Bates, forever associated with his roles in Thomas Hardy classics The Mayor of Casterbridge and Far From the Madding Crowd, plays a butler in the film which was inspired by both Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game and Agatha Christie's novel Ten Little Indians. The plot revolves around a weekend shooting party at an aristocratic stately home in the 1930s, and there are no fewer than 25 interwoven storylines involving a rich and exotic gallery of characters.
The eclectic group includes a countess, a World War One hero, the British matinee idol Ivor Novello and an American film producer who makes Charlie Chaplin movies.
As the guests assemble in the gilded drawing rooms, their personal maids and valets are busy in the teeming kitchens and corridors downstairs. But all is not as it seems. Neither the bejewelled guests lunching and dining at their enormous leisure, nor the servants labouring in their stark work stations.
Part comedy of manners and part mystery, this is a tale of events that bridge generations, class, sex, tragedy - and culminate in murder. Altman, who directed Nashville and M*A*S*H, has assembled one of the most impressive casts of British talent to be seen in a single film in recent years.
As well as Bates, it includes Dorset-reared Kristin Scott Thomas, and Charles Dance, who lives near Chard in Somerset.
A bunch more for you to choose from.
'Park' perks up fest
By STEVEN GAYDOS
November 12, 2001 - November 18, 2001 Pg. 47 The world premiere of Robert Altman's U.K.-lensed comedic murder mystery "Gosford Park" opened the 45th Regus London Film Festival at the Odeon Leicester Square on Nov. 7, literally filling the theater's giant stage with dozens of the film's cast.
Altman was one of the few non-Brits from the pic, which was packed with a veritable who's who of notable English thesps, including Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Derek Jacobi, Alan Bates, Charles Dance, Jeremy Northam, Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon, to name but a few.
Post-pic, the crowds braved monsoon-type weather to feast and dance at the gala party at the Old Billingsgate Fish Market, which was decked out with glamour and glitter befitting the Brit upper-crust theme of the film.
The cash takes to GBP 345,000 the total raised so far for the refurbishment of the centre near Shaftesbury Avenue.
Around GBP 700,000 is needed to refit the entire facility, which runs classes and provides support for working actors.
Mr Bates was asked to become the Green Lane cinema's patron to coincide with its 21st anniversary celebrations this year. The Allestree-born actor has been a regular visitor to the cinema since it opened in January, 1981.
Andrew McIntyre, the cinema's director, said: "We're delighted and very proud to have Alan Bates as the cinema's patron. As one of Britain's greatest screen actors, and as a Derbyshire man, we feel honoured that Mr Bates is supporting the Metro."
The actor, who trained with Peter O'Toole, starred in films such as Women in Love, during which he wrestled naked with the late Oliver Reed.
In 1992 his wife, Victoria, died of a suspected heart attack less than two years after his 19-year-old son, Tristan, died from an asthma attack.
The Cherry Orchard (PG)
The Metro, Green Lane, Derby, August 4-6. Box office: 01332 340170.
August 4, 2000. Showbiz: ACTORS/ACTRESSES ALAN Bates is not one to look back in anger or with nostalgia but he admits The Cherry Orchard, for him, has an air of deja vu.
For the film is the lovechild of Michael Cacoyannis, the man who 36 years ago directed him alongside Anthony Quinn in the movie classic Zorba the Greek, and - according to Alan - is just as artistically made.
"The same guy who won an Oscar for designing Zorba did the design for The Cherry Orchard. It's a very beautiful piece of work," he told The Week Out. I almost mentioned that there was a moment here for us to share - that Cacoyannis also directed me some 30 years ago. OK, it was for just the one day and I was one of a million extras and the film had the unlikely title The Day The Fish Came Out - and to this day I have never seen it on any cinema screen. But...
The film did have some significance in that its launch in 1967 coincided with the military coup which stifled democracy in Greece and led to Cacoyannis' self-imposed exile and the banning of his films in the country for the next seven years.
"The Cherry Orchard is something Michael has always wanted to do but never found anyone to back him," Alan continued. "But he finally managed to raise some Greek money and got it made in Bulgaria."
In the Chekhov film Alan plays Gaev, a middle -aged, ineffectual but charming member of a dying breed of old established Russian families at the turn of the last century.
"He's part of a privileged, pampered world which is rapidly fading and he and his sister can't come to grips with it. They don't see the changes coming - the rise of communism, the world wars. It's rather sad and nostalgic and their behaviour is ridiculous. I'm glad I've done it."
HE movie also sees Alan acting alongside the enigmatic Charlotte Rampling with whom he last worked 34 years ago in Georgie Girl.
Charlotte plays one of the central characters who returns to Russia after five years' absence to live on the family's run-down estate with her brother Gaev. The pair are advised to cut down their beautiful cherry orchard in order to sell it off for building land and so save the estate - but both adamantly refuse.
Alan is full of praise for his co-star.
"Charlotte is divine to work with. She's an actress who doesn't pull the big number with anyone. She's one of the crew. She's very serious about her work. But there is something in her which is just right for the part - something gossamer which you can't quite catch. Charlotte has real mystery. She's a great original." The all-star cast also includes Frances de la Tour - best known to television audiences as Miss Jones, the object of lecherous Rigsby's passion in the comedy Rising Damp.
Alan was recently Antony to Frances' unlikely Cleopatra in a production at Stratford, where the opening scene with his head buried beneath her skirt was almost as controversial as his famous nude wrestling bout with Oliver Reed in Women in Love.
Alan is again generous in his praise. "Frances has a wonderful exotic quality. She has lots of charisma, humour and intelligence."
On the late Mr Reed, he is more circumspect.
"Oliver was an extraordinary man. At his best, he was a fine actor, but he didn't always treat roles with the seriousness he could have done. He was a great liver. Sometimes he drove other people mad, but beneath the reputation there was a very sensitive soul. He made his mark."
ALAN had a decade of acting experience behind him when he appeared in Ken Russell's infamous Women in Love with Reed and Glenda Jackson. He didn't, he said, find the wrestling scene at all embarrassing.
"The scene was straight from the book. It was central to the action. It didn't bother me. I was young and fit then. I wouldn't do it now."
But then Alan (66) is renowned for his total dedication and incredible ability to get inside the skin of his characters.
"It's just a question of doing some research and letting it soak into you beforehand so that you understand the person you're playing and how they think."
It's a skill which, over the past four decades, has landed him a string of classic roles and enabled him to work with some of the greatest names in the theatre and movie world - directors like John Schlesinger, Franco Zeffirelli and Ken Russell, writers like Alan Bennett, Harold Pinter and Simon Gray, actors like Anthony Quinn, Peter Finch, Julie Christie, Mel Gibson and Helena Bonham Carter.
And more or less everything he has touched has turned to gold. He gained an Oscar nomination for The Fixer, a Tony award for Simon Gray's Butley, a BAFTA award for his TV work in 1984 and in 1995 was awarded a CBE for his achievements.
Alan puts it down to choosing wisely and well.
"Given one's popularity and demand in a given decade, I've always tried to choose what I appear in as far as I could. I've been lucky. Most of what I've done has been worth doing.
"I came in in the Sixties with the beginning of new writing - things like A Kind of Loving.
" Then I was able to get roles in films which were based on classic novels like Far From The Madding Crowd and The Go-Between. There are only three or four things I hope no-one ever sees."
LAN has to pause to consider what have been his best acting roles.
"I try to give every part my full commitment. Some I pull off better than others. I suppose Butley and Pinter's The Caretaker are among my best - and possibly Women in Love."
Even faced with a double tragedy in his personal life, Alan's professionalism has always shone through.
The untimely death of his 19-year -old son Tristan from an asthma attack followed soon after by the loss of his wife, Victoria, was enough to shatter anyone.
Alan threw himself into work.
"I suppose I'm a bit of a workaholic," he said, "although I do like a break."
These days the work continues to role in. Following Antony and Cleopatra's successful run, he is currently filming a BBC dramatisation of Nancy Mitford's novel Love in a Cold Climate.
He's also found himself acting alongside his son, Benedick, on a couple of occasions.
"He's very good and more important, very nice and a pleasure to work with," said the fond father, recalling his own early passion for the stage - despite his musical parents' yearning for him to become a concert pianist.
Alan, fortunately for Derby, has never forgotten his roots.
Born in Allestree, he attended the Herbert Strutt Grammar School in Belper, winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
He still has a brother and childhood friends in the area and has appeared on several occasions in productions at the Derby Playhouse.
The city has rewarded him with with a Cinema 100 plaque and an honorary degree.
His fondness for his home city is reflected in his visit to the Metro this weekend, taking precious time out of a hectic filming schedule to launch this week's screening of The Cherry Orchard.
ALAN Bates will personally introduce tomorrow's 5.15pm screening of The Cherry Orchard at The Metro. Normal prices apply and you can book seats by calling The Metro on 01332 340170.
The Cherry Orchard can also be seen at the Green Lane cinema tonight and on Sunday.
GRAPHIC: Alan proudly receiving his honorary degree at Derby University. Alan Bates and Charlotte Rampling in a scene from The Cherry Orchard.
June 20, 2000. Arts: FESTIVAL, Pg.11 HE may have trodden the boards of famous theatres and rubbed shoulders with many a great film star, but Derby-born actor Alan Bates is set to swap the bright lights for Ashbourne.
The actor, famed for roles in Women in Love, Far from the Madding Crowd and A Kind of Loving, has agreed to appear in the town's first arts festival, which gets under way on Friday, June 30.
He will perform five Shakespeare sonnets at an event called Power of the Voice at St John's Church, Buxton Road, on Monday, July 3.
Mr Bates, who now lives in the village of Bradbourne, is well known internationally through his appearances across the globe and he has also spent time touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Phil Tregoning, a festival organiser and the owner of Ashbourne Art Gallery, said: "I know Alan as he pops into the art gallery and he has always given me great support.
"I thought I would give him a ring to see if he would open the festival for us but he went one better and said he would come and perform in it.
"It's a great coup to have such an international star for our first festival. A lot of people forget where they come from when they become famous but this just goes to prove that there are some people who don't.
"Alan's support is very much appreciated and to have such a name as one of our acts is a great boost. It's also a wonderful example to us all when someone this famous puts his time and energy behind a rural town's first festival of arts."
People attending the performance will also be able to enjoy an arts show made up of work by Derbyshire artists.
Lucinda Wells, the show's curator, said: "It's fabulously exciting to be involved in the festival as there is a great deal of energy going into it from everybody involved.
"Everybody has really pulled together in order to make the festival a success."
Power of the Voice tickets cost GBP 4 and, along with tickets for other events, they can be obtained from Ashbourne Tourist Information Centre or from the Britannia Building Society in the Market Place.
For more information on the festival or for a programme, telephone 01335 348707.
Festival is a first
THE Ashbourne Arts Festival will feature more than 30 different acts of theatre, drama, music and art.
The event, which is taking place for the first time, aims to promote Ashbourne's vibrant arts scene.
On Friday, June 30, the PNEU School, Windmill Lane, hosts a traditional ceilidh at 8pm. Entry is GBP 5.
On Saturday, July 1, a free crafts exhibition is being held at St Oswald's Church Hall, Church Street, between 10am and 4.30pm, and Open Door Youth Theatre will perform tales of Ashbourne's past, present and future at the St John's Centre, Buxton Road, between 2pm and 5pm.
On the Sunday, Victoria Square will be filled with the sound of pan pipes, guitars and drums for the Music in the Square event, starting at noon.
On Tuesday, a free evening of poetry and music is being staged at Cary's Wine Bar at 8pm, and a Salsa Night is the highlight of Wednesday at Madisons in the Market Place from 8pm. Entry is GBP 2.50.
On Thursday, there is a variety of dance workshops taking place at the Empire Ballroom from 10am for GBP 2.50 per hour and Madisons will host an Indie Night on Friday from 8.30pm. Entry is GBP 5.
The Derbyshire Pro-Loco Art Competition comes to town on Saturday, July 8, giving people the chance to win cash prizes for painting local scenes. Entry is GBP 1 and artists can register at the Town Hall between 9am and 10.30am.
The event is rounded off by the Picnic in the Park from 12.30pm, which will feature the Brookside Jazz Band and the Ashbourne Town Band.
LIFE force, energy, obduracy are the words that best describe the acting of Alan Bates. Which is why he is so good at playing Chekhov, people who do nothing, like his Gaev in Michael Cacoyannis's new and stylish film of The Cherry Orchard - languor, a forlorn ineffectualness, being just on the flip side of a passionate embrace of life.
It is also why Bates is a definitive Antony, opposite Frances de la Tour's equally definitive Cleopatra - the fallen hero, the man who loses everything but who, as Bates says, "is not a loser". A man defiant in the face of destiny, a man who grapples with his grief. And which, finally, is why Bates's reading of Thomas Hardy's poems later this month will be so poignant and apt. Hardy, whose love poems to his dead wife - an effusion of feeling too late to change anything - are the best things he ever wrote. "Woman much missed how you call to me, call to me."
That same old sentimentality, until the last great and brutal line. "Thus, I, faltering forward ..."
Together these three performances form a portrait of Bates, at this time of his life, aged 65, still endlessly working and wrestling, always wrestling, to balance grief with joy, appetite with loss. It is almost 10 years since his son Tristan died suddenly in Japan at the age of 19, followed some months later by Victoria, his wife of 22 years, leaving Bates and Benedick, Tristan's twin. Too cruel to contemplate. "People ask, how do you cope, and all I can say is that you do." You cope, he says, "Because you don't want it to stop."
Though this is not true of everyone. It is not true of his wife.
After their son's death, she developed a wasting disease. "She just started to vanish." I ask him if he thinks she died of grief. "I can't analyse it to that degree. All I can say is that it could have been."
Didn't this make him furious? Of course, he says, to see someone walk away from help. "I went nearly mad trying to stop it, but I couldn't. In the end she went away somewhere that I couldn't find her. I didn't know where she was. It was her choice. A hugely brave death."
I ASK him if he has ever considered suicide seriously.
He says not. "Those things come into your mind, obviously, when you've lost people. If they can go, I can go ... I've had a pretty full life ..."
But. "I do believe in living out your own time, unless it's absolutely impossible, which it is for some people." It is, famously, impossible for Antony and Cleopatra, both of whom take their own lives - unable to live without the other. Not that they are ever particularly nice to each other.
"Thou wert a bungler ever," Antony flings at her, almost kicking her across the palace floor. And this from the man who later bungles even his own suicide. Two great and noble bunglers.
Is this what true love is, I ask Bates? You know, he says, "I've never believed much in that holding hands kind of love. I've always thought that love is about two different personalities trying to confront life, trying to make sense of their responsibilities, to themselves, to each other, and to the wider society." And if you can manage that, he says, "then that's not bad".
Theirs was not an easy marriage. "We were highly incompatible." They stopped living together when the boys were young, had separate homes, negotiated separate ways of doing things. "But we never divorced. We couldn't let each other go. Sure it was troubled, turbulent. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I loved her and she loved me. I think that can happen, that two people can love each other and not be able to get on at all."
He is not a great one for heroes, Bates says, and he has never believed in a god, but he can't help admiring Antony and even finding something godlike in him.
Maybe what appeals so much is his earthbound quality: "Antony is like a big bird, trying to take off into that final flight. In the end he can't make it, the effort is too great but he never gives in."
THERE is something moving and human in failure, Bates says. It is why we love the people in The Cherry Orchard so much. "They are terrific and they are hopeless, and just charming. And you can't believe the way they are behaving." We have to accept change, he says. Their tragedy is that they can't.
And then he says, again apropos of Antony, but he must be talking also of himself: "Antony faces things, he faces despair. He lets himself plunge in order that he can rise up, because sometimes you have to go right down ...You can't come up if you don't."
But enough of this, Bates says.
Too sad. He may be fatalistic but he is funny too. He has a kind of mischievous giggle; at times he looks like a particularly elegant boy. He is generous about colleagues, and makes a great cup of tea. And life is good to him too.
Benedick is about to get married to "a lovely woman". He can't wait. And he has himself recently fallen in love.
His philosophy he says is best summed up by a woman he knew years ago. It was when his two boys were small and he had gone to the school to collect them.
Walking home with a friend she suddenly turned to him and said.
"Isn't it lovely walking along this side of the street. Most people seem to think it's better on the other side. But it isn't."
The Cherry Orchard is on general release. Antony and Cleopatra at the Barbican until April. Alan Bates will read from Thomas Hardy at the Purcell Room on 27 February.
By Roger Clarke
February 12, 2000. FEATURES; Pg. 25 This labour-of-love, an adaptation of the Chekhov play about tragic Russian aristocrats overwhelmed by the march of history, is a late blossoming by the venerable director of the Sixties classic Zorba the Greek. As a play it's among the great works of literature, but unfortunately this star- studded version comes a cropper - once again, Charlotte Rampling loses it on a staircase and Alan Bates dons a silk dressing-gown, and the various Scots, Welsh and Aussie accents are more than a distraction. I was prepared to give it a shot but when a character early on said to another "I'm sure you haven't come all the way from Russia to talk about nuts", it lost me.
By Nicci Gerrard
January 23, 2000. Observer Review Pages; Pg. 3 'I AM SIXTY-FOUR. I do not always recognise my life,' says Alan Bates. 'All the things that have happened ' He rubs a hand across his bearded chin and doesn't smile.On the screen and on the stage, we have watched Alan Bates grow older from the first burst of fame when he played Cliff in the original Royal Court Look Back in Anger, when he was just 24, through Women in Love (famously wrestling naked with Oliver Reed), The Go-Between, Far From the Madding Crowd, A Kind of Loving, Zorba the Greek, The Entertainer, Whistle Down the Wind, An Englishman Abroad, Georgie Girl, as the loquacious alter ego of David Storey, of Simon Gray. He's been Hamlet, Ivanov, the master builder Subtle, loud, eager, angry, sober, dark, innocent, sexy, boyish, sardonic, hopeful, weary. Lines imperceptibly etching themselves on his handsome face, age creeping up on him, until here he is now, rugged, creased, lived in and well-marked by time, which so many actors spend their lives fleeing. He's handsome still, more solid in his rumpled clothes and ample beard, like a grizzled, powerful bear. You feel, looking at him, that he has earned the right to be the scorched Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra at last (a part offered to him many times over the past decades, which he is finally playing at the Barbican, opposite Frances de la Tour, and back with the RSC after a 20 -year absence).
He is also appearing with Frances de la Tour, as well as Charlotte Rampling, in Michael Cacoyannis's film adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which opens on 11 February. Cacoyannis directed Bates in Zorba the Greek, three decades ago. 'We had better not wait another 30 years for the next one,' says Bates. He calls the film 'wonderful'; he says Cacoyannis who had dreamt of doing The Cherry Orchard for years, raised the money for it himself, and expended on the film 'so much passion and love' allowed the individual characters to blossom and let the play speak for itself. He calls his role of Uncle Gaev a 'real sleeper: he's a hidden part; one of those dreams. I read the script and at first I thought: but everyone else is in charge and I'm just hanging round, on the edge. But actually he's so present; he becomes a major character. I loved working with Charlotte, who plays this divine woman whom everyone loves and no one can get hold of and that's Charlotte too, that's what Charlotte is like herself. It often happens in Chekhov he writes so wonderfully of families, and you become a family yourselves. You can't avoid what's written there.'
BATES IS TOUCHING and strange in the film sad and optimistic, expansive and childish and innocent. He says of acting that 'each time, it is as if it is the first time, as if each job is for your first break. I don't know if that attitude is healthy or retarded. Of course, there's an accumulation of approaches, techniques, attitudes, understanding, that help you, maybe help you, not to fail. Yet also you begin at zero. At the start I almost can't walk across the stage, I am so scared. And of course, maturity makes things more deal-able with. You don't care so much about things like reviews, what people think of you. And so do big experiences. Experiences like having children.' He pauses, looks at me with his brown and scrupulous eyes. 'And like losing children.'
Ah, there it is. Nine years ago, Alan Bates's life was torn in half: 'Literally in half,' he says to me now. 'Four became two. Like a sniper in your garden.' First his son, 19-year-old Tristan, died after an asthmatic attack. Then, some months later, Victoria, his wife of 22 years, also died. 'Suddenly it was just me and Benedick (Tristan's twin brother) left.'
These things, he says, change you deeply. 'They have to. You have to learn something as you go through, you have to allow them to change you. They are as present as ever to me but they're not there physically. It's tempting to go all wacko and say, 'He spoke to me yesterday.' Wacko or not, I believe in his presence. I was saying to my friend, Angharad Rees, who suffered the same experience, that all four of us dominate me, dictate who I am. The mysteries of going,' he says, 'are the same as the mysteries of coming.'
He tells me that when his son died, he almost went mad. 'You have to go mad with the grief well, I wasn't mad, of course, I was consumed. Just consumed utterly. You have to go to the extremes or you won't come out the other side. You stand a chance if you let yourself be wrecked. Suppress it and you're in big trouble. And you have in the end to find a way to come to terms with it. Or you take your bottle of aspirins. You go on and you tell yourself they wouldn't have wanted it any other way. That's what my wife kept telling me in those first months, 'He would have wanted you to go on." So he poured himself into work. In the first scene he rehearsed after Tristan's death, as Claudio in Zeffirelli's Hamlet, he found himself standing at the graveside of Ophelia: 'Another 19-year-old.' He laughs ruefully. 'At least I knew how to behave. Actually, I suddenly saw death everywhere. Everything was connected to death. Everything was sharpened, heightened.'
THE LOSS, SAYS BATES, was 'terrifying'. He always thinks he doesn't want to talk about it and it's private, but then he finds he does talk still, because: 'There it is. There he is.' He swings round in his chair and points. 'That's Tristan,' signalling a large pen-and-ink drawing of a young man staring down at us. 'And that's Benedick. And my wife. And me.' Three handsome men and a beautiful woman. 'There we all are together.' He smiles very proudly at the haunted wall. 'The family.'
His wife died 'mysteriously', he says. The doctors called it a wasting disease. 'She had to she just let life well, what do I mean? It's too mysterious. She just vanished, She just disappeared. She was always a mysterious creature, with a lot going on in her mind. It was as if one day she said, 'Well, that's it, I'll go now".' He waves his hand gently, as if giving her permission to depart. The loss of half the family induced in him and his surviving son a sort of metaphysical panic: a great whoosh of fear that blew over them for some time.
Acting helped, says Bates. 'You have to use your self and yet believe that you are someone else.' He has no idea how he became an actor. He grew up in Derbyshire, on the edge of the Peak District (he has a house there and it is still the place that he calls home) and went through school resisting drama ('It was sissy'). Yet he went to the theatre every week, and suddenly, just before his teens, he understood that he was intensely drawn to the theatre and knew, too, that it was where he wanted to be himself.
He started to act, and to win competitions, and realised: 'Maybe it was something I could do well. I hadn't been very good at school, never really liked it. I was a rather private boy, hidden maybe acting is where I could show off. Ha! Some critics say I show off rather too much. I love acting. It is a permanent challenge; there is always further to go. Whether it is in film or on the stage, it is about understanding a character, and reaching out. Of course, in the cinema, you're not your own man, whereas in the theatre, when the curtain goes up, it's yours. I often think what a strange job I have dressing up and pretending to be someone else. But I give who I am to these parts, and if it reveals an aspect of life, then maybe,' he shrugs, 'maybe I'm doing something a bit useful.'
He wants to play Timon of Athens (which he was going to do along with Antony, until he came down with a chest infection). He has his eye on Prospero. He thinks that now is a good time to reflect on his life. 'How am I going to face the next 30 years of my life? I have particular circumstances, of course: people have died, when I should have died before them. It's given me a different dimension. I don't care so very much what happens to me any more. All that's gone. I guess in work I just hope for more experiences like the ones I've had recently, acting with two women (Frances de la Tour and Charlotte Rampling) who are at the peak of their capacities. When it works, you think, 'I am still functioning. I can still do this." I have been a lucky man.'
And in life? 'Ah well, yes, in life, I just think I will let life happen. Not that you lose control or don't care. Just that you don't panic. When I first lost Tristan and Victoria, life made me panic, I was filled with a sense of utter insecurity. Life comes right into your face. Bleak. Now, after all this time, I can deal with my life alone. I'd like to have a companion, but I can be alone.
And I find that I can be sort of happy. Sort of.'