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I
    wanted him to be real, as real as he was in
    the books, as real as I could possibly make
    him.
    The first thing I realised was that I was a
    slightly too young to play him. He was a
    retired police detective in his sixties when he
    first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at
    Styles, while I was in my early forties. Not
    only that, he was also described as a good
    deal fatter than I was. There was going to
    have to be some considerable padding, not
    to mention very careful make-up and
    costume, if I was going to convince the world
    that I was the great Hercule Poirot.
    Even more important, the more I read
    about him, the more convinced I became
    that he was a character that demanded to
    be taken seriously. He wasn’t a silly little
    man with a funny accent, any more than
    Sherlock Holmes was just a morphine addict
    with a taste for playing the violin. There was
    a depth and quality to the Poirot that Dame
    Agatha had created – and that was what I
    desperately wanted to bring to the screen.
    I took the role of Poirot because it
    precisely symbolised everything I believed
    about being an actor, which I hadn’t truly
    discovered until well after I’d started out in
    Chester, at the age of twenty-three, back in
    1969.
    In my first years in the profession, I
    struggled to find my identity, to understand
    why I was actually doing it. What was it that
    I wanted to be as an actor exactly? Was it
    just about dressing up and becoming
    someone else? Was I desperate to become
    some kind of star?
    I was confused. I’d achieved part of my
    dream – I’d become a professional actor –
    but what did that mean? What did I want?
    I was so uncertain that I looked up the
    dictionary definition of what an actor was. It
    defined it as a thespian, a theatre player –
    but that was really no help to me at all. It
    didn’t strike any kind of chord. If my only
    objective was to strut around the stage or
    the film studio pretending to be someone
    else, I didn’t feel comfortable.
    There was no real purpose in that for me;
    it just didn’t fit the man I knew I was: the
    serious, slightly reserved son of a South
    African-born gynaecologist and an English
    actress who was the daughter of a music-hall
    artist from Kent, and who’d gone on to
    become a dancer on the West End stage
    herself.
    Deep down I knew that I didn’t want to
    pretend to be someone else; I wanted to
    inhabit them, to bring them to life. The
    longer I thought about it, the more I realised
    that what I really wanted to do was to
    become different people, to transform myself
    into them. I wanted to be a character actor,
    not a star. That was what I enjoyed, that
    was what acting really meant to me.
    It was at that moment that I also realised
    that the playwright or screenwriter of any
    piece I appeared in depended on me as an
    actor to give his or her character a
    personality and voice. That was what excited
    me,
    because
    without
    character
    and
    personality, there can be no drama. I was
    convinced that my purpose as an actor was
    to become the writer’s voice.
    That
    understanding
    came
    like
    a
    thunderclap. I realised – suddenly – that it
    wasn’t about me. It was about the character
    I was lucky enough to play, and my job was
    to bring out the truth in the character – and
    what the writer wanted. Ultimately, that was
    what really lay behind my decision to play
    Poirot.
    That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to
    write this book. I wanted to try to explain
    what being a character actor means for me,
    and how it can sustain you even if you play a
    single part for more than a quarter of a
    century. I don’t think any actors have ever
    really attempted that before – not Basil
    Rathbone or Jeremy Brett, who both played
    Sherlock Holmes; nor John Thaw, who
    played Inspector Morse; nor Raymond Burr,
    who brought us both Perry Mason and
    Ironside; nor even Richard Chamberlain, who
    was Doctor Kildare for all those years.
    I wanted to try to explain what my