It's a metaphorical undressing.".Holm is still smarting about the "silly articles" prompted by his onstage nudity. "The more I have to do with my face and eyes, the better I like it. As someone once said about film acting, the most difficult lesson to learn is to do nothing. Because it was such an enormous close-up I was able to register what I was thinking, which is `you silly cow, why are you doing this to me?'"One thing that won't be shown in massive close-up, is Holm's fleeting nude scene. For instance, when Lear confronts Cordelia and says `better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better' - it's a very long take and we just hold each others eyes. Given Holm's emotionally devastating delivery, it's surprising to discover that there was little Method in his madness. Instead, he would "lark around" with the rest of the company before going on stage, and hanging his performance on the verse "The arias are so fantastic, they carry you along.
I know it sounds corny, but you just get taken over."Being swept away by what Shelley called "the most perfect specimen of dramatic poetry existing in the world" was somewhat harder, admits Holm, with the film's fragmented shooting schedule. "It's odd recording scenes in a different order - the final waking up scene was the first one I had to shoot. And stopping and starting all the time means you lose momentum. I wouldn't say it was a let down but I did miss the drive of the play on stage, the audience reaction."Still, after roles in everything from Alien ("that was 1979, 1 would have done anything then") to Stanley Tucci's Big Night ("I got to bite Isabella Rosellini's bum"), Holm is no stranger to cinema, and revelled in the chance to play to the camera instead. "I had to be physically fit, because you need such enormous stamina for the role, but mentally I didn't find it difficult at all". In other words, they're a couple of years short of retirement."Holm's first experience of Lear came in 1959 when he played the fool to Charles Laughton's King "It was more of a reading than a performance.
Laughton wasn't well at the time and he'd often stop and say `Umm... could you take me back a moment?' The prompter would take him back to the beginning of the speech he'd dried on, and he'd say `no, further', then turn to the audience and say `I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen but this is just plot'."Happily the 66-year-old Holm had no such problems remembering his lines. "People always say that when an actor reaches a certain point in his career then it's time to `give his Lear'. "Shakespeare's hard to get right on television but the screens are a bit bigger these days," drawls Holm, adding wryly, "It is BBC2.
