thing the father daughter relationship.” His daughter telephones, while we are talking. ‘How are you, sweetheart?” he says, adoringly.
He’s good to his daughter.
“Oh God, yes. We have always been great friends, so she is emotionally stable and goes for men that are kind to her.”
So Tom Conti may have lured Shirley Valentine away from her family, but he’s devoted to his. In fact, he says, he refused to move to Hollywood because he didn’t think it a suitable place for his daughter to be brought up.
Finally, I mention the Dublin Theatre Festival. It’s what he’s here for. You must say something about it, I tell him.
“I’ve never been at it!” he says. “So I don’t know what it’s like. But I’m sure it will be great fun. The Irish like theatre and this is a good play, so I’m in the right place.”