“No one loves a dirty joke more than Judi”: Richard Eyre on managing greats

Spend some time with the actors and it soon becomes clear that many of them don’t hold directors in as high regard as one might think. Richard Eyre is among the exceptions, fondly remembered by artists including Brian Cox, Ian McKellen and Eileen Atkins as a facilitating force in their memoirs and memoirs. After a short stay with his company, it’s not hard to understand why. When we meet before upcoming events Weapons of Understanding season screen operation BFI Southbank, Eyre is an extremely friendly, direct and open person; He shares insights into his past, thoughts on some of his past productions, and memories of his collaborators.

expanding theatre, TVEyre’s wide-ranging work, including film, opera and journalism, has been vital to British cultural life over the last 50 years. From working at the Edinburgh Lyceum to managing the Nottingham Playhouse (1973 to 1978), Eyre produced Play for Today before being appointed artistic director of the National Theater (1987 to 1997). He presided over an extremely productive period. NTWhile he continues to work prolifically in film and cinema, he also has a ten-year history chronicled in his insightful published diaries, National Service (2003). TVHe appeared in projects such as the searing Falklands War drama Tumbledown (1988) and the hot-tempered Tennessee Williams adaptation Suddenly Last Summer (1993).

Since we broke up NTEyre’s work includes many more theater productions and several films such as Iris (2001), Notes on a Scandal (2006), The Children Act (2017) and Allelujah (2022). TV The films King Lear (1998; 2018) and The Dresser (2015), as well as recent attempts at writing poetry and plays. With new film and theater projects in the works for 2025 (including his own version of Strindberg’s Dance of Death), Eyre remains as creative and productive as ever.

Alex Ramon: What were some of your formative experiences and inspirations for the film? TV and theater?

Richard Eyre: I was born in 1943, grew up in Dorset and didn’t see a play in the theater until I was 16. So the most important thing for me was television. I have a strong memory of seeing Vanessa Redgrave in As You Like It TV black white There was Play of the Month, which is a classic, so I would see works by Shaw and Wilde and a season of Shakespeare’s Roman plays. That was my cultural education and it came from there. TV rather than movies at the time.

Seeing Hamlet on stage with Peter GRASSIt was an epiphany. But I had a lot to do. Luckily this coincided with a very rich period in British theater in the early 60s. It is the same in world cinema: these were the glorious years of Bergman’s films, the French New Wave, and the Italians. After a very culturally deprived childhood, my cultural education was very intense for four or five years.

How did your initial ambitions to become an actor turn into an interest in directing?

I was not good enough as an actor to satisfy my own critical faculties. I was at a show at Leicester’s Phoenix Theater and persuaded some of my fellow actors to attend Sunday’s production of Ann Jellicoe’s The Knack, which I was directing. It was a success, and Phoenix director Clive Perry said: “You have to make a choice: do you want to be an actor or a director? If you listen to my advice, you will manage!” I took his advice and he employed me as his assistant when he went to Edinburgh to run the Lyceum. I directed nearly 20 shows there. I went on to manage Nottingham Playhouse and then was asked to go into the theatre. BBC He produced Play for Today.

What was this transition like? You’ve described theater directing as poor training for screen work.

Simply put, it’s bad training in the sense that in theater you’re always presenting it from one perspective, but the audience has a lot of choice about exactly where to look. In the movie, the situation is exactly the opposite. You have the ability to move the camera to change the size of the shot. There is a vast catalog of tools and means of expression, from the lenses used to the editing. There are few comparisons to theater other than you work with actors and storytelling.

Do you always insist on rehearsal time when working on a film? TV?

Yes. Good actors are always smart and humorous people. I enjoy their company, and it’s important to hear what they have to say and how they’re going to say it before approaching the set. Even if it’s just for two or three days, sitting down and talking like we do now means players are starting to make choices instead of doing everything during the day.

What was it like to make your film debut with The Plowman’s Lunch, which has a very clever script by Ian McEwan and captures the early 1980s so sharply?

It was a Channel 4 venture with a small budget but a very exciting one to make. The turning point in the film’s fate was that it went to Cannes, where it was supported by critic Alexander Walker, who considered it a very important film about England.

The final scene, shot at the 1982 Conservative Party conference, is quite extraordinary. How did you start making films there?

Cheat! The production manager knew someone who worked in the Conservative Party press office and they gave us a pass and we were allowed to shoot. We were among the Conservative Party loyalists and they assumed: Why wouldn’t they? – we were friends of the party. There’s a shot I really like that pans Michael Heseltine to Jonathan Pryce wandering around the conference room. So it was pure guerilla filmmaking. You don’t have a chance to have that kind of access today.

What are your memories of Play for Today? Do you see his legacy in contemporary art? TV any drama?

Occasionally, he really becomes part of the national conversation with something like Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office (2024). But the aim of Play for Today was truly extraordinary: to be contemporary and controversial. Tumbledown, which we produced five years after the Falklands, continued this tradition. The Blades were ready for this, but viewing figures were huge due to the controversy.

How was your collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis as Kafka in The Insurance Man and then as Hamlet in the theatre?

Dan was a very close friend and we had a great time filming The Insurance Man. We were staying at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool and I got into the elevator with Dan… he wasn’t even in costume or make-up but I definitely felt like I was in the elevator with Franz Kafka. I remember thinking this was quite strange. But I couldn’t quite put two and two together, and when I asked if he would play Hamlet, I thought Dan would identify with Hamlet so much that there would be no distance between him and the character. And of course it didn’t end happily (Day-Lewis walked off stage during the performance and was unable to return to the production). We may have lost touch, but he’s such a great actor and sweet guy.

And with Maggie Smith in Suddenly Last Summer?

Maggie was an incredibly intelligent, incredibly well-read, and incredibly resourceful woman. What happens can be unpredictable: one day he may greet you like a long-lost love, another day he may be quite cold. When we did Suddenly Last Summer it wasn’t very good and the studio was so hot that a fire alarm went off. He was not very happy with the conditions, which he compared to the Bridge on the River Kwai. On the contrary, this increased its actual performance, which is quite surprising.

You have worked with Judi Dench many times. Do you have a favorite collaboration?

I loved doing Notes on a Scandal with him, and he loved it too: playing a truly mean-spirited character for the first time, rather than someone who was a source of kindness and generosity. Her favorite scene was the one where she lays naked in the bathroom with a sweaty face and smokes a cigarette. At the New York premiere, Lauren Bacall came up to me and said, “Richard! How dare you humiliate Judi by making her do this scene?!” Lauren couldn’t quite imagine that a star would allow herself to look like that. But Judi loved her. It’s funny how she has this demure, easy-going reputation. No one loves dirty jokes more than Judi. Iris’ I remember him and Jim Broadbent giggling and telling each other stories on the set.

Which movies are in the series? BFI Do you hope viewers in particular will rediscover this season?

Insurance Man may be one of them; It’s a very distinctive film, not typical Alan Bennett territory, and beautifully shot and extraordinarily well designed by Nat Crosby. Just a Boys’ Game, which I also produced and directed by John Mackenzie, is a brutal and, in my opinion, very touching film about an accidental gang murder in Greenock.

What advice would you give to directors starting their careers today?

Don’t feel like you have to have all the answers. It’s about being open and asking the right questions to liberate your collaborators’ imaginations.

In the theatre, Peter Brook said to me: “You should never have a first night” – which means critics’ judgments can change your view of what you’re doing. If you manage to ignore this, the business is constantly evolving.

In film, you work moment by moment, frame by frame. In Truffaut’s Night Day (1973), the director lies in bed and thinks: “Please keep my movie alive.” And that’s exactly what you’re striving for: to make every piece of the film come to life. Because in the end, each shot is like a cell in the body of the film.

Richard Eyre’s season running BFI Southbank in December.