Latest news with #HaroldPinter
Toronto Star
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
‘Old Times' review: Harold Pinter classic manipulates power with ease — and terror — at Soulpepper
In rehearsal for a revival of 'Old Times' in 1984, the Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins asked Harold Pinter to explain the show's ambiguous ending. The playwright's flippant nonresponse, in his posh British accent: 'I don't know. Just do it.'
Telegraph
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Danny Dyer: Why I would turn down a knighthood
has said he would turn down a knighthood, because the title 'isn't for me'. The former EastEnders actor, 47, explained that he was too 'anti-establishment' for the accolade, bestowed upon individuals by the monarch for a significant contribution to society at large. Speaking to Radio Times, Dyer said he would follow the example of his 'hero' Harold Pinter, the Nobel-winning playwright, who turned down a knighthood in 1996. The actor also joked that he was the 'cheaper version' of Sir Gary Oldman, the Slow Horses star who was knighted in King Charles II's Birthday Honours this year. Asked if he had ever been approached about appearing on the New Year's Honours list, Dyer said: 'Harold was my hero and turned down a knighthood. He was anti-establishment as well, so I don't think it's for me.' Dyer first starred in Pinter's play Celebration at 22 years old before going on to appear in the writer's productions of No Man's Land and The Homecoming. Pinter declined the honour of a knighthood – offered to him on behalf of the late Queen Elizabeth II when John Major was prime minister – but accepted the award of Companion of Honour in 2002. He was then presented with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005 as well as the French Légion d'honneur in 2007. Dyer's knighthood comments come after the long-running 'arise, Sir Danny Dyer' quip, which began in 2017 when Michael McIntryre, the comedian, sent a spoof offer of the honour to Dyer's friends and family during a TV show. As part of the skit, which aired on Michael McIntyre's Big Show, friends, co-stars and family responded to the message with a mixture of congratulations and disbelief. The actor also discovered he was descended from royalty during his 2016 appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? which showed he was a relative of King Edward III. 'A cheaper version' Dyer became a household name in EastEnders, the popular BBC soap, from 2013 to 2022. He has since appeared in Disney's hit Rivals, the comedy series Mr Bigstuff, and Three Quick Breaths, the upcoming Irish film. Discussing his starring role in the latter, the actor quipped that he had been chosen as the 'cheaper' version of Sir Gary, who he joked was approached for the part first but requested £2 million 'just to read it'. 'But I was next in line, which I'm chuffed with,' he said, adding: 'If you go Gary Oldman and I'm next, it's because I'm obviously cheaper. I'm happy to be a cheaper version of Gary Oldman.' In the thriller, Dyer plays the sole character, an old-school football agent who desperately tries to get his star player one final payday before his own life and his player's reputation implodes. Speaking about the second season of Rivals, for which filming is underway, the actor said he couldn't reveal much but teased that 'we've got no issues with the old second-album syndrome'. 'I've been blessed with a lovely character. He's not the lead and he doesn't need to be the lead,' he added.
New York Times
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Jane Stanton Hitchcock, 78, Dies; Crime Novelist Who Mocked High Society
Jane Stanton Hitchcock, a daughter of privilege who skewered the foibles of her tribe in a series of addictive crime novels, and who then uncovered a real-life crime when her mother was swindled by her accountant, died on June 23 at her home in Washington, D.C. She was 78. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Kathy Rayner, a friend. Ms. Hitchcock grew up at 10 Gracie Square, a blue-chip co-op on the East River that was once home to Gloria Vanderbilt, Brooke Astor and other Manhattan society figures. Her mother was Joan Stanton, a glamorous but chilly 1940s-era radio star famous for her role as Lois Lane on the radio version of 'The Adventures of Superman.' Her father, Arthur Stanton, who adopted her when she was 9, had made a fortune importing Volkswagen cars after World War II. The Stantons were known for their elaborate parties, where Leonard Bernstein might be found at the piano. For Jane's 21st birthday, Neil Simon composed a sketch. When she was 29, she married an heir of the wealthy industrialist and Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, William Mellon Hitchcock — who had earned a bit of notoriety when he rented his mansion in Millbrook, N.Y., to the psychedelic-drug guru Timothy Leary — mixing her newish money with his gilded-age wealth. A tart observer and a professional wit, Ms. Hitchcock drew from her rarefied ecosystem in all her work, beginning with a series of wanly reviewed films and Off Broadway plays — and one London production, directed by Harold Pinter in 1990. It wasn't until she began mixing social satire with murder that she found her voice. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Gawn Grainger obituary
The actor and writer Gawn Grainger, who has died aged 87, had an extraordinary career that spanned more than 70 years. Even if rarely the star, he had the resilience and versatility of the born character actor and was the product of a now vanished regional repertory system. Above all, he was an indispensable team player and a pillar, along with Michael Bryant, of the National Theatre. He began his career there under Laurence Olivier in 1972 when the company was situated at the Old Vic and worked under successive directors before making his final appearance in 2017 during the tenure of Rufus Norris. He worked regularly in the West End and in TV and in the 1980s sidelined his acting career to focus on writing scripts for the small screen. He soon returned to the stage, however, which was his natural habitat. As an actor he had a powerful physical presence, a superb voice and the consummate adaptabilityimparted by rep training. Off-stage, he also had an instinctive charm that made people like and trust him. During his early years at the National, he not only came under Olivier's wing, but became a lifelong friend of the actor, whom he regarded as a surrogate father, and his family: he eventually went on to ghost-write Olivier's book On Acting (1986), and, along with Maggie Smith, was present at the great man's deathbed. Having temporarily abandoned acting, Grainger was persuaded to return by Harold Pinter to appear in two plays of his at the Almeida theatre, and was rewarded with Pinter's eternal friendship. His ability to relate to people extended even to critics. He and his wife, Zoë Wanamaker, were passionate theatregoers and whenever I ran into Grainger at first nights he would want to exchange opinions about whatever we had recently seen. What he did have in common with many actors was a slightly ramshackle upbringing. He spoke openly about the fact that he was the result of an affair between his Scottish mother, Elizabeth (nee Gall), married at the time to another man, and a lodger, Charles Grainger. Although his parents went on to marry, his mother felt obliged to leave puritanical Glasgow, where her son was born, to live in London. At the start of the second world war, the young Gawn was evacuated to Northern Ireland. Returning to the capital, he got a scholarship to Westminster City school but soon found himself drawn to public performance. As a boy scout, he took part in the Ralph Reader gang-shows. But it was a sign of his self-confidence that, as a 12-year-old, having read that Ivor Novello needed an actor to play the boy-monarch in his West End musical King's Rhapsody, he turned up at the stage-door, feigned a non-existent appointment with Novello and immediately got the job. After that an acting career was inevitable and in the early 60s he benefited from a still flourishing regional repertory system. He started in weekly rep at Frinton-on-Sea, Essex, playing opposite an equally young Vanessa Redgrave, graduated to fortnightly rep at Ipswich, where Ian McKellen was in the company, and finally moved in 1964 to Bristol Old Vic where the productions changed every three weeks. There he played a succession of leading parts, including the title roles in Sartre's Kean and John Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, and was Romeo to Jane Asher's Juliet. It is a sign of Bristol's prestige that Romeo and Juliet was one of three of its productions chosen to go on a world tour, winding up in New York in 1967. That led to Grainger spending a year on Broadway in There's a Girl in My Soup and, in another testament to his versatility, becoming a regular on an American version of the TV panel-game What's My Line? Back in London, Grainger found a new stability by marrying the actor Janet Key (his first, brief, marriage had ended in divorce) and when he joined Olivier's National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1972 it was as if he had found his destiny: he loved the company and the company loved him. His debut was in Michael Blakemore's dazzling production of The Front Page and he went on to appear in Macbeth, The Misanthrope, The Bacchae and Trevor Griffiths' The Party – in which Olivier made his last National appearance – before playing the lead in Jonathan Miller's production of Beaumarchais's The Marriage of Figaro. I described him as 'eagle-eyed but humanly vulnerable'. Grainger was one of the few actors to make the transition from Olivier's National to that of his successor, Peter Hall. It is also a sign of Grainger's status and dependability that, in his Diaries, Hall records frequently turning to him to gauge the company's mood during periods of industrial strife. While loyal to Hall, Grainger was a key member of the Bill Bryden company that created its own distinctive style and aesthetic under the umbrella of the National Theatre. The Bryden approach was based on team-work, vocal prowess and uninhibited physicality, and Grainger, who appeared in productions of Tony Harrison's The Passion, O'Neill's The Long Voyage Home and The Iceman Cometh, and Lark Rise and Candleford, among many others, was perfectly suited to the gutsy ensemble ethos. In the 1980s, however, Grainger decided to devote himself to writing. His first stage play, Four to One, had already been performed at the Young Vic in 1976 and been well received. Set in the back-room of an Islington pub during a game of pool, it suggested an adroit mix of Robert Ardrey and Pinter, in that it combined territorial possessiveness with hostility to intruders. A handful of stage-plays followed, including Jubilee, starring Peggy Mount, but in the 80s Grainger worked mainly for TV and radio. There were single plays such as Clowns, produced by Bryden for BBC One, long-running series including The Big Deal, with Ray Brooks, and Trainer, the horse-racing drama. It was a fruitful period, but in 1991 Grainger was invited by Pinter to appear at the Almeida in London, in productions of Party Time and Mountain Language, which later led to performing alongside Pinter himself in No Man's Land. David Leveaux's production of the latter reminded us that the play is a string quartet and that the servants, superbly played by Grainger and Douglas Hodge, are just as important as Hirst and Spooner, played by Pinter and Paul Eddington. Grainger remembered that Pinter loved the camaraderie and back-chat of the dressing-room. One night Grainger said to Pinter 'Here you are in this tatty dressing-room in Islington – one of the great writers of the 20th century.' Pinter replied, with mock-fierceness – 'What do you mean, one of?' This period of renewal for Grainger was shattered by the death of his wife, Janet, in 1992, but in 1994 he married Wanamaker, to whom he was deeply devoted. Over the next three decades he rediscovered his appetite for acting and did a massive variety of work: West End plays including Amy's View, Don Juan in Soho and The Entertainer, where he caught perfectly the grumbling disillusion of the aged Billy Rice; numerous shows at the Donmar and the Young Vic, including a touching performance as the aged Firs in Katie Mitchell's production of The Cherry Orchard; and, inevitably, a return to his spiritual home at the National Theatre, where he was a bullish publican in Sing Yer Heart Out For The Lads, a sprightly elder in Really Old Like Forty-Five and the vigorous father of the hero's champion in Saint George and the Dragon. In his later years he had problems with macular degeneration, but he remained, whenever I met him, invincibly cheerful and left behind imperishable memories: of an engaging raconteur, a fine writer and the kind of dedicated ensemble actor who is the backbone of British theatre. He is survived by Zoë and two children, Charlie and Eliza, from his second marriage. Gawn Grainger, actor, born 12 October 1937; died 17 May 2025
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Danny Dyer says death of beloved mentor sent him into ‘spiral of madness'
Actor Danny Dyer has said the death of his mentor, playwright Harold Pinter, sent him into a 'spiral of madness'. Nobel Prize-winning playwright, Pinter, casted former EastEnders actor Dyer, 47, in his play Celebration, which was first staged at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2000. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Dyer said he would stay at the playwright's house and learn about famous writers and poets like WH Auden and CS Lewis. In 2001, the play was transferred to New York's Lincoln Centre and during one performance, Dyer forgot his lines on stage and had an 'anxiety attack', having taken drugs and stayed out the night before. Dyer felt 'so bad about letting him (Pinter) down' but said the playwright put his arm around him and made him 'feel better about it'. Reflecting on his death in 2008, he said: 'I hadn't spoke to him in a while. I did go off the rails for many years, and I found out by looking on the front of a newspaper. 'Again, I'd been on a bender and I was coming home and I was going, I think I was going to buy cigarettes at the petrol garage, and I see it in the paper. 'Pinter dead'. 'This really sent me on a spiral of madness, really. Recommended Reading Danny Dyer gives 'most honest interview ever' in ITV show EastEnders icon Danny Dyer reveals why he left the BBC show EastEnders Danny Dyer goes undercover to sell the Big Issue 'The guilt of not being around him anymore and just being lost, I was a bit of a lost soul, and again, angry at the world.' In April, US publication Deadline reported that Dyer was developing an idea for a play about his relationship with Pinter, whom he referred to as his 'mentor'. Danny Dyer's episode of Desert Island Discs will air at 10am on BBC Radio 4 and will also be available on BBC Sounds.
