Profile/Ian McDiarmid: He has played the evil ruler of the galaxy, but it was his role in Brian Friel's Faith Healer that really put him on top of the world, writes Kate Holmquist
The hard chaws of the Dublin theatre scene know him from way back and he's never forgotten them. A lifetime ago - in 1971 or thereabouts - Ian McDiarmid found himself crawling over an awkward system of ropes while attempting the leading role in what might best be described as an inventive but ineffective touring production of Glasgow Citizens' Theatre's Timon of Athens at the Abbey in Dublin. He had managed to wend his way by rope downstage and was clinging on, mid-monologue, when a Dubliner in the front row whispered in a gravelly voice, "You're murderin' the bard."
"I could do nothing but agree," McDiarmid tells friends when recounting his first experience of the Dublin stage.
It was 35 years before McDiarmid braved the Dublin audience again, this time last February in Brian Friel's Faith Healer at the Gate. It starred Ralph Fiennes in the role of the troubled faith healer, Ingrid Craigie as his long-time lover and McDiarmid as Teddy, the faith healer's cockney handler, a retired impresario.
Teddy is a role that McDiarmid believes fits him "like a glove". While Fiennes had tongues wagging and fan clubs buying tickets for two and three performances in a row, McDiarmid lived quietly in an apartment on Bachelor's Walk, rarely recognised and only occasionally asked for his autograph, an intrusion he loathes.
In May, the production opened to rave reviews on Broadway and this week McDiarmid won, at the age of 61, the Tony award for best featured actor. Six of the other awards went to The History Boys, but that hasn't done Faith Healer any harm. In the crass language of Playbill, it's "done socko business", recouping its €2 million investment in the first eight weeks so that it is now comfortably in profit and packing them in.
McDiarmid's Tony came about something like this: four years ago, McDiarmid's long-time friend and theatrical partner, director Jonathan Kent, cast McDiarmid in Faith Healer in London. Last year, Ralph Fiennes and Michael Colgan were talking about doing Faith Healer and Fiennes wanted his friend, Kent, to direct it. Kent wanted McDiarmid to play Teddy. There was no argument from Colgan, who had admired McDiarmid's definitive performance as Teddy four years previously.
Few who passed McDiarmid on the street while he was in Dublin rehearsing and playing in Faith Healer would have recognised Darth Sidious, leader of the Galactic Empire. McDiarmid has a malleable, unremarkable face - apart from his remarkably high forehead - and in TV dramas he's always the villain or the doctor or the interesting character part. In the 1970s, he played a supporting role in the TV series, The Professionals, but, like his many other TV roles, it didn't lift him from respected actor to international star.
On stage, where he is widely respected for his Shakespearian roles, he's known for playing monomaniacs and madmen and he does wonderful, scary things with his voice. When George Lucas auditioned him to play the hooded, sonorously voiced Sidious, alter ego of the evil Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars saga, Lucas's only comment on McDiarmid's appearance at the audition was "great nose".
McDiarmid, so self-effacing that he hates being recognised in public, would be the first to say that he's no Brad Pitt. But, in his dapper tuxedo, accepting the Tony, he seemed to be one of those people who grow into their looks with age.
McDiarmid gets on well with Lucas because Lucas is serious, a perfectionistic and shy - and so is McDiarmid. An entertaining raconteur with fellow actors and close friends, he really prefers his own company and, after living alone in Notting Hill for 20 years, he recently bought a house in his home country of Scotland. He's been busy doing it up during breaks between performances - although it will have to wait now that Faith Healer is set to run until the autumn.
In 1990, Kent and McDiarmid took over an old fleapit of a theatre in north London, the Almeida, and set about turning it into the most important theatrical enterprise in the city through sheer belief and on a tiny budget. As co-artistic directors, they side-stepped the world of institutional theatre and by following their instincts attracted audiences - as well as big-name actors. Ralph Fiennes, Kevin Spacey, Juliette Binoche, Anna Friel, Diana Rigg and Rachel Weisz were among the Hollywood stars persuaded to perform in plays by David Hare, Harold Pinter, Neil LaBute and Howard Barker for £260 a week.
McDiarmid and Kent also attracted a fashionable theatre crowd, although this wasn't the point. Passion for the theatre was. They even introduced "pay what you can afford nights" so that no one would be excluded. David Hare credited them with reinventing the European repertoire and making British theatre more cosmopolitan.
When Kent and McDiarmid decided to leave the Almeida in 2002, the theatre world was aghast, but McDiarmid loves taking risks. Constantly reinventing himself, he has an uncanny knack of getting his due rewards - the Tony not the least of them, although to be fair, his shelves are already laden with British theatre awards.
McDiarmid believes that money always follows art and that nothing is impossible. The Almeida ran on a shoestring and when corporate sponsorship grew leaner, he filled the gap by getting the Star Wars people to give the Almeida a charity preview. The Star Wars income has, in more ways than one, enabled His Imperial Majesty of the Galactic Republic to do what he loves.
The seeds of the Teddy role were planted in McDiarmid 56 years ago when, as a five-year-old boy, he was taken backstage by his uncle, a stage manager, after a variety act in Dundee that featured a comedian, Tommy Morgan - who McDiarmid imagines as the original Teddy. He was instantly hooked by the overdone make-up on men as well as women, the stage lights and the idea that one man could entice an audience into a magical world.
From that moment he harboured a terrible secret: that he was born to be an actor. Not wanting to disappoint his father, McDiarmid went to university and studied psychology, eventually getting a masters in social science. His Scottish Presbyterian guilt prevented him from following his dream until one day he realised that it was either go to drama school, or be miserable until the day he died.
The cheap, variety hall act he saw as a five-year-old began developing over the next 35 years into the very heart of the character of Teddy, a part he first auditioned for 20 years ago for the original Broadway production. He was told he was too young for the part, which combines the sleazy, decaying charm of the small-time impresario with big questions about mortality. Death is a theme that McDiarmid is more than at ease with.
The Scottish Presbyterian presence is never far away from the off-stage McDiarmid's persona. He conveys a moral authority that makes his friends wary of disappointing him and, while at the Almeida, he was perceived by some as "the enforcer", even though, on the face of things, Kent was the powerful director and McDiarmid took a backseat as an actor.
But it would be a mistake to think of McDiarmid as anything less than an impresario, as his winning friendship with Kent, teamed for Broadway with Fiennes and Colgan, led directly to the Tony award this week.
He's an actor who knows, like the great actor-producer-impresarios of the past, that to get a great part, you first have to do whatever it takes to get the play produced on the stage.
The McDiarmid File
Favourite role Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest, directed by Jonathan Kent
Love of his life The theatre
Most challenging aspect of his role in Faith Healer "Bladder control" (he has to drink five bottles of "beer" - cold tea - each performance)
How he feels about getting the Tony award "Flabbergasted"
Most likely to be seen Walking the Scottish cliffs, book in hand, contemplating mortality and his next big theatre project
Least likely to be seen On a pair of Heelys
Most likely to say "No, I'm not him, I just look like" him
Least likely to say "May the Force be with you"