Star Turns

TIM WALKER remembers a meeting with a particularly pensive Rowan Atkinson I met Rowan Atkinson on an autumn day in 1988 that, he informed me, was the 10th anniversary of the start of his career in show business. Up until that point, his credits included the ground-breaking satirical television series Not the Nine 0’Cock News, Blackadder and its […]

TIM WALKER on his run-ins with Michael Winner, a thin-skinned character whose reputation has come under fresh scrutiny in the #MeToo era The late Daily Mail gossip columnist Nigel Dempster loved to have a flutter. When I worked as his deputy around the turn of the millennium, he’d be watching the racing on television most afternoons. On […]

TIM WALKER on Dame Maggie Smith, an actress able to make people laugh, on and off screen. When I went to see Dame Maggie Smith appearing in A German Life at the Bridge Theatre in London, I was invited backstage to see her after the curtain went down. It was a hot night in 2019 and the […]

Best known as Grouty in Porridge, Peter Vaughan was an actor who seemed to get better with age The Seven Ages of Man speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It amounts to a career trajectory for all serious actors. The best and luckiest manage to grow old with their audiences, going from playing “the whining schoolboy, with […]

TIM WALKER remembers a tense meeting where the Spanish singer was anxious to save face. I got to meet the old crooner Julio Iglesias in the late1980s and it’s his vanity that made the encounter so memorable. In those days, I used to work with Jane Bown, a photographer so grand that she numbered the […]

TIM WALKER on meeting Billy Graham. As a venerable democracy, Great Britain used to take a somewhat condescending view of America and the way she liked to wave her flag and loudly profess her faith in God. It wasn’t that we were by and large unpatriotic or ungodly, but we just felt that we’d reached […]

For Ian Lavender, who played Private Pike in Dad’s Army, the magic of the series came from the way it was written to suit the actors’ personalities. By TIM WALKER. There have been 10 prime ministers since the first episode of Dad’s Army was broadcast, but the Guardian has suggested that the show resonates now more than ever because of […]

TIM WALKER on being charmed by Lord Delfont. Lord Delfont has enjoyed something of a career renaissance in recent years, albeit posthumously. Sir Michael Gambon played the great showbusiness impresario as a thoroughly decent man in the film Judy – the Judy Garland biopic that had Renée Zellweger in the title role – and, the year before […]

TIM WALKER on an actor proud to have been called a luvvie. It was the word “luvvies” that introduced me to Peter Bowles. I’d used it in the way journalists generally do as a light-hearted, if lazy and cliched, way of describing actors and it had provoked a debate in the letters column of The Stage, […]

TIM WALKER reminisces on his time covering the tax evasion trial of Ken Dodd. One normally only gets to spend an hour or so in the company of a big star – that’s all that tends to be allocated for even the biggest interviews – but in the case of Ken Dodd it was for […]

TIM WALKER on his friend, the director Michael Grandage. The first time I remember talking to Michael Grandage was as he was standing anxiously in the foyer of the Donmar Warehouse Theatre in Covent Garden. It was the first night of Frost/Nixon. “I’ve been looking forward to this one,” I said. He replied: “I’m terrified.”  The […]

TIM WALKER on the director John Schlesinger, a man with just the right sense of perspective. John Schlesinger resided in one of those vast Christmas cake mansions in Kensington that signal to all the world its owner has achieved his wildest dreams. He couldn’t exactly claim to be a self-made man – dad had been a […]

TIM WALKER on theatre director Indhu Rubasingham, who provided him with a much-needed morale boost. It’s hard to put a value on theatre – just as it is on music, football, art or any other endeavour that’s prone to become a religion – but a value it undoubtedly has. That was brought home to me eight years […]

Lockdown has left much of the arts in limbo, but director Stephen Unwin has been characteristically bustling, says TIM WALKER. Theatres are much like any other places of work and the best directors – like all bosses – create environments in which everyone feels they can succeed. It’s all very well to scream at actors and […]

TIM WALKER remembers his old friend Ronald Harwood, a writer who left judgement to others. Ronald Harwood was fascinated by how individuals responded to stark moral dilemmas. He never, however, judged, and preferred to etch out his characters in shades of grey – rather than blacks and whites – and that’s what made his plays and […]

TIM WALKER remembers a meeting with Malcolm Muggeridge, an encounter which has haunted him since revelations about the journalist and broadcaster later emerged. Malcolm Muggeridge – St Mugg, as he was known in his day – admitted to me that he had been an actor all of his life. His credits included I’m All Right Jack and Heavens […]

TIM WALKER remembers a somewhat frosty encounter with Sir Anthony Quayle, who was unwilling to be drawn on his political views. All actors have areas of their lives that are off limits and it was no different with Sir Anthony Quayle. The year was 1986 and the grand old man of the stage was about […]

This is the time when I traditionally look back on the shows I’ve reviewed over the previous 12 months and select the ones I’ve most enjoyed. I have, however, a practical problem that will no doubt soon be confronting the judges of the big theatrical awards: there isn’t an awful lot to choose from. I […]

TIM WALKER looks back at a memorable meeting with the great mime artist. Of all the people in all the world, mine artists must seem like the least promising subjects for an interview. Marcel Marceau was, however, a joy to talk to. And just to behold. It was the summer of 1990 and the scene […]

TIM WALKER on how Brexit helped turn actor Frances Barber from an enemy to a friend. It was a young man named Tyler who first acquainted me with Frances Barber. Six years ago, she boarded a plane at Heathrow bound for Los Angeles and he’d been seated beside her. The crew made a big fuss […]

TIM WALKER looks back on a meeting with Quentin Crisp, which left him unimpressed. Quentin Crisp was fond of saying that if you ever wanted to shock your parents, you should tell them you’d met him. I’m not sure he was all that shocking by the time I caught up with him 1985 when he […]

TIM WALKER looks at the life of Sir Cliff Richard… One of the frustrations of being Sir Cliff Richard is that newspapers only normally dispatch showbusiness journalists to talk to him. That’s limiting for him, and limiting, too, for the public in terms of their understanding of him. So it delighted the veteran entertainer when, […]

Greta Scacchi reveals her thoughts about Hollywood and how she retained her self-respect at all times. You could be forgiven for thinking that before the Me Too movement began to get traction three years ago, men in Hollywood had behaved impeccably towards women. That of course is arrant nonsense and Greta Scacchi was one of […]

In the age of the coronavirus, it’s perhaps as well not to dwell too much on six degrees of separation, the idea that all people on average are six – or fewer – social connections away from each other. Still, I was struck by how true this was just over a decade ago when I […]

I miss the days when I’d think nothing of looking at my diary and seeing I had a lunch with someone like Eartha Kitt. The reputation of the West End stage meant that the greatest performers from all over the world were continually converging upon it. I realise now how I took that for granted, […]

Boris Johnson’s spinmeisters have been going on a lot just lately about how “Churchillian” his rhetoric has been. Ian Blackford, the SNP politician, was probably closer to the mark when he characterised what Johnson had been saying – and his delivery – as “yapping, bumbling, mumbling”. I’ve no doubt, too, that if Robert Hardy were […]

Hounds chase foxes not out of any personal antipathy, but because it’s what their lords and masters train them to do. It was once a bit like this between Hugh Grant and me. The stand the actor has taken on media intrusion into people’s lives – including his own – meant he was considered to […]

It was at the Chichester Festival Theatre just over a year ago that I last saw Dame Diana Rigg. Not on stage, but sitting directly in front of me as her daughter Rachael Stirling starred in a revival of Sir David Hare’s play Plenty. She glowed with maternal pride. The fine actress’s death earlier this […]