Episode 9: Neil sits down with...actor Trevor Eve Part 1

Neil Hancock: 00:00:11
Hello, everyone.  I'm Neil on Wheels and this is my new podcast.  I can't walk the walk, but I can talk the talk.  I'm a wheelchair actor who wasn't able to work during the pandemic.  But rather than sitting around doing nothing, I thought I'd sit around doing something.  In this series, I'll be chatting to people in the theatre, TV and film industry about the challenges they've overcome in order to achieve great things in life.  He's had an acting career that spanned nearly five decades, which has seen him play a variety of roles, including Private Eye, Eddie Shoestring in the series Shoestring, Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd in the BBC One crime drama Waking the Dead and Dominic King in Kidnap and Ransom.  He has also had an illustrious stage career, having won two Olivier Awards, one for his role as James Leeds in Children of a Lesser God and the other for Dr Astrov in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.  As well as acting, he is a producer and has also written his first novel, Lomita For Ever, published in 2019.  If you haven't guessed it yet, the actor I'm talking about is none other than Trevor Eve.  Hello, Trevor.

Trevor Eve: 00:01:23
Hello, Neil.  Thank you so much for that introduction.  That's amazing.  I'm interested to hear what this guy has to say.

Neil Hancock: 00:01:33
Well, welcome to the show.  Thank you so much for coming on.

Trevor Eve: 00:01:36
It's my absolute pleasure.

Neil Hancock: 00:01:38
Now, I just want to start, you're really someone who has done it all.  You've had a stellar career, but your path initially wasn't going to be in acting at all.

Trevor Eve: 00:01:49
No.

Neil Hancock: 00:01:50
You ── I believe you studied architecture at Kingston Polytechnic but dropped out and enrolled at RADA.  Can I ask what made you decide to change from architecture to acting?

Trevor Eve: 00:02:02
Well, I went to the Kingston School of Architecture and I think in a way it was a... the whole thing was a sort of, possibly a compromise to please my father, who obviously I wanted to please and had great respect for.  I wanted to be a painter, an artist and he said there's no money in that.  So, I was always interested in the concept of design and space.  So, I applied for architecture and when I got there I did just under three years and found it to be... it just wasn't what I expected it to be.  I didn't find it to be a creative outlet.  And so, the things that I was doing were spending most of the afternoons in the cinema instead of attending lectures.  I think I saw Easy Rider about 12 times at the time it came out because we're talking 1969 here.  And then I found that I started to go to the theatre, which is something I'd never done.  I was from Birmingham and my family was, you know, not a theatre going family at all.  And I didn't know anything about actors, acting, nothing.  But when I got to London, I found that my interests were going to the theatre.  And indeed, I think it was Ingmar Bergman's production of Hedda Gabler at the Royal Court that I was just completely mesmerized by.  You could nip into the royal court.  You went to ── you didn't pay to go through.  You stood by the exits when people came out for the interval and then nipped in and just stood at the back.  And the ushers were kind of, you know, they were quite understanding, not like today, where you'd be probably whipped out, I don't know.  But then it was great.  So, then someone said to me, and I can't remember who, go ── why don't you do what you want to do?  And I thought, what is that acting?  I don't know anything about it.  So, I looked up and this is true in the Yellow Pages, which was a pre-google days, this was a publication, like a telephone directory of all kind of business premises and outfits.  And I looked up under drama schools for like I got Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Central, LAMDA, and wrote off, paid my £10 or whatever it was to audition, and went and auditioned and got in.  So, I got into RADA.  I did find a lady off Marylebone High Street who did sort of instructions of how to act, because I didn't have any idea.  So, that was like you'd raise your hand on a certain line, and then you'd raise your other hand on the other line.  And so, when I got to do my RADA audition, a wonderful man called Hugh Cruttwell, who was just the most brilliant man, God bless him, he's not with us anymore.  But his understanding of acting was second to none.  He said to me, he called me into a room after my audition, he said, that was absolutely dreadful.  And I said, oh, I'm so sorry, sir, but I have a feeling you can act.  You have five minutes to prove it.  And so, and he said, don't do any of the stuff you were doing in the audition space.  So, I ── that's what I did.  We gave him sort of five minutes of raw, emotional acting, and he said, I shouldn't really say this at the end, he said, I shouldn't really say this, but I have a feeling I'll be seeing you in September.  And indeed, I remember getting the letter from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and took the place.  Yeah.  So, that was that.  That's a very long-winded way of how I changed from architecture to acting.

Neil Hancock: 00:05:45
That's fantastic.  And you were there in the early 70s, weren't you?  What was your time at RADA like?

Trevor Eve: 00:05:54
Well, I was very aware of having to make something work in my life, having spent two and a half, three years studying architecture.  And, you know, that's quite a long time to be doing something that you realize you don't want to do.  So, I was really, I got my head down and I worked really hard and I really enjoyed it.  I absolutely loved...I loved RADA.   I had the best time.  I loved everything about it.  The whole idea of liberating yourself and coming to terms with your emotions and being able to be emotional and apply it to work and get sort of support for that.  And I suddenly found, God, this is who I am, this is what I want to be.  I'm not just a sort of, you know, emotional bag of whatever.  I can apply it to a profession.  I was truly, truly excited and thrilled, and obviously I had application because, you know, I did well there.  So, yeah.

Neil Hancock: 00:07:05
Well indeed, because you won the Bancroft Gold Medal while you were there.  For those who don't know, what is the Bancroft Gold Medal?  And how did you get it?

Trevor Eve: 00:07:14
Well, there were lots of prizes.  There are no prizes anymore.  I think as of 1985, they were ruled to be, you know, an issue in terms of picking out the best of and everybody should be on a much more even playing field.  The Bancroft Gold Medal was for the best overall actor.  I mean, it was the top award.  You know, you got truly hated for getting that one.  I mean, you won that and everybody just hated you.  And indeed, I went to the, my first job was at the Liverpool Everyman, which was a wonderful theatre, very political theatre.  And when it got, there was a little piece in a newspaper when I got there saying, the results of the RADA year, and they pinned that up on the board.  And I think it took me, you know, a good six months to play it down because I just got ribbed for being the Bancroft Gold Medal, you know, the RADA Bancroft Gold Medal winner.  But, you know, that's, I was proud, I was very proud of it, I still am.

Neil Hancock: 00:08:22
And were there any parts of your training that you found hard?

Trevor Eve: 00:08:26
To be really honest, no.  And I know that people do find it hard, but I had felt so displaced at school.  When I was at school, I didn't get on at school.  I was kind of criticized for everything I did.  I was a really ── I was good at sport.  Sport was my saving grace.  But the rest of it, I was considered to be undisciplined, lacking in a sort of direction, focus.  I ── so, I was ── I didn't enjoy school.  I was a sort of delinquent, I suppose, and got punished a lot and really got disappointed that I was being punished because I didn't── I wasn't a bad person.  I knew I wasn't a bad person.  I just didn't agree with much that was going on.  And so, when I got to RADA and I found I could put my physicality, my emotional, my sense of mischief, my anarchy, all those things into my work, I just thought, wow, just being an actor, it's just fantastic, you know, it's ── I loved it to bits.

Neil Hancock: 00:09:32
You'd finally found the place where you fitted.

Trevor Eve: 00:09:36
Yeah, I think that's it, Neil.  I'm not sure that I fitted in to the profession in quite the same way that I fitted in to RADA.  I think the profession presented itself with certain problems, but I think the idea at RADA, in that training environment of being able to speak your mind and to have opinions, you know, was, you were hugely respected and encouraged in that direction, and so, I enjoyed it enormously.  And also, the people that I worked with in the immediate aftermath of RADA were also encouraged that in a kind of, in a way that, well, maybe we'll talk about that later.  I won't be presumptuous.

Neil Hancock: 00:10:37
Were there any teachers in particular that helped you develop?  And if so, how did they help you develop?  You mentioned Hugh Cruttwell, but were there anymore?

Trevor Eve: 00:10:49
Yeah, there was Michael McAlien and Robert Palmer, June Kemp, Matt- Toshka, Federer, Madame Federer, who was a legendary movement teacher, you know, who said, I, you know, played Hamlet like a rugby player.  Yeah, there were lots.  They were hugely critical and had very astute fine eyes.  And to see what you... but I welcomed the criticism.  You know, I was stripped down to be made to feel after, you know, a year or so, that I was, you know, a kind of bull in a China shop and just a big, yeah.  But I don't know.  It was one time in my life I was prepared to... not one time, but a time in my life that I was prepared to accept criticism because I found it was constructive criticism.  And I was prepared to acknowledge my failures, of which there were many, because they told me how to try again and be better, you know.  And that's to me, to all of us, isn't it?  It's the key.  You don't want to be written off as a failure, but to be told if you did this, you would be better.  And I kind of really, truly got an education and grasped it and appreciated it because I didn't listen at school.  I didn't listen to a damn thing.  I mean, I just thought they were all shitheads.  I mean, I really thought the teachers were just like, you know, I didn't get them.  I didn't like their values.  I didn't like, you know, I was just, they were talking another language to me... anyway.

Neil Hancock: 00:12:28
And at that time, did you do third year shows like they now do at RADA or didn't you do those then?  And if so, how did you then go about getting your agent?

Trevor Eve: 00:12:39
Well, we did seven terms then, I think it was a seven-term course and yeah, we did, you know, you did Chekhov in the third term, I think, and then the Greeks in the fifth.  And in the final two terms, you did ── I was massively fortunate.  I did Iago, I did Petruccio in Kiss Me Kate musical.  I did, in the Greeks, I did Theocles in Seven Against Thebes.  I had some cracking parts, much of the annoyance of my fellow students, but, I mean, you know, I was really lucky.  And I think that's what you need.  We all know you need that in life.  You need big slices of luck.  So, my agent, was... they came along and were very particular, as I'm sure they do now, the same process.  And there was a man called James Sharkey who was with Peter Fraser and Dunlop and he was a really cool kind of top guy, you know.  He had a lot of the sort of 30 somethings who were really, really successful and so, he was a real catch and he came to see me and signed me up and I was, again, I was fortunate there, you know.  That's good, I got with a good guy.

Neil Hancock: 00:14:12
And you already mentioned earlier the Liverpool Everyman.  In 1974, you did a play at the Lyric which I think started at the Liverpool Everyman which was John Paul, Georgia, Ringo and Bert.  And you played Paul McCartney.  And then a couple of years later then you then work with Laurence Olivier on a play that I think was televised called Hindle Wakes.  What was it like to be involved in both of those productions?

Trevor Eve: 00:14:41
Well, the Liverpool Everyman play, Willie Russell was the writer in residence at The Liverpool Every man, wonderful writer.  And he had this concept for this show about Bert who was, you know, from the same area as the Beatles and loved them and so it was seen through his eyes, really.  And I played Paul McCartney and then Bernard Hill played John Lennon, Tony... Anthony Sher played Ringo, Phil Joseph played George and George Costigan played Bert and it was an extraordinary event because it was really good in that it was funny, it had Barbara Dixon was on stage playing the music.  It was a fabulous thing and... piece and all of the kind of the producers from the West End immediately came up to watch us night after night.  There'd be these big limos outside as they were - And it was Robert Stigwood, who was a massive record producer and impresario then who took the show down to London and where it ran for a year.  And, yeah, it was hugely successful and then we were going to do in a movie of it and I think there were legal issues as to why we couldn't do the movie because of America.  I can't remember now.  But, yeah, that was a lot of fun.  And I got to say, you know, Tony Sher, who is also a brilliant artist as well as a brilliant actor, he kind of helped us all make ourselves up to look like the characters.  I was okay as long as it didn't stand in profile because my nose is a lot bigger than Sir Paul's.  But, so, I did most of my acting front on but it was a lot of fun, I loved it.  And then Hindle Wakes, was I'd ── when I finished that show, I did a couple of TV things and a couple of theatre fringe shows, worked with, yeah, that was late - So, Hindle Wakes was at that time, Laurence Olivier had a sort of project at Granada called Laurence Olivier Presents and he could do anything he wanted, basically.  So, he had ── he'd pick a play from whatever year it was and he'd get people like Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman.  All these people would come and work for him and he decided to do this play by Stanley Houghton called Hindle Wakes, which was written in 1912, about a Manchester mill owner's son who married out of his own class.  And Olivier was auditioning people, he was directing it.  He'd cast Donald Pleasence as the lead man, the father, but the lead was the young guy.  So, I got myself an audition and this is where, you know, the mischief comes in.  I found out where I read the play.  It was set in just outside Manchester.  I went up to that town, I looked it around it, I'd listened to the accent.  I worked really, really, really hard on that particular accent.  I went back and I walked into the audition and Olivier, who was just I got there early, actually, it was in Golden Square in Soho.  And I remember getting there early and Olivier got out of the taxi in his salmon pink trousers.  I’ll always remember it.  And I was so nervous, Neil.  Can you imagine?  I was so nervous.  And, so, I worked, I think it was Prestwich this character was from or something.  I can't remember, something like that.  So, he said, so, where are you from, dear boy?  And I said, oh, just outside Manchester, actually, where the play is set, sir.  So, I did this whole thing and then he said, well, will you read with me?  And I said yes.  I do apologize in advance for my Northern accent, of course, which was perfect.  Anyway, I auditioned with him and me in a room, that was it.  I did lots of scenes with him and went away.  And anyway, I got the part and this was for me the most amazing kind of transforming thing of my life because I went up to Manchester to film this for six weeks and started a relationship, you know, with two actors there.  It was him, Olivier, who I went on to work with on different... and an actor called Donald Pleasence, who I also worked with again.  And they were just so magnificent to me.  I mean, I can remember after the first day's rehearsal of filming Olivier, so meet in the bar, 08:00, dear boy.  And I met in the bar and he said, okay, so, you'll be here every night, 08:00, and you won't spend any money at all.  This is not a very good impersonation of Olivier, but I don't want to attempt the absolute accurate one because it doesn't do justice.  And every night I did, I was ── he really looked after his people.  And we had dinners with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.  And every night people would come from Hollywood to discuss the further the project, other projects he was doing.  It was just a magical time and they were so, so kind.  And we would go back on the train to London at the weekends.  I mean, this is, you know, times gone by, this is when you'd get to the train and there'd be case, a case of wine.  And it was particular Chablis that Olivier had ordered to be put on the train.  And so, we would get on the train, we'd all sit there in first class and he'd open this special wine that he liked, none of the railway stuff, you know.  You just think, oh, my God, these days, you know, it was just extraordinary.  And they'd be, it was just great.  And then back again on the Sunday night and it was just, it was magic, as you can imagine. 

Neil Hancock: 00:21:24
And Chablis as well.  Not cheap stuff, is it?

Trevor Eve: 00:21:29
No, it wasn't nothing but that was it, you know.  It was all just, it was all just kind of amazing, amazing time being with these people who were... a man who was just at the pinnacle and the summit of the profession that I was entering.  And it was just so magnificent that he took time to, you know, educate me in the process and tell me how to do stuff and help.  And I then went on to work with Zeffirelli on a play where I met my wife Sharon, and Olivier's wife was the lead in that.  And he came to that, to rehearsals, and then I worked, well, I don't want to get chronologically out here, and so I hand it back to you.

Neil Hancock: 00:22:22
I was just going to say, you then worked with Olivier and Donald Pleasence again on Dracula, at the 1979 film Dracula with Frank Langella.  You briefly talked about how they were so nice to you and how they helped you.  In what specific ways would you say that particularly Olivier and Donald Pleasence helped you to become a better actor?

Trevor Eve: 00:22:48
Well, I think what they did is... I was obviously terrified.  I mean, you know, when you walk onto a set when you're being directed by Olivier and indeed, when you walk onto a set when you're acting opposite him, it's, you know, it's like, it's terrifying.  It's, you know, it's like having Rafal Nadal or Federer at the other end of the tennis court, you know?  I mean, these are serious icons.  And the great thing was that they immediately eliminated that sense of nervousness and of them being in any way superior or better or more wonderful.  And in fact, Olivier was just the world's worst corpser.  And there are bits of Dracula that are in little, tiny segment fractions of it where I'm not, I can't stop laughing because they just teased all the time and joked and I mean, it was just such an eye opener.  The whole kind of approach of the fun approach to doing it was just magnificent.  So, they broke down any possible barriers, you know, very early on in your relationship with someone like Olivier, he just says, call me Larry, dear boy, you know, and you just that's what you call him.  And you're just alongside him as a friend and a co-worker.  It was brilliant.

Neil Hancock: 00:24:19
I must say, the one thing I found when I watched Dracula, the one thing I found... it's probably tame by today's standards, but it was very atmospheric, you know.  It was almost black and white, even though it was shot in colour.  And I can imagine in 1979 it would be considered to be somewhat spooky, although now, we probably wouldn't consider it spooky at all to the same extent.

Trevor Eve: 00:24:42
Yeah, but the thing about that Dracula, which, I mean, I think it's wonderful.  Frank Langella had done it successfully.  Huge production on Broadway of Dracula where he won all the awards.  And then John Badham came as the director and he just had the most massive hit with Saturday Night Fever.  So, suddenly, you know, with the Olivier Donald Pleasence, you know, the English side, you got these sort of major players from Hollywood.  And it was quite fascinating to see that, to see Olivier deal with it...(laughter) I mean it was, you know, because as a man who's had been around the block a few times, Hollywood and everywhere else, and, you know, it was just, it was just brilliant.  And they were all just so great.  I mean, they were just, it was ── I know I sound like everything is great, but we are talking about the great period for me.  I mean, the sort of, you know, the developing period where I basically had my, you know, my jaw on the ground most of the time, just in awe.  So, things do change later on, but maybe we'll get there.

Neil Hancock: 00:26:02
And going out of chronology slightly, but I always ── I noticed that you were also in a Sunday Drama.  And... back in about the, I think, 1977, there was a show called The Sunday Drama and you were an episode called Portrait with Annette Crosbie, who was Victor Meldrew's wife in One Foot in the Grave.  I mean, were those nice little domestic plays that people could watch back then, like talking pictures, in effect?

Trevor Eve: 00:26:33
Yeah, they were.  That was a big, a big sort of season of plays.  That was actually, I think, the first television job I did directed by a man called John Glenister, whose two sons, Robert and Philip, are still tremendously successful.  And he was a wonderful director.  And Annette Crosbie was a fantastic actress.  And the other person, there was only a three hander.  The other person in that was legendary... was a man called Maurice Denham, who was probably one of the most accomplished actors of the period... of that era.  And so, I, there again, had this sort of schooling with these masters, you know, and it's just good fortune to be able to watch and learn.

Neil Hancock: 00:27:23
So, with your time in Dracula, I know you wanted to make and establish a career in the US.  Do you think Dracula being in a film with those people like Olivier, Pleasence and all those different people, do you think it helped you establish a career in the US.

Trevor Eve: 00:27:40
No, the US, the US career or not, let's say my time in the US.  Let's not be so grand as to say the US career.  My time in the US came about a few years later when I was offered, I was out in Los Angeles and I was oh, no, hang on, that's not what happened.  No, what happened was, that's right, I remember.  I did a thing from here called The Corsican Brothers that was for American television in 83' or four, something like that, a few years later.  And I went out to the States to promote it because it was on CBS or NBC or whatever.  And while I was there, I met a young producer, another, you know, one who's now an icon called Brian Grazer, Brian Grazer, who works with Ron Howard on Imagine Films and has done just about everything that we've, you know, a massive producer.  And now he was starting out and he had a script called Shadow Chasers that he wanted to make as a movie of the week.  And so, I got offered that, I got offered, it was like a comedy of about the paranormal pre–X Files, you know.  It was like a sort of, sort of scary comedy thing.  And what happened there was that went out and did well, and then I got a phone call saying would I do a series of that?  And they wanted me to do 14 more episodes.  And so, they paid me, you know, relocated me, and I went out and lived in LA and shot that for six months or so a year.  So, that's how that came about.

Neil Hancock: 00:29:40
And what was it about the US that appealed to you?

Trevor Eve: 00:29:46
Well, Sharon, both Sharon. I mean, we, I think we fit the bill of actors pretty well.  I think we've kind of got a real wandering sort of peripatetic thing about life.  We like to try places and move around.  So, Sharon grew up in Liverpool, I grew up in Birmingham.  Obviously, our introduction to the whole industry from sitting at home was Hollywood, you know, it was America, it was American films, American TV.  So, I think when the opportunity to go there came about and it was Olivier, bless him, who got me my ── I got a green card through him, you know.   Because it ── when I applied for a green card, because I was working there so much that it was, I think it was better for me to get a green card, I can't remember now.  But anyway, they said, you need to get letters from people and you need to prove that you are of international worth and, you know, you can do what you're doing.  So, I said, oh, okay.  So, I only got one.  I got one from Olivier and when I went to the offices to pick up my green card, which I got very, very quickly, his letter was framed on the wall in the little office there, you know.  It was just kind of, you know, another slice of good fortune in the immigration office, you know.

Neil Hancock: 00:31:22
Now, I'll come back to your theatre career a little bit later, but I just have to bring up a hallmark moment in your life.  The part of Eddie Shoestring in Shoestring, which I can admit to you, is my dad's favourite TV show, Trevor.

Trevor Eve: 00:31:41
Oh, bless him.

Neil Hancock: 00:31:43
And I wanted to ask what drew you to the part of Shoestring?

Trevor Eve: 00:31:48
I wasn't drawn to the part of Shoestring at all.  This is the start of the change, if you like, in my perspective of being an actor.  I had been to RADA.  We've discussed where I got to at this point.  I'd worked with Zeffirelli, Olivier, twice, three times, had just completed Dracula.  And the producer, the man who created Shoestring, a wonderful man called Robert Banks Stewart, God bless him, no longer with us, had heard of me, I mean, you know, that was great.  And he met me and said, would I like to do this TV show?  And I wasn't at all keen to do it, I was on a different trajectory.  I'd worked with I didn't, I really didn't want to do it, I just thought, oh, why do I want to play the same character?  I think was like 11 episodes or something, but I was persuaded that it would be a good idea and so, I thought it had, you know, it was original, at least it wasn't a sort of a rehash of anything, it was a totally original piece in its concept.  So, I just, I said yes and immediately went about applying all my work and my sort of, you know, investigation and research as to what this character would be like and came up in the first month before we started shooting and completely the other end of the spectrum from what Robert Banks Stewart thought it should be.  So, that was my first, if you like, my first professional confrontation, I would say, with and also it was the BBC.  So, I'd always worked with people who had gone, hey, yeah, good, I get it, that's good.  Do you think that's a good idea?  Or you appreciate their ideas or whatever?  And this was the first time they went no.  I said, what do you mean no?  You can't do that.  You can't ── I don't want him dressed like that, I don't see that, I don't think you should have moustache, I don't think you should have your tie undone around your neck.  I don't see why you would do that.  And I gave them all my background reasons for the character who'd had, you know, a reaction to working in the computer industry and there was and duh duh duh, we had a degree of conflict which we settled and I then got most of my own way, not out of any arrogance, but just genuine belief, which has always been my thing.  Maybe it's misguided belief, many would say, but I believe, you know, in the work, I believe in the quality of the script, I believe in the grasping interpretation of a character and I believed that I was on to something.  So, we had a very frictional beginning which we resolved and I carried on through many frictional relationships with the directors through that.  And it was my first experience of friction.  I hadn't  even come across any, anybody saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no.  It was like, hang on a minute, I'm back at school, I'm back at school here, people telling me not to do that, people saying that's not right, and, you know, all these sort of conformist, conservative, small C phrases that I hadn't heard in the 6-7 years of leaving drama school.  Anyway, I don't want to go on about that.  But that was a sort of a changing whole kind of transformation many levels, because when it went out, it was hugely successful in that it was like a 23-4 million viewers and so, I was ── my life, which I wasn't very good at dealing with was changed overnight in that I was an actor who'd done good work, just suddenly walking out on the street and getting everyone stopping and going, hey, it's you, you know.  And that was the massive change, which I didn't take very well.  I didn't find it easy.  I know that in this day of social media and everybody, everybody's approach to fame is one of just wanting it.  I can't say that I didn't want it because it's an approbation of the work that you've done.  So, it's a positive thing in its purest form.  I just found it a shock. I'm quite a private person and I found it quite a shock.  Yeah, I can't remember what my point of all this is, Neil, but I'm sure you'll bring me back to my point.

Neil Hancock: 00:37:19
So, I must say, I love the show myself, and particularly, one of my favourite episodes is Room with a View.  And I love... there was a character you were, there was an actor you worked with, and the character you played was, you were, it was an actor you worked with in, the character she played was Letty Ross, played by Madeleine Thomas.  And I thought the scenes that you two did together were absolutely fantastic.

Trevor Eve: 00:37:40
Right.  You know, I can't remember the specifics of the episodes because we shot 21 in all.  I just remember, I suppose, the battles.  I remember certain directors sending me letters before...  I just couldn't believe it, you know, a show that this is a 2nd series.  I can remember one director who will remain nameless, although his name is engraved deeply in my skin, sending me, I think, was a six-page letter telling me what I should and should not do as this character.  Now, I'm not dealing here with, you know, in my opinion, people who were like legends or people that you should necessarily listen to.  I've never really said this to anyone before, but I found that just about the most bollock breakingly annoying thing that had happened up to that point in my career, that I'm in a show that is a huge hit.  And like the 3rd episode of the 2nd series, I get a director telling me, I will not work with you if your tie is tied loosely, you will tie it up.  You will not wear a tie like that.  You will wear, I can remember, a chocolate velvet kipper tie.  You will not wear those baggy suits, you will not, and I just thought, what is going on here?  But then, of course, it's, you know, it's you're working... I don't want to go on about these institutions, but you're then working in a conflict.  You're working to create drama in a creative sense, out of an institution.  And at that point, at that time, that was, really, I found it really difficult.  There were people there who didn't respond to the creative drama essence of the piece.  They were more interested in getting it to conform in some kind of overall concept of what should be represented by an institution that was, you know, publicly state owned.  I mean, I found it really confusing and conflicting and I think…

Neil Hancock: 00:40:10
Well, of course, you're an actor.  You ── it's kind of let me do my job and you do yours, isn't it?  That sort of thing.

Trevor Eve: 00:40:18
Yeah, but it becomes behavioural.  It becomes behavioural and it becomes to do with, you know, I'd come from a place where the creation is all. The method of getting to the creation is not as important as the result.  So, you know, we ── through the method school, you know, you didn't really mind if someone ran 20 times around the block before they came to do a scene because they did the scene well or whatever it was, you know.  And there was definitely a conflict, you know.  I got told off for eating too many peanuts in a scene by the head of drama.  I mean, this is something that, you know, I was called into an office and the head of drama had watched a scene in the rushes, in the dailies, the things they get every day of the film that you shot during that day.  And it was a bar scene and there were peanuts on the bar and I was having a lemonade, and so I ate the peanuts.  And the head of drama said, this isn't an American show.  You don't eat and talk at the same time.  If that gives you some indication of the creative conflicts that I was going through at that time, that's probably the best example to illustrate that.

Neil Hancock: 00:41:49
And so, that was probably one of the reasons why Shoestring had to end, unfortunately.  Because, as I say, I thought it was a great show, you know, in terms of, it was like, it was probably like nothing else at the time that people saw on TV to some extent, was it?

Trevor Eve: 00:42:05
No, I think it was a sort of, it was a bit of a breakthrough, in a way.  And I, in this conflict, I do want to say that Robert Banks Stewart was not the area of conflict.  We eventually bonded and were very excited about what we were doing.  It was others that came in.  It was very weird, but, yeah, I think it was a kind of bit of a revolution.  Yeah.  I think, you know, I got told to speak clearer and louder and why am I making everything sound ordinary and, you know, real?  It was fascinating.  Anyway, as with all jobs that I do, I ultimately look for what really, I really enjoy in them and I did really enjoy doing it.  I just met a couple of real prime wankers along the way.  If you can't use the word wanker, I can replace it with many.  But, if, yeah, I think you probably can on a podcast.

Neil Hancock: 00:43:22
I think we can, yes.  One thing I've been really looking forward to talking to you about is in 1981, you won an Olivier Award for playing James Leeds in Children of a Lesser God.  Now, I know from having read it that you would have had to learn sign language.  How much of a challenge was that?

Trevor Eve: 00:43:45
Well, Neil, that was the whole thing, because I love a challenge.  So, yes, it's absolutely, absolutely decreed that the actor, whoever has played it, does not just learn the language relevant to the piece, but they learn the whole of American Sign Language.  So, before we started the one day of rehearsal, I went to New York for six months and had a teacher every day and went and mixed in the deaf community, I think, in White Plains it was outside of Manhattan and learnt American Sign Language.  And I loved every living second of it.  To me, it was spectacularly liberating.  Yeah.  That's all I can say about that preparation.  It was the most exciting preparation for any project I've ever done.

Neil Hancock: 00:44:42
Did you find it hard at all?  I mean, how long did it take you to learn?

Trevor Eve: 00:44:45
Six months.  Yeah, it ain’t easy.  I mean, you're learning a language, but the expression within that language, the variation, the emotional subtleties of it, were just illuminating.  I completely, completely loved it.  Yeah.

Neil Hancock: 00:45:06
So, with that play, I mean, the play for me has a very sort of interesting central issue about it, in the sense that you're a speech therapist and you're trying to help Sarah Norman learn to speak, but Sarah Norman doesn't want to speak.  She wants to be deaf on her own terms, in a sense.  And so, I'm just wondering, what was it like to explore those sort of issues in the play?  And what sort of reaction did you get from audiences when you were exploring this play?

Trevor Eve: 00:45:42
Well, the audiences were spectacular.  The political aspect of the deaf world was something that I found, I completely understood, and it was a real education because we enter into it as hearing people as a sort of hierarchical, we can hear, you can't.  But therefore, there's an element that is easily picked up of patronization and just being, you know, coming in from a superior sort of, once superior faculty position, and that you have to get rid of that one in seconds because their value and their life and what they have is equally valuable, if not more than what we have.  I mean, I can't really explain it that when you learn the language and you get into their world, it's inconceivable that you would think in any way that you would call it... them to have some form of handicap or some form, because they don't want to perceive it as that, because it isn't to them.  It isn't because they sense and can appreciate so much, that's maybe more than us, but certainly equal to the humour.  I mean, Neil, I had a blast, and I ended up doing chat shows as Elizabeth’s interpreter, Elizabeth Quinn, the actress, and it was just, you know, it was just fantastic.  I also got to say it's the noisiest backstage I've ever been in.  The door slamming, the foot stomping, the clapping, the, you know, the ── it's, you'd think it would be dead, dead quiet, it's not because the expression is just so volatile and it was magic.  And the height of the fine tune sensory perceptions on stage that it was certainly one of the, I mean, just, I mean, to be opposite Liz, Elizabeth, who was deaf, fully deaf, totally deaf.  Her sense of the audience when we were doing the play, she also had, you know, the thing about sign language is that you got two hands.  And let me tell you, the one hand never stops talking.  It's not doing the lines.  It's saying, why are the audience responding differently tonight to that line?  And, I mean, you tell me.  And they were and, you know, she ── and so, I would be ── I'd be doing the whole thing in vocalizing and interpreting and also having a dialogue with my other hand saying, I don't know, I think they might have missed that line or missed the cue or missed the word or missed the joke.  Maybe I didn't enunciate it enough, you know.  It was an astonishingly exciting experience to do that.  It's got to be up there with the best jobs.

Neil Hancock: 00:49:09
And so, when you ── where were you when you heard that you've been nominated for an Olivier Award for it?  And how did you feel when you found out you had been nominated?

Trevor Eve: 00:49:20
Well, I ── fantastic.  I mean, really great.  There was massive buzz around the play.  I mean, we were sold out within, you know, I don't know, within a week of opening.  I mean, the whole run was sold out.  It was a big success, so, I was thrilled.  But I can't say that looking back, my memory is obviously it wasn't like a surprise.  It was like the hot ticket.  So, I think that, you know, I'm not saying we were expecting it, but it would have been surprising had certainly had she not been nominated, which she was, and indeed won.  So, I mean, she ── I think she is brilliant.  I've worked with her since, actually, and I think she's a brilliant actress.

Neil Hancock: 00:50:12
And that concludes the first part of my chat with Trevor Eve.  The 2nd part is available to listen to now.  If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, please follow me on Twitter @neilonweelspod or Instagram, the Neil on Wheels Podcast.  Until next time.