“Nobody loves a dirty joke more than Judi”: Richard Eyre on directing the greats

Spend some time with actors and it soon becomes apparent that many don’t always hold directors in as high esteem as might be imagined. Among the exceptions, referred to with great affection as an enabling force in memoirs and reminiscences by performers including Brian Cox, Ian McKellen and Eileen Atkins, is Richard Eyre. After a short time in his company, it’s not hard to see why. When we meet in advance of the upcoming Weapons of Understanding season of his screen work at BFI Southbank, Eyre is exceptionally personable, direct and open, sharing insights into his background, reflections on some of his past productions, and memories of his collaborators. 

Spanning theatre, TV, film, opera and journalism, Eyre’s wide-ranging work has been vital to British cultural life over the past 50 years. From working at Edinburgh’s Lyceum to running Nottingham Playhouse (1973 to 1978), Eyre went on to be a producer of Play for Today before being appointed as artistic director of the National Theatre (1987 to 1997). He presided over an extremely fertile period in the NT’s history – a decade recounted in his insightful published diaries National Service (2003) – while still continuing to work prolifically in film and TV, on projects such as the searing Falklands War drama Tumbledown (1988) and the hothouse Tennessee Williams adaptation Suddenly Last Summer (1993).

Since departing the NT, Eyre’s work has encompassed many more theatre productions, diverse films such as Iris (2001), Notes on a Scandal (2006), The Children Act (2017) and Allelujah (2022), TV films of King Lear (1998; 2018) and The Dresser (2015), as well as recent forays into writing poetry and plays. With new film and theatre projects (including a self-penned version of Strindberg’s Dance of Death) in the works for 2025, Eyre remains as creative and productive as ever. 

Alex Ramon: What were some of your formative experiences and inspirations in film, TV and theatre?

Richard Eyre: I was born in 1943 and grew up in Dorset, and I didn’t see a play in the theatre until I was 16. So it was television that was most important to me. I have a strong memory of seeing Vanessa Redgrave in As You Like It on TV in black and white. There was Play of the Month, which would be a classic, so I’d see things by Shaw and Wilde, and a season of Shakespeare’s Roman plays. That was my cultural education, and it came from TV rather than movies at that time.

Seeing Hamlet on stage with Peter O’Toole was an epiphany. But I had a lot of catching up to do. Luckily that coincided with a very rich time in British theatre in the early 60s. And in world cinema as well: those were the great years of Bergman’s films, the French New Wave, the Italians. So my cultural education was very intense over four or five years, after what had been quite a culturally deprived childhood.

How did your early ambitions to be an actor shift to an interest in directing?

I just wasn’t good enough as an actor to satisfy my own critical faculties. I was in a show at Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, and I persuaded some of my fellow actors to join a Sunday production of Ann Jellicoe’s The Knack that I directed. It was a success, and Clive Perry, the Phoenix’s director, said: “You need to make a choice: do you want to be an actor or a director? If you take my advice you’ll direct!” I did take his advice, and when he went to Edinburgh to run the Lyceum he took me on as his assistant. I directed about 20 shows there. I went on to run Nottingham Playhouse and then was asked to go to the BBC to produce Play for Today.

How was that transition? You’ve described theatre directing as a bad training for screen work.

Well, simply put, it’s bad training in the sense that with theatre you’re always presenting the thing from one perspective, yet the audience has a lot of choice in terms of exactly where they look. With film it’s the opposite. You have the facility to move the camera, to change the size of the shot. From the lens used to the editing, there’s a huge catalogue of devices and means of expression. There are very few comparisons with theatre except that you’re working with actors and storytelling.

Do you always insist on rehearsal time when working on film or TV?

Yes. Good actors are invariably intelligent, witty people. I like their company, and hearing what they’re going to say and how they’re going say it before we get near the set is important. Even if it’s just two or three days, sitting down and talking as we are now, it means that the actors are starting to make choices, rather than doing it all on the day.

How was it to make your debut in cinema with The Ploughman’s Lunch, with a very smart script by Ian McEwan that so sharply captures the early 1980s?

It was a Channel 4 venture with a tiny budget but very exciting to make. The turning point for the fate of the film was that it went to Cannes where it was championed by the critic Alexander Walker who saw it as a hugely important film about Britain.

The late sequence shot at the 1982 Conservative Party conference is pretty extraordinary. How did you get to film there?

Deceit! The production manager knew someone who was in the Tory Party press office and they got us passes and we had permission to film. We were among the Tory Party faithful and they assumed – why would they not? – that we were friends of the party. There’s a shot I love that pans off Michael Heseltine on to Jonathan Pryce who’s wandering around the floor of the conference. So it was pure guerrilla filmmaking. There’s no chance you’d get that kind of access today.

What are your memories of Play for Today? Do you see its legacy in contemporary TV drama at all?

Just occasionally, with something like Mr Bates vs the Post Office (2024), which really became part of the national conversation. But the brief for Play for Today was really extraordinary: to be contemporary and to be controversial. Tumbledown, which we made five years after the Falklands, continued that tradition. The knives were out for it, but because of the controversy the viewing figures were huge.

How was your collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis as Kafka on The Insurance Man, and then as Hamlet in the theatre?

Dan was a very close friend, and we had a great time doing The Insurance Man. We were staying at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, and I got into the lift with Dan… he wasn’t even in costume and make-up, but I definitely felt I was in the lift with Franz Kafka. I remember thinking that’s rather odd. But I didn’t quite put two and two together and think that when I asked if he would play Hamlet that Dan would identify with Hamlet so completely that there would be no distance between him and the character. And of course that didn’t end happily [Day-Lewis walked off stage during a performance and was unable to return to the production]. We rather lost touch, but he’s the most wonderful actor and a sweet man.

And with Maggie Smith on Suddenly Last Summer?

Maggie was an incredibly bright woman, incredibly well-read, incredibly skillful. She could be unpredictable: one day she’d greet you like a long-lost love and another day she might be quite frosty. She wasn’t very well when we did Suddenly Last Summer and the studio was so hot that a fire alarm went off. She wasn’t best pleased by the conditions which she compared to The Bridge on the River Kwai. If anything, the situation enhanced her actual performance, which is quite amazing.

You’ve worked with Judi Dench multiple times. Do you have a favourite collaboration?

I loved doing Notes on a Scandal with her, and she loved it as well: for once, not playing someone who’s a fount of goodness and generosity but a character who’s really mean-spirited. Her favourite scene was the one where she’s lying in the bath, naked, sweaty-faced and smoking. At the New York premiere I was accosted by Lauren Bacall, who shouted “Richard! How dare you humiliate Judi by making her do that scene?!” Lauren couldn’t quite conceive that a star would allow herself to look like that. But Judi loved it. It’s funny that she has this demure, cosy reputation. I mean, nobody loves a dirty joke more than Judi. On Iris, I remember her and Jim Broadbent telling each other stories on the set, cackling with laughter.

Which films in the BFI season do you particularly hope audiences will rediscover?

The Insurance Man would be one – it’s very idiosyncratic, not typical Alan Bennett territory, and it’s beautifully shot by Nat Crosby and marvellously well designed. And also Just a Boys’ Game, which I produced and John Mackenzie directed – a savage and, I find, very moving film about an accidental gang killing in Greenock.

What advice would you give to directors starting out today?

Don’t think you have to have all the answers. It’s about being open and asking the right questions to emancipate the imaginations of your collaborators.

In theatre Peter Brook told me: “You should never have a first night” – meaning that critics’ judgements can change your view of what you’ve done. If you manage to ignore that, then the work is always developing.

In film you’re working moment by moment, shot by shot. In Truffaut’s Day for Night [1973] the director lies in bed thinking: “Please let my film live.” And that’s exactly what you strive for: that each fragment of the film has life. Because ultimately each shot is like a cell in the body of the film.

The Richard Eyre season runs at BFI Southbank in December.