London---For Derek Jacobi, it had been a dream season. He had played four choice parts with the Royal Shakespeare Company---Peer Gynt, Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero in "The Tempest" and Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing." These had won him London's four major acting honors, capped that very afternoon at the London Evening Standard Awards luncheon, where he was voted Best Actor. Heady stuff. Unfortunately, as Jacobi entered the Barbican Theatre after the luncheon, he was told that his dressing room wasn't available--it had been preempted by the "Peter Pan" company. So London's most acclaimed actor sat in his overcoat in the Barbican's lobby, discussing with an American visitor the rewards of repertory.

Los Angeles will see Jacobi and the RSC in a mini-repertory starting this week, as part of the Olympic Arts Festival. "Much Ado About Nothing" followed by "Cyrano de Bergerac". Staged by the RSC's associate director, Terry Hands, both productions promise to be romantic, witty and pleasureful--celebrations of each play, rather than the examinations that the RSC has been know to conduct.

Certainly Jacobi seem the kind of theater artist who wants to give his audience pleasure and value, rather than the kind who wants to confront and reform. He has come up through the system without too many hard knocks---first at Cambridge, then with the Birmingham Rep (Laurence Olivier's alma mater), then with Oliver's new National Theatre, where he played featured parts for eight years. Fame happened to Jacobi with his portrayal of the stammering "I, Claudius" for the BBC in 1976. He has also played Hamlet and Richard II for the BBC, and made several films. But "theater is what it's really all about" for Jacobi, whether it means starring in Erdman's "The Suicide" on Broadway or trekking "Hamlet" to China with the Prospect Theatre Company.

The RSC stint has solidified Jacobi's growing reputation as his generation's answer in the classical repertory---one of the answers; McKellen is another---to Gielgud and Olivier. In person he is a blondish man with a somewhat vague face, all the better to write a part on. An interviewer finds him quiet, thoughtful, playful---interested in making the conversation go, as well as in making something of the question. An ensemble player, rather than a monologist.

L.A.Times: You and the RSC are coming to Los Angeles for the Olympics. Is the actor a kind of athlete?

Derek Jacobi: You do have to be fit. Eight performances a week is a lot of exercise. I do a bit of swinging on chandeliers in "Cyrano".

L.A.Times: There's also an element of competition.

Jacobi: I shy away from that word in the theater. The idea that we're all out there trying to see who can grab the most attention. "Look at me, look at me." I much prefer the idea of ensemble: "Give, give; take, take." Occasionally you score. But that's not always the important thing. Sometimes it's the setting up of the shot.

L.A.Times: But there's another kind of competition in classical theater. Ralph Richardson did Cyrano. Jose Ferrer did it. Now Derek Jacobi sets himself up to do it.

Jacobi: But it's not a question of doing it better. I am the Cyrano that's inside me, just as they were the Cyrano that was inside them. I'm not trying to prove that I am right and they were wrong.

L.A.Times: In sports, the crowd just watches. Is the theater audience the actor's opponent, in a sense? A force that's got to be brought to heel?

Jacobi: They do react as one animal. If they're bad on a certain night, they're all bad. There aren't any pockets where you can say--Well, they're enjoying it over there. Now, when they're bad, it's usually your fault. But sometimes, curiously.....it ain't. Sometimes it's a rogue audience that WON'T enjoy itself.

L.A.Times: What do you do then?

Jacobi: As Sir John says, there are times when you just send technique on.

L.A.Times: You've been mentioned as an heir to Gielgud and Olivier. What does it take to become a great actor?

Jacobi: I would be wary of the word "great," simply because you have to earn it. It takes a long, long time.

L.A.Times: Twenty or 25 years?

Jacobi: More, more.

L.A.Times: How long have you been at it?

Jacobi: This will be my 24th year.

L.A.Times: So you're only at the first plateau.

Jacobi: As Dorothy Tutin says, there are three categories to being an actor. First category is "Young and Promising". That's a good category. The second is "Experienced and Successful." That's a very good category. The last one is "Distinguished and Acclaimed." That's the best. But once you get there, all sorts of problems start. I think I'm in the middle category. I'm experienced and successful--in the fact that I'm working, a huge success in a profession that's 85% unemployed. At any one time there are only about 5,000 working actors. That's a privileged club to be in.

L.A.Times: What are the problems of being Distinguished and Acclaimed?

Jacobi: The pressures of an achieved reputation. When you're Young and Promising--even when you're Experience and Successful--you can have your failures. You NEED your failures. But when you become Distinguished and Acclaimed, the failures look bigger and you're not allowed so many.

L.A.Times: Have you become more careful about the roles you choose?

Jacobi: I've never felt that I was in a position to choose them. To say "no" is kind of not in my nature. I don't think it's in a lot of actors' natures. If you are given something, you immediately say, "Oh, yes, of course I'll do it." The next instinct is to say: "Opps, shouldn't have done it---wrong part---this is the one that's going to find me out, oh God." I would love to be one of those actors that get scripts piling up on the doormat. But then how do you choose? I don't have the instinct to know whether a script is a winner or a loser until I've worked on it with other people.

L.A.Times: Can you tell whether it's a good part for you?

Jacobi: I trust my gut reaction when I feel: Yeah, I want to say those words. I can't wait to find out HOW to say those words.

L.A.Times: That marks you for me as a British actor---the idea that it all starts with the word.

Jacobi: Absolutely. The play is what the writer wrote. He is the man.

L.A.Times: You were once quoted as saying that actors have one foot in the cradle. A lovely phrase. I hope you made it up.

Jacobi: I did. It came after somebody had described me as "elfin". The hackles rose. What do you mean "elfin"? Then I thought: Well, it's true. I kind of stopped inside at 18, really. I don't feel grown up and mature. Never have. And perhaps that's a good thing for an actor. The child is up front with his emotions and his reactions, and it's part of the actor's stock in trade to be able to do that. Therefore, I think an actor should have one foot, very firmly, in the cradle. In fact, I can physically recall the sensation of being pushed in my pram. Doesn't help me with many parts.

L.A.Times: So the actor is an unfinished personality? He hasn't come to the point of having crystallized, and therefore he can open himself to fictitious personalities more easily?

Jacobi: But as Olivier used to tell me at the National: You have to find your center, both as an actor and as a person. There's a degree of disguise, a degree of change, in taking on a role. But it's got to be filtered through the force in there that is YOU. Otherwise, you're playing a creature with no heart, with no insides, really. I don't understand actors who think it's a question of getting the shoes right. I wish it were that easy.

L.A.Times: Perhaps some actors need the reassurance of the perfect disguise. You don't seem to be that kind of actor.

Jacobi: I don't know what kind of actor I am. I try to approach everything I do truthfully. I try not to cut corners. I never phone it in. The audience doesn't care that you've been at the theater rehearsing since 10. They've made the effort to come away from their televisions, and you owe it to them to absolutely forget the troubles of the day, and do it for them.

L.A.Times: Can it be a liberation from those troubles?

Jacobi: Indeed it can. In the theater I can cajole, and maneuver, and shape what's happening. In the theater I know how it's going to end. In the real world, I don't.

L.A.Times: Let's talk about the two roles you'll be doing in Los Angeles, Cyrano and Benedick.

Jacobi: Benedick is a charming rogue. Cyrano's laughs come from somewhere deeper. The nose is merely a symptom of something else. We all have that thing about "People don't like me because of this one thing" or "This one thing is just ruining my life." It's usually not true, and it wasn't true in Cyrano's case, as you find out at the end. Sir Ralph said: "I have only one word of advice for you, dear boy. Wear two noses. One for the first two acts, and a smaller one for the last three. Because the first two acts are about a nose and the last three aren't. We decided it would be better to have a nose for all seasons, but he was right about the play. By the end, the audience has forgotten the nose.

L.A.Times: How do you approach Benedick? Since you feel less close to him, do you take a characteristic of someone you know and say, "This is like Jim, I'll try that?"

Jacobi: I did that with "I, Claudius." I had a friend at college who had such a stammer and I consciously lifted it. But Benedick is very much myself, I think. I have no disguise, no makeup. I look exactly as I look now. I enjoy the wit, I enjoy the bravura. But the main thing that I keep in my head all night is that I have always love Beatrice. These two keep talking about each other because they need to be talking about each other! It's in the text that they've had an affair in the past that went badly.

L.A.Times: Does it help you to think about your character's past, or do you believe that the play only exists within the two hours?

Jacobi: As far as the audience is concerned, it only exists for those two hours. To the actor, it is important to know the Before. Otherwise, you'll make an entrance but you won't actually bring a person on. It's something the audience notices almost subliminally. Now the actor has started talking and it's OK......but for a second there was nobody there.

L.A.Times: Albert Finney is quoted in the Peter Hall diaries about how unrewarding it is, emotionally, for an actor to be in a comedy where you mustn't tip the joke, as opposed to being in a tragedy, where you and the audience can experience the emotion together. Do you find comedy drier work than tragedy?

Jacobi: It does require more energy. In comedy, you're going for an up-front physical reaction---i.e., you want the audience to laugh. If they aren't laughing, you're not succeeding. So the minute you come on, you've got to be on top of it. While in a drama, which is not dependent on making anybody laugh, you can sort of ease into your performance and reach the heights in your own time.

L.A.Times: Psychological question: Have you ever used a role you've played in the theater to help you in a real-life situation?

Jacobi: I'm afraid it works the other way 'round. All the things I can do in the theater I probably enjoy more because I can't do them in real life. I do have what's called "emotional liability." It means you're very easily moved in real life. You cry easily. Which I do, to the embarrassment of my friends. And I use that. When I was doing "Peer Gynt" last year....Peer's mother dies in the course of the play. My own mother died three years ago. Every night I saw her lying there. And shed tears, very naturally. And was conscious that I was putting her there, mentally. In time I was almost ashamed I was doing that.

L.A.Times: Do you have any general approach when faced with a new character?

Jacobi: The word "character" is deceptive. An actor will say: "No, I can't do that, because my character wouldn't do that." In fact, we are all, every one of us, capable of everything and anything! To say "my character wouldn't do that" takes away the edge of what this character MIGHT do.

L.A.Times: So you define your character as that person to whom all the things in the play happen. You draw lines from them to him.

Jacobi: You're not playing "the character." You're playing the person within the situation. How that person reacts to the situation he is put in. The choices are immense. And to get back to your original question, one of the marks of the great actor is that he makes the right choices all the time. Olivier makes the most superb choices!

L.A.Times: The right choice seems to have a quality of surprise to it.

Jacobi: It's particularly important in classical plays, where, even if they haven't seen the play before, they know that Hamlet's dressed in black and says, "Alas, poor Yorick." Of course, if you do something outrageous, you lay yourself open to the cry of "Gimmicks! Had to do it different!" That's why I grabbed "The Suicide" on Broadway with both hands. The chance to do a modern play, where you couldn't be compared with the 6,000 other people who had played the role before! On the other hand, I love repertory. To wake up on a Monday morning and know that between Monday and Saturday you've got Prospero, Benedick and Cyrano to play.....it's a pretty good thought.

L.A.Times: You also get to win a lot of prizes.

Jacobi: Prizes are kind of silly,...until you win them. Then you say: Well, what do I do? Do I act ungracious and say, "Stuff it, I don't want it." Or do I obey the dictates of my one-foot-in-the-cradle heart and say: "Actually, I quite like winning prizes. Thank you very much, it's lovely." And THEN go back to saying it's silly.

L.A.Times: Have you ever wanted to direct?

Jacobi: Yes. I think I'd be good with the actors. A director who has never acted doesn't know the huge leap into the darkness that you have to make. But I haven't wanted to direct enough to do anything about it. I still have acting to get rid of.