{"id":250,"date":"2026-05-19T21:07:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=250"},"modified":"2026-05-19T21:07:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:07:15","slug":"tom-courtenay-could-have-been-a-star-he-chose-to-be-an-actor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=250","title":{"rendered":"Tom Courtenay Could Have Been a Star. He Chose to Be an Actor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>\n\tSir Tom Courtenay is 89 years old and telling a story about the day Alec Guinness showed him the script for a peculiar science fiction film he wasn\u2019t quite sure about.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=248\">Pedro Almod\u00f3var\u2019s \u2018Bitter Christmas\u2019 Receives Warm Response at Cannes<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cHe seemed uncertain about it,\u201d Courtenay recalls. \u201cBut there was something he could smell in it.\u201d The film, of course, was <em>Star Wars<\/em>. It made Guinness fabulously wealthy.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThis is what a conversation with Tom Courtenay is like: an almost offhand tour through the entire span of postwar British cinema and theater, conducted by a man who was present for most of it. <\/p>\n<p><iframe allowfullscreen=\"true\" class=\"pmc-protected-embed\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" id=\"pmc-protected-embed-2\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=PMC9493138610\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe worked with David Lean on Dr. <em>Zhivago<\/em> \u2014 where he watched Lean hide behind a hotel pillar in Madrid to avoid having to speak to Rod Steiger. He stepped into the role of Billy Liar on stage after Albert Finney originated it, and was compared to Finney relentlessly; then, in 1983, he made a film with Finney that turned them from professional rivals into best friends. <\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe met Judi Dench at the Old Vic straight out of drama school. He bonded with Guinness on the set of <em>Zhivago<\/em> and stayed in touch for the rest of Guinness\u2019s life. Queen Elizabeth II told him, at his knighting in 2001, that Manchester audiences might be better than London ones.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe occasion for all of this is <em>The Dresser<\/em>, Peter Yates\u2019s 1983 film adaptation of Ronald Harwood\u2019s play, which brought Courtenay his only Oscar nomination and which is the subject of this week\u2019s <em>It Happened in Hollywood<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe film casts Courtenay as Norman, the devoted, slightly fey dresser to a declining Shakespearean actor (Finney) touring England during the Blitz. It remains one of the most purely pleasurable two-hander performances in British film history.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCourtenay had done the stage version before the film. He and Finney, who had orbited each other for two decades without becoming friends, discovered on set that the film\u2019s central dynamic \u2014 two roles written, as Courtenay puts it, \u201cto make people not friendly\u201d \u2014 had the opposite effect. <\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cWe became best friends working on it together,\u201d he says. Finney loved to tease him about his indifference to technical filmmaking. \u201cIf there\u2019s a black hole, he\u2019ll find it,\u201d Finney would say, affectionately, about Courtenay wandering into shadows.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe film\u2019s climax \u2014 a long, unbroken scene in which Norman falls apart after the actor\u2019s death, finally undone by years of devotion that went unthanked \u2014 was shot in a single take at director Peter Yates\u2019s insistence. <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=246\">\u2018Double Freedom\u2019 Review: Lisandro Alonso\u2019s Sequel to His Slow Cinema Debut Adds a Major Twist, but Stays True to its Roots<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cHe said, \u2018Now go away, lie down, don\u2019t think about it.\u2019 And then they lit it, and I came and did it,\u201d Courtenay recalls. The focus drifts slightly at one point. Yates kept it anyway.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tWhat makes Norman work, Courtenay says, is something quite simple: \u201cHe loves the actor more than he loves himself. That\u2019s the key to the part.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\n\tIt\u2019s a formulation he returns to when describing his character in his most recent film, <em>Queen at Sea<\/em> \u2014 directed by American filmmaker Lance Hammer and co-starring Juliette Binoche \u2014 which premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year and earned Courtenay an acting prize. <\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn that film, he plays a man fighting to keep his dementia-stricken wife at home against his stepdaughter\u2019s wishes. Two films, four decades apart, animated by the same principle: a love that asks nothing back and gives everything.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tCourtenay turned down most of Hollywood when it came calling in the 1960s. He was the face of British New Wave \u2014 the Jean-Paul Belmondo of British cinema \u2014 and could have parlayed that into something considerably more commercial. He passed.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cI felt the only way I\u2019d develop as an actor would be on the stage,\u201d he says. \u201cI probably overdid it. I overdid my turning things down.\u201d He waited out the production of <em>Dr. Zhivago<\/em> in a kind of genteel agony, watching Lean search for the right weather and grow his daffodils. He made do with the company: Omar Sharif, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tHe has no regrets about any of it, or if he does, he wears them too lightly to notice. At 89, he is still accepting parts he likes, still charming film crews who tease him about his football club, still winning prizes. <\/p>\n<p>\n<em>Queen at Sea<\/em> is expected in UK art houses this September, timed for awards season. He doesn\u2019t know yet about a US release.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cIf I didn\u2019t get on the stage while I was young,\u201d he says, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have learned how to act. It\u2019s one thing to have some talent. It\u2019s another to make the best of it.\u201d<br \/>\u00a0<br \/><em>It Happened in Hollywood\u00a0<\/em>is available on all major podcast platforms. <em>The Dresser<\/em> (1983) is currently available to rent on Apple TV.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=244\">Jill Kargman Is Still the Upper East Side\u2019s Most Unlikely Ambassador<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At 89, Tom Courtenay revisits 1983\u2019s &#8216;The Dresser&#8217; and the lifelong lessons of a career spent in the company of legends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[282,222,283],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-it-happened-in-hollywood","tag-podcasts","tag-thrs-original-podcasts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Tom Courtenay Could Have Been a Star. 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