“Things I wish I’d known at 18” .......by Sandra Barwick (Sunday Express--1984)

 

Probably best known for his performance in ‘I Claudius’, Derek Jacobi began as a schoolboy prodigy.  Successes at Cambridge were followed by more at the Old Vic, with Olivier as his mentor.  After an absence of six years, for film and television work, Jacobi is back on the London stage with the RSC. He talks to Sandra Barwick.

“When I was 18 I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. It was lovely to be promising.

I’d just done a schoolboy Hamlet on the Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. What I lacked in craftsmanship and insight I made up with raw energy. I tore several passions to several tatters. It was a black and white Hamlet, very simplistic.  But for all that it may have had something very accessible because we got a lot of publicity.

I had reviews in the papers.  I had a profile in “The Observer.”  I was even summoned to the Soho office of 20th Century Fox. And though I’d always, from a small child, wanted to be an actor, it was really at that moment that I thought 'yes, I could probably make it work'.

It was a real turning point, because while I was in Edinburgh I also got the results of my scholarship to St John’s, Cambridge.  I’d only tried to go there because of the opportunities to act.  The quick retentive memory that made it easy for me to learn lines made it easy to learn dates. 
But I wish I’d known exams would eventually end.  I still get examination dreams, not knowing the work, as well as actors dreams – not knowing the lines.  It’s horrible but by now I’ve learned how to wake myself up to escape…

Looking back perhaps it would have been better to have taken a year off to have travelled, to fill in that gap between the schoolboy and young man. When I went up I was surrounded by young men who’d done two years of National Service and had some experience of the world.  And I was an only child straight from a middle-class background in East London.  I’d gone to the local primary school 200 yards down the road which my parents were very involved in.  My parents were friends to me – we got on marvellously.

So when I arrived in Cambridge my parents dropped me at my digs and we all cried – mum, dad and me. It was like being left on the moon. I was 54 miles from home.  I’d never had that kind of freedom and responsibility and I wish I’d known how to cope.

I didn’t know at parties how much to drink, when to drink, how many canapés to consume.  I’ve still never worked out the knives and forks.

Though I paid out of my grant for my food in hall I only went in there once, in the first week, and I felt like Oliver twist. It was a long hall with trestle tables. You fetched your food and went to your place. I sat down at a table along a wall, and it was the hearty table. The guy opposite me had finished and the only way out was across the table so he stood up onto it and put his foot in my soup.   ‘Oh, frightfully sorry old chap. Oh ha ha ha.’ I fled to the Rose of India and spent the next three weeks consuming curries.

Within the first year I’d taken up smoking. I smoked heavily for 20 years, buying three packets a day. By the time I knew it was going to effect my career, it was so hard to give up that I had to have hypnosis.

My lack of social confidence made me waste time, especially in the first six months.  I wish I’d done more acting.  And I especially wish I hadn’t gone up with any kind of spurious – and it was largely spurious – reputation, because the first thing I did in the first fortnight of term was a modern American play in which I played a psychiatrist. And I was appalling. I came a cropper, and for a while I was untouchable. The undergraduates of the second and third years had read reports in the papers of what had happened at Edinburgh and the knives were out. It was ‘Ooh, this boy is coming up. Let's see what he can do. He’s no good. Right, one … two …’   I wish I’d known how to handle that.

I did find Cambridge very competitive. I remember thinking, if It’s like this here, what’s it going to be like in the profession?  I was a bit frightened that I wouldn’t be able to survive.  But I wish I’d known that it’s much better. Professional actors are extremely generous to each other, much more relaxed, less envious.

I lack ruthlessness.  Maybe if I’d been a bit more ruthless when I was young, life would have been better. But I’ve learned since that first term how to ride my punches.  I don’t fight back.  And, though I don’t exactly harbour grudges, I don’t forget.  Which is probably a failing.

I’ve discovered a lot about my self that I wasn’t clearly aware of at 18.  I’m a loner.  I tend to run away from conflict and decision-making; I’m a true Libran in that sense.  I find it more difficult to deal with the real world than with the creative side of my life in which I can make choices, which I do find exciting.

But with all it’s faults, with all the angst, the fears, the laziness, the lack of responsibility, I remember Cambridge with great pleasure.  Once I’d settled down and worked my way back into the stream of acting again it was just a cornucopia of wonders, people to get to know, places to see, things to learn. I adored it all so much that, without having a Peter Pan complex, I’ve never quite let go of being 18.

I didn’t overlay my 18-yearold self with ‘maturity’, ‘adulthood’,...those awful words that plug all the holes where emotions or instincts might keep dribbling out.  That’s partly being an actor, keeping the child in the man.  I still try to keep all those holes unbunged.”