Britannia rules the stage

Theatre is the tough training ground that has made UK actors a constant feature of awards ceremonies the world over. Al Senter goes behind the scenes to find out why our luvvies are in such demand

London is the theatre capital of the world. Every night the curtains go up on more than 100 shows from West End musicals to Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre to pub productions in attic rooms. Outside the capital, the RSC is displaying renewed vigour, while regional theatres are showing what can be achieved with adequate funding. North of the border, the new National Theatre of Scotland, an organisation rather than a bricks-and-mortar building, has been an instant success, with its production of Black Watch the hit of last year's Edinburgh Festival.

When the awards season is in full swing, from BAFTAs to Tonys, Golden Globes to the Oscars, Brits are usually out in force, strongly represented in the nominations and often walking off with the biggest spoils. For her extraordinary performance in The Queen, Dame Helen Mirren seems to have collected every gong going. So why, and how, does Britain produce such great actors?

For a start, there is a ready supply of talent. Despite only a handful of places at British drama schools, they are swamped with applicants. Peter James, principal at LAMDA, reports that the 54 places he offers each year attract almost 3,000 hopefuls, none of them daunted by the poor prospects fledgling actors face on graduation.

According to actors' union Equity, its 36,000 members' average income from acting work is less than £10,000 a year. The downside is that the US has become a lure. "Young actors these days are often plucked from drama school and popped directly into a Hollywood movie," says actor Hugh Bonneville whose credits include Iris and the recent adaptation of Diary of a Nobody. "So there's less sense, now, of learning through observation while holding tea-trays in drawing-room comedies."

Both coasts of America have an insatiable appetitie for British talent. Last year Alan Bennett's play, The History Boys, swept the board at Broadway's Tony ceremony and Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon may well do the same this year. To collect her Oscar, Helen Mirren had to fend off fierce competition from her compatriots Kate Winslet and Dame Judi Dench.

The pre-eminence of the British actor seems at odds with popular preconceptions of the national character. One can debate ad nauseam whether emotional reticence is an English speciality or is spread throughout these islands, but what unites the UK is a self-deprecating wit and an unease with showing off. Yet we delight in cavorting about the stage pretending to be somebody else.

"The British have always liked to dress up, and going on stage is a way of legitimising that urge to perform. It's legitimate self-expression," says film and stage director Richard Eyre. "Actors are generally quite shy, and acting for them is often an escape from the torture of being themselves," adds stage director Christopher Luscombe, whose production of A Midsummer Night's Dream can currently be seen at London's Open Air Theatre. "They feel more free when they're playing someone else."

But Luscombe is clear about what distiguishes talent here from that in the US. "We—the British—are best at text-based theatre whereas American actors are fantastic at film because they have a physicality, an ease with their bodies, which the more uptight and cerebral British lack," he argues "But the business is so competitive now that actors have to be able to do everything."

Thanks to several quirks of fate, Hollywood has become the centre of the international film industry and English is enshrined as the lingua franca of the entertainment business. And the fact that the greatest playwright the world has known is among our national treasures further boosts British actors' chances over there.

We imbibe Shakespeare from an early age and use phrases everyday that he first coined. His plays remain at the heart of the English syllabus, and glance at any actor's stage credits and it is bound to include a number of Shakespeare productions. Companies such as the RSC, Shakespeare's Globe and the Open Air Theatre in London's Regent's Park all specialise in the bard's work, which is so prodigious it can easily furnish an actor with the lion's share of his employment.

In this way, a British actor will almost inevitably receive a thorough grounding in Shakespearean language. Add to that a succession of highly literate British (and Irish) playwrights—from Jonson and Webster, through Congreve, Sheridan, Shaw, Wilde and Coward to Pinter, Stoppard, Bennett and Hare—and it is easy to see how UK acting talent can be honed on the boards before moving to the big screen.

Far from being intimidated by Shakespeare, new generations of writers turn to the theatre to express themselves. There are just as many unsolicited plays sent to new-writing venues such as the Royal Court and the National Theatre as there are would-be actors applying to drama school. Nurtured on such rich playwriting talent, British actors are better equipped than most to handle the intricacies of text: an ability that is particularly prized by Broadway and Hollywood directors.

British actors also bring diverse experience to their craft. In the average CV, one will find a season or two at the RSC or the National, West End experience and work with leading regional theatres. On television, they will have appeared in everything from sitcoms and period dramas to a gritty police or hospital series. There may be the occasional day's work on a Hollywood blockbuster and a smattering of radio. American actors, by contrast, are often forced to choose between the theatre in New York and elsewhere on the eastern seaboard and movies and television on the west coast. Only a few achieve the range that is available to British actors.

And just as British playwrights may sense they are tapping into the spirit of Shakespeare every time they type "Act One, Scene One" on their PC, so a British actor is aware, however vaguely, of the lineage that stretches back to Richard Burbage, the leading man of Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

To younger actors, the names of even the 20th century giants such as Olivier and Ashcroft, Gielgud and Evans may be unknown. But they will always be associated with the great tradition that they are unconsciously endorsing and which endows them with a unique sense of continuity and identity. Every time the curtain rises on a stage production, every time the opening theme to EastEnders or Coronation Street is heard, every time the cinema screen flickers into life, some aspect of that great tradition is celebrated.

Acting aristocracy: the Knights and Dames of british film and stage

Dame Judi Dench
The nation's favourite actress, a kind of Queen Mother of Equity, Dame Judi's 50-year career stretches back to her Juliet at the Old Vic in 1957. A peerless classical actress—her Lady Macbeth is unlikely to be bettered—she was finally discovered by Hollywood in Mrs Brown. Having overlooked her Queen Victoria in one film, the Academy rewarded her with a Best Supporting Oscar for her comparatively brief appearance as another queen, Elizabeth I, in Shakespeare in Love. Now it seems that she can hardly make a film without receiving an Oscar nomination, most recently with Notes On A Scandal. She is currently filming The Cranford Chronicles for the BBC.

Sean Connery
These days the former 007 is more often campaigning for the Scottish National Party than saving mankind from another megalomaniac. It may be that Sir Sean has retired from the screen having won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in The Untouchables in 1987 and a BAFTA Best Actor gong in 1986 in The Name of the Rose. The belated conferring of a knighthood was seen, in some quarters, as a gesture reluctantly prised from a British government because of his political views, but surely he rightly owns his place in the pantheon of British actors. The latest James Bond, Daniel Craig, will have his supporters, but in the eyes of many, this will always be the definitive OO7.

Michael Gambon
Dubbed "The Great Gambon" by Sir Ralph Richardson, a knight of a previous generation, Sir Michael was a relatively junior member of Olivier's National Theatre company in the 1960s, before striking out on his own. Initially, he came to prominence through the work of Alan Ayckbourn, but it was his towering performance as Galileo in the National Theatre's The Life of Galileo in 1980 that revealed his strengths as a leading man. A notorious jokester, he ambles between stage and screen, giving his Falstaff at the National in 2005, succeeding the late Richard Harris as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films and contributing a series of cameos to Hollywood productions.

Diana Rigg
For generations of schoolboys growing up in the 1960s, Dame Diana has an imperishable appeal, especially in those clinging cat-suits she sported as sultry spook Emma Peel in The Avengers. Latterly she has concentrated on theatre work, playing a series of sacred monsters including Medea, Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and as Mrs Venable in Suddenly Last Summer. Even if she may no longer be capable of felling villains with a karate chop or two, it would be nice to see her back in comedic vein.

Tom Courtenay
Sir Tom emerged, almost simultaneously with his great friend, frequent colleague and fellow northerner, Albert Finney, at a time when theatrical fashion was changing and Mancunian was as acceptable an accent as Mayfair. Like Finney, he became part of the post-Royal Court, British movie realism of the early 1960s, starring in such films as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. A diffident man, his career has ebbed and flowed in recent years, although he scored a great success as the poet Philip Larkin in a solo show, Pretending To Be Me.

Julie Andrews
Dame Julie may owe her fame to the double whammy of her Oscar-winning Mary Poppins in 1964 and Maria in The Sound of Music the following year, but she was already an established star of the musical theatre before Hollywood came calling. She created the role of Eliza in Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady but infamously lost the part to a non-singing Audrey Hepburn when the musical transferred to the screen. She now brings her ladylike presence to the screen in films such as The Princess Diaries.

Elizabeth Taylor
Still a member of Hollywood royalty, British-born Dame Elizabeth has survived numerous serious illnesses, a string of husbands and a career that has brought her two Oscars and three further nominations, to maintain her position as one of the world's most glamorous women. As an MGM contract player while still in pigtails, she is a living link to the old, traditional Hollywood of the star system and the movie moguls.

Ian McKellen
Sir Ian is the latest example of an actor who toils, relatively unsung, for decades only to achieve "overnight" worldwide prominence through film success. One of the greatest classical actors of his generation, he and Dame Judi Dench were the jewels of Trevor Nunn's unsurpassable 1976 production of Macbeth. He may have been transformed by a long white wig and a prodigious amount of facial hair into Gandalf, the world's favourite wizard, in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but rather than taking a series of lucrative film cameos, he has now returned to the stage to be reunited with Trevor Nunn for the RSC's current production of King Lear.

Helen Mirren
Currently basking in the worldwide acclaim for her Oscar-winning performance in The Queen, after two previous nominations, Dame Helen can do no wrong. Her world-weary policewoman in ITV's Prime Suspect series has an iconic place in television history and her potrayal of another monarch, Elizabeth I, also earned her a hatful of prizes. Such regal roles seem at odds with her early image as the wild child of the RSC, but she nevertheless remains almost alone among her peers, in managing to combine in her work a thrilling sexual charge with seriousness and integrity.  Her next movie will be National Treasure: Book of Secrets, out in March 2008. Although in her early 60s, it seems the world is at her feet.

Derek Jacobi
Honey-toned and still youthful in appearance, Sir Derek was an integral part of Olivier's National Theatre company, but left to establish himself as a leading classical actor. His performance in the title role of I, Claudius in 1976 won him his television spurs and, although he has appeared in numerous films and television dramas in the past 30 years, the theatre would appear to be his chosen medium. Acclaimed for his work in Schiller's Don Carlos in London's West End, he recently scored another bulls-eye as the senior Mortimer in John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father.

Ian Holm
The diminutive Sir Ian has latterly been keeping a low profile-since playing Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He made his breakthrough as a member of Sir Peter Hall's early company at the RSC, combining a dazzling Henry V with a mesmeric Richard III as well as creating the role of Lenny in Pinter's The Homecoming. Although films rather than theatre have claimed him in recent years, he was a famously naked King Lear in a chamber production of the Shakespeare play at the National Theatre in 1997.

Joan Plowright
Even without her damehood, Dame Joan was part of theatrical nobility as the third wife of Laurence Olivier. Indeed she can choose to be addressed as Dame Joan or Lady Olivier. Her career goes back to the "Angry Young Man" years at the Royal Court in the 1950s and it was in John Osborne's The Entertainer that she met and fell in love with Olivier. Family commitments and an ailing husband may have limited her opportunities but after Olivier's death in 1989, she was discovered by Hollywood in The Enchanted April and she has worked steadily ever since.

Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben became something of an Aunt Sally when it was reported last year that he'd insisted on being addressed as Sir Ben on the set of his latest film. Few of his fellow theatre aristocrats have the same attitude. A member of the RSC in the 1970s, his fortunes were transformed when he was cast as Gandhi in Lord Attenborough's biopic for which he won the Best Actor Oscar in 1983. He has an arresting screen presence—as a London hood in Sexy Beast he was a miracle of maniacal menace—and he shows an eclectic taste in film projects.

Maggie Smith
Famously acerbic, Dame Maggie began her career in revue and developed into a major classical actress as a member of Olivier's company at the Old Vic during the 1960s, a decade that ended with oscar-winning performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She now makes occasional stage appearances, most recently in The Lady From Dubuque at London's Haymarket Theatre, and brings a sharp-tongued distinction to films such as Gosford Park and Becoming Jane. She is also integral to the Harry Potter franchise as Professor McGonagall; a latter-day Jean Brodie, perhaps.

Michael Caine
Now in his mid-70s, Sir Michael retains his place as the epitome of cool. It's as if his playing of such iconic 1960s figures as Alfie and Harry Palmer has insulated him against the many unworthy films he has made for sound financial reasons. A winner of the Best Supporting Oscar for The Cider House Rules, Caine seems busier than ever and he is a welcome sight, whether on a cast-list or as a guest on a television chat-show.

Tomorrow's stars today

The random nature of the film industry means that stardom might be one audition away. The fresh-faced drama school graduate holding a spear at Stratford or tucking into Betty's hot-pot in Coronation Street's Rover's Return could be tomorrow's National Theatre Hamlet, or the new James Bond.

Of the under 40s with solid stage credits who have encroached on television, Eve Best is one of the likeliest to inherit the mantle of Ashcroft or Dench. She made a sensational debut with Jude Law in Tis Pity She's A Whore and has gone on to give a powerful Hedda Gabler at the Almeida and made an equal impression opposite Helen Mirren in O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra at the National. Best is currently starring with Kevin Spacey on Broadway in another O'Neill epic, A Moon For The Misbegotten.

Like Eve Best, Anna Maxwell Martin is not a conventional beauty, but she has come far, quickly. She followed prominent roles at the National with an immaculate portrayal of the virtuous Esther in the BBC dramatisation of Bleak House and she has just finished playing Sally Bowles in the West End revival of Cabaret. Several films are also in the offing.

Alan Bennett's The History Boys is certain to be seen in future years as a nursery for male talent. The charismatic Dominic Cooper as classroom tease Dakin, and Samuel Barnett as the unhappy, gay Posner registered strongly and both are now embarked on major television projects. Watch out, too, for Owain Arthur who was in the play's West End production.

Ben Whishaw, intense, dark-eyed, passionate, was a sensational, grungy Hamlet at the Old Vic a few years ago and has been snapped up by the film industry. He played the lead in the patchily received screen version of Perfume and is limbering up for the film version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Whishaw was a recent Konstantin in a National production of Chekhov's The Seagull and in the same role in the current RSC revival is Richard Goulding, apparently one of the brightest talents of his year at the Guildhall. A fellow Guildhall graduate tipped for the top is Susannah Fielding who has attracted attention as Zoe Wanamaker's daughter in the National's The Rose Tattoo. And mention should be made of Rory Kinnear, son of the late comedy actor Roy Kinnear, who is receiving acclaim for roles at the National.