The emperor's new role

Sir Derek Jacobi, about to tour New Zealand in The Hollow Crown, tells BRIAN VINER why he prefers the stage to the screen.

Whenever I think of Sir Derek Jacobi he is wearing a toga and fighting a stammer. But has he ever thought of the 1976 television series I, Claudius as a burden?

"No, I think most actors rather enjoy having a role they are identified with," he says. A twinkle enters his eye. "And it's not as if I could get typecast. There are not too many stuttering, limping, twitching emperors around."

We are talking in the offices of London Weekend Television, makers of The Jury, a six-part drama in which Jacobi plays the barrister defending a Sikh boy accused of murder (the series has not yet been picked up by a New Zealand channel). He gives a riveting performance, as does Antony Sher for the prosecution. But he is glad not to be watching himself on screen, which he avoids whenever possible.

"I hate it," he says. "They say the camera never lies, but I think the camera does a lot of lying. On stage, actors are much more in control. On the screen, it is someone else's decision as to which bits are shown, in what order they're shown. That can change your rhythm."

Unusually for a classical actor, Jacobi has enjoyed great success in popular television for example as Cadfael, the sleuth with the abbey habit. In cinema, he has been less prominent, although he did don a toga again to play a senator in Gladiator. He was one of those who bore the dead body of the heroic Maximus out of the Colosseum.

"And," he recalls, "a woman asked for my autograph. As I was signing, she kissed my shoulder. She said, 'That's 'ad Russell Crowe's bum on it, that 'as'."

Jacobi chuckles. I have heard he can be a little precious, but today, he is charming, funny and self-deprecating. His anecdotes are enlivened by a huge talent for mimicry. The Russell Crowe fan is given a lower-middle-class London accent, which must come easily, for Jacobi was brought up in Leytonstone: "Me and David Beckham." Both parents worked in a department store in Walthamstow in east London.

I don't know much about his childhood, I tell him. "That's probably because it was very happy. Only child, loved school, adored my parents. My father died last year. He got to 90, bless him. My mother died in 1980. I was in a play on Broadway, and brought them over to New York on Concorde. The producer was a very rich woman who put a private plane at their disposal, so they jetted down to Washington and had a fantastic time. They'd never been to the US. It was if they were on the moon. And it was three weeks later, when she was still bubbling with excitement, that she died."

A deep breath. "She had a brain haemorrhage cooking Sunday lunch. It was terrible for my father. I often think about him ... a very ordinary couple, she's cooking Sunday lunch, he's pottering around in the garden, she suddenly says she's got a terrible headache, calls out for him to get an aspirin out of her bag, he comes back in, and she's gone. He calls an ambulance, she's dead. He goes to the hospital, comes back, it's now three in the afternoon, he's got her watch and her rings, and that's it."

Jacobi has tears in his eyes, and so do I. I ask whether he thinks about his own mortality?

"Oh, I do. Anything to do with death and I'm a rag immediately. I get very emotional. And, of course, I'm way past the interval."

But still too young, at 62, to play King Lear?

"I think so. I have seen too many Lears who are too young. He is 84, after all. But it is a sort of hoop, you know. If you have any aspirations to be a classical actor when you're young, you have to go through the Hamlet hoop. Doesn't matter what else you've done, what's his Hamlet like? Then, what's his Lear like? And audiences and critics collect performances. It's always comparative. You're the fattest, thinnest, loudest, softest, of the decade, of your generation, of the century."

Jacobi's career began in 1960, with Birmingham Rep. His big break came in 1963. "In 1962, we did She Stoops To Conquer - I was young Marlow. And someone decided to televise it, in the Aston studios in Birmingham. Those were the days of live TV, and we followed What's My Line?, which overran that night, I remember.

"Anyway, unbeknown to me, down in Brighton, Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright had got locked out of their house, so they checked into the Royal Crescent Hotel, went to their room, and switched on the TV. And they saw She Stoops To Conquer.

"Then, at the beginning of 1963, Olivier was on a scouting mission round the reps to find young actors for his Chichester season, which would become the National Theatre. I was playing Henry VIII, sharing a dressing-room with [the actor who played] Wolsey. Olivier was in for a Wednesday matinee. Afterwards, he comes to the dressing-room. I had changed, but Wolsey was sitting there in his under-dress. And to Wolsey, he goes on alarmingly about how wonderful he was. And then he left. But 10 seconds later, he came back, looked at me, and said [here Jacobi imitates to perfection Olivier's high-pitched incredulity] 'You ... were ... Henry?' A week later, by which time he had connected me with young Marlow, I got a letter ... "

With the National Theatre, Jacobi gave any number of critically acclaimed performances. Yet it was I, Claudius that turned him into a household name.

"For my parents, although I had been with the National Theatre, it really could have been the National Coal Board. But to be on the telly ... Derek's made it! They'd tried everybody for Claudius before they tried me, though. Charlton Heston, even Ronnie Barker."

I ask him whether Robert Graves, who wrote I, Claudius was a presence on the set.

"He did come to the studio, but he was more than a bit gaga by then. I sat next to him at lunch, and at one point he turned to me and said, 'I've always had a great deal of trouble with the Scots, I suppose because I've reached the grand old age of 130.' Later, he sent the Beeb a telegram saying 'Claudius is very pleased.' He thought he had a hotline to Claudius."

The performance propelled Jacobi to stardom, and there he has remained. Apart from Gladiator, and Robert Altman's Gosford Park, he has stayed faithful to the theatre - as evidenced by his appearance in The Hollow Crown touring New Zealand later this month - although he was blighted for three years by appalling stage fright.

"I would go absolutely rigid with nerves, but I don't talk about it too much in case I talk myself back into it," he says.

- INDEPENDENT

* Derek Jacobi appears in The Hollow Crown with Diana Rigg, Donald Sinden and Ian Richardson: Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, April 16-18; Christchurch Town Hall, April 20; Civic, Auckland, April 23-27.