Derek Jacobi was causing a problem last week to his colleagues in the new production of Richard II. It was not his performance which was at issue, nor the reviews, which were universally congratulatory. It was the somewhat unusual--for an actor--problem of diffidence. Only persistent cajoling by colleagues and management--"But, Derek, your name is ABOVE the title"--persuaded Jacobi that he should take an individual curtain call.

Modest, self-effacing unassuming, "TERRIBLY private"---the testimonies are fulsome and ubiquitous, to the degree that one is almost surprised to find Jacobi on the stage at all, let alone reaffirming his standing as one of our most acclaimed classical actors. It is the sheer inventiveness of his Richard II which is so arresting. The customary portrayal of the beleaguered king is effete and self-pitying--a character who proceeds through myriad shades of weakness; Jacobi's Richard is no wimp, but he is a psychological minefield. It is a thoughtful performance, a reminder that the greatest classical actors must of necessity be students of human nature as much as of the text. In Jacobi's case, it also requires extraordinary powers of memory and a division of concentration. While appearing each night as Richard II, by day he is rehearsing for a forthcoming Richard III, and he is preparing for his role as the Chorus in a film of 'Henry V'. He likens the three-fold task to patting the head and rubbing the stomach at the same time.

A fanciful shorthand might have it that, at the age of 49, Jacobi is this era's Gielgud to Ian McKellen's Olivier. The comparisons are necessarily invidious, although Jacobi acknowledges an affinity with Gielgud in voice and a "gentleness", which is in contrast to the machismo of Oliver.

"Derek would run a mile from reputation," says Clifford Williams, 'Richard II's director. "He doesn't want to take up any mantle. He doesn't like any of that. He's just interested in acting."

Jacobi deals with the question of comparisons more obliquely. The idea of "the definitive performance...the performance of the decade," as a yardstick by which all other performances will be measured, is nonsense. Acting, he says, is so much a question of choices; how did that person come to do THAT rather than THAT? To a large extent, it is the choice, not the talent, that makes an actor special--the way he uses the talent. Beyond that, he says, acting should be "a true exposure of yourself." One is well-accustomed to actors saying this sort of thing. But Jacobi qualifies it with an insight that say much of his self-effacing nature, and his reluctance to let his persona dominate the part he plays.

"We'll take it for granted that actors can act; then the skill or craft of it--or the trick--is to make people believe they're seeing somebody real on stage, not an actor acting. Ideally, they should leave the theatre talking about the person they've seen and the emotions they've felt--not saying,

'gosh, isn't he a good actor.' That suggests that it's been a spectator sport, and the actor has showed off. The playwright is the most important person in the theatre; we're there to serve the play."

This sort of intensity surfaces unbidden from Jacobi. Ask what he enjoys about acting and he replies that it is "as necessary to me as living." A moment's pause for thought. "It gives me a sense of being able to cope with what I'm doing. I can cope with the unreality of it all better than the reality of real life. On stage, I know the journey I'm making and how it is going to end. I have never been good at improvisation, and life is totally improvised."

Jacobi's early life, growing up in the East End of London, seemed an unorthodox prelude to a career on the stage. His father Alfred worked in the tobacconist and confectionary trade; mother Daisy in a greengrocer's shop. His interest in acting was nurtured by a sympathetic master at Leyton County High School; by the age of 18, he was playing Hamlet in a school's production at the Edinburgh Festival fringe. He won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he studied history, and drama alongside Trevor Nunn, Corin Redgrave and Ian McKellen, going on to serve his apprenticeship at Birmingham rep.

There is a story that his subsequent elevation to the National Theatre owes much to Laurence Olivier losing his house keys. Returning to his home in Brighton, and unable to effect entry, Olivier instead checked into a nearby hotel. Switching on the television, his eyes lighted on Jacobi in the role of Marlowe, and he invited him to join the National Theatre in 1963. A friendship was born. Much later, Jacobi would revive a set-piece which Olivier had made famous--a double-bill of Oedipus and Mr. Puff (In Sheridan's The Critic'). Olivier paid tribute with a telegram which read simply, "You cheeky bugger."

Jacobi's period at the National as Olivier's protege was formative, developing both his acting ability and his character. After eight years, most of them spent playing the second lead, he left, complaining of feeling "like an old sofa being pushed around." His first major television role was in Heinrich Mann's 'Man of Straw'. But it was his performance as the stuttering emperor in the award-winning 'I, Claudius' , in 1976, which really brought Jacobi to popular attention. Improbably enough, he shared the Variety Club Show Business Personality of the Year award that year with John Inman.

Television has proved intermittently useful since for reminding people of his existence--"If you eschew it altogether, people assume you're dead, that your career has come to nothing...." Film roles have happened along only occasionally--he supposes he is difficult to cast, not conforming to any particular character or type. "But a full-time movie career is something I would not want." His ideal career would encompass all things at the highest level, but he believes the greatest "job satisfaction" is to be found in the theatre. "In anything to do with the camera, somebody else is making the choices--creating the rhythm, editing--which in the theatre the actor makes himself. There is no safety net in the theatre, which makes it more exciting."

Friends describe him as quietly ambitious. "He makes very wise choices in his career," says David Parfitt, a director of the Renaissance Theatre Company. "Derek would rather wait for the right job to come along than rush into things." Jacobi characterises himself as a "placid soul". He has never believed in the axiom that an actor works best from a position of temperamental insecurity and angst; Jacobi's air is rather one of quietude and serenity. He lives alone in Hampstead, a house of fastidious orderliness--"plumping up the cushions and emptying ashtrays the moment the front door is closed"--collecting china and gardening.

"But I am a worrier. I worry inside. I don't like making waves, confrontation. There's a line in 'Richard II': These external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief, that swells with silence in the tortured soul.' I think I understand totally what that means. I'm not coming on that I'm a deeply sad and disturbed person, but I don't have that divine temperament that throws things and gets rid of it all. The neck and the shoulders seize up first,..whereas if I could let it all hang out and risk five minutes of unpleasantness, which I cannot do......so I get a stiff neck instead." It is, he acknowledges, a small qualification in an otherwise satisfied life.