Is Roache ready to be famous?

By: Madeleine North

Linus Roache ran shy of stardom after "Priest". Now he's back in the 
limelight opposite Ralph Fiennes.

4 June 2000

Several critics disliked Linus Roache's interpretation of Bolingbroke in
the Almeida's production of Richard II. "Lightweight" was the pejorative
term of choice in describing his performance. So it was interesting
to hear the actor in question admit to an initial error of judgement in
his approach to the role.
"I didn't realise till quite late on that actually I see the play through 
Richard's eyes," says Roache, perched on a stool in the vastly empty bar
area of the Gainsborough Studios in Shoreditch. Last time he did the play,
he took Ralph Fiennes's part of Richard, and some time during the show's
previews it dawned to Roache that he was infected by the royal role.
"I wasn't taking the crown properly," he recalls, referring to the scene
in which Richard bitterly relinguishes his title. "I wasn't doing my job
properly." That he turned things around is evident in the more complimentary
reviews which talk of his chilling, calculating usuper. Now he is to
play the malevolent Aufidius to Fienne's hubristic Coriolanus in the
second offering from Jonathan Kent and company.

They had just broken from rehearsal when we meet: the lines are so fresh
in Roache's mind that at one point he slips quite naturally into a recital
of a favourite speech. Though he is a well-respected actor of both stage 
and screen, Roache's status palls in comparison with the stellar Fiennes,
whom probably 99 per cent of the audience each night have come to see.
But if Roache is having to play second fiddle to his more famous
colleague, it doesn't show. He is fulsome in his praise of Fiennes.
"He is an extraordinary actor," Roache offers, without prompting. "I 
genuinely really admire the guy. It's a bit like, I imagine, how it must
have been working with the young Olivier -that kind of tenacity and focus
and intensity and commitment." 
They are exact contemporaries -Roache would have been in the same year
as Ralph Fiennes at Rada had he not decided to plump for Central- and go
back to their early days at the Royal Shakespeare Company. We're friends,"
Roache explains, "but it's more like... it's a great working relationship.
We don't socialise a lot. But there's a lot of mutual respect and 
admiration." So he doesn't find working with his latter-day Olivier
intimidating? "Oh no!" he laughs. "I can't be bothered with all that.
No, no. I just want to keep up."

Roache first came to people's attention in 1994, playing a homosexual
Catholic clergyman in Antonia Bird's film "Priest". He was lauded for
his performance and swiftly became the British Actor to Watch. His
responce to impending stardom has been well documented - he pressed the
pause button and retreated to India for two years - and it seems to have
worked in his favour. He quietly slipped to another critically acclaimed
performance in 1997, taking the lead opposite Helena Bonham-Carter in
Iain Softley's adaption of Henry James's "The Wings of The Dove". But
he wasn't ready, Roache says of that "Priest" period, to be in demand, 
to dive into the all-consuming melee that is fame. "I just wanted to
stop the wheel," he explains matter-of-factly. It was a personal
decision but, in retrospect, it did his career no harm. "Well, it's a lot 
of kudos... 'Mysterious actor disappears for one year'," he shrewdly points
out. "Exposure can kill you."

In the case of his father, William Roache, who plays 'Coronation Street's'
Ken Barlow, exposure certainly took its toll. Ridiculed in a tabloid
article for being boring, Roache senior sued the paper for libel, won,
but wound up bankrupt and something of a laughing stock. It was, Roache
winces, a terrible time for his dad. "I kind of think it would've been
better to put fish and chips in the paper", he comments, while recognising
that his father had "just had enough" of casual character assassinations.
Linus Roache, too, has had his fair share of unfavorable press, targeted
mostly at the spiritual organisation to which he is affiliated. Face,
or Friends of Andrew Cohen Everywhere (Cohen being the "all-human" guru,
who, I am led to believe, teaches spiritual enlightenment through
self-enquiry) is now, Roache corrects me, the International Fellowship
for the Realisation of Impersonal Enlightenment. The title change is
presumably a reaction to tabloid scaremongering that Cohen is a
manipulating cult leader, but it sounds no less pompous and I indicate
as much to Roache. He is neither ruffled by my cynicism nor preachy
in response. Like a man who has had an extraterrestrial experience,
and knows that the more fervently he tells his tale, the less his
friends are going to believe him, he is careful to explain his
enthusiasm. "It's actually about taking responsibility and becoming
independent," he imparts. "I suddenly realised we all think we want
independence, but what does real independence really mean? It means
actually standing up. Being accounted for and taking a risk in life."

As a philosophy of life, it sounds fairly harmless, yet even the
'Independent' did a hatchet job on the organisation, he declares.
When I express surprise that he subsequently agreed to this
interview, Roache admits that he had thought of refusing any question
on the subject, but decided that "No, it's a big part of my life. It
means a lot to me." It has, quite evidently, changed his life. Without
a trace of irony, Roache tells me that Cohen should win the Nobel
Peace Prize, and he is working on a documentary about the man. Is he
planning to recruit people with it, I tease? "It's not about forcing
people," he laughs dismissively. "It's natural if you find something
that gives people confidence in life, you don't hold it to yourself.
That's not the point. It's about sharing it."

Whatever the nature of the organisation, it's clearly given Roache a
self-assuredness that was previously lacking. He won't be running
away from fame if it comes recruiting again. And it may well do. He has
three maverick new films in the can ('Pandaemonium', Julien Temple's
"bonkers" take on the Romantic poets, in which Roache plays Samuel
Taylor Coleridge; 'Siam Sunset', about "a bus ride across Australia to
hell"; and, more obscurely, 'The Venice Project', a semi-improvised
piece shot in 12 days with Dennis Hopper) and the Almeida stint,
Roache notes, has inevitably raised his profile. One thing's for sure:
he is steering well clear of theatrical projects once the Shakespeare
double bill is over. "I feel like I've done a lot of theatre," he
remarks, "and I'm not one of those actors who goes, 'I have to do
theatre, that's where my home is'." He is unsentimental about the
faith of the Gainsborough and the transient nature of the project.
"It's here a few months and then it's going to be a block of flats,"
he says. It is a statement of ephemerality that could apply just
as neatly to the actor himself.