tue 26/11/2024

interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Paul Bettany

Since breaking onto the movie scene in 2001 with major roles in A Knight's Tale and A Beautiful Mind, London-born Paul Bettany (b 1971) has pretty much gone through the card. From a Darwinian ship's doctor (in Master and...

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The Jonathan Ross Show, ITV1

When Michael Parkinson voluntarily took his talk shows off-air, he stayed away for rather more than a decade. Eventually he returned from the wilderness to his natural home on Saturday night and was rightly greeted as the prodigal son of chat....

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Interview: Bombay Bicycle Club

If Bombay Bicycle Club had been born on America’s West Coast, their music would no doubt soon be all over the soundtrack of the next big teen drama. All the ingredients are there: the artiness, the phlegmatic cool, and the tunes that form a natural...

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Q&A Special: Magician Paul Kieve

'You are flying by the seat of your pants': Paul Kieve on stage illusion

Hollywood has turned the special effect into a birthright for a generation of movie-goers. “How did they do that?” is no longer a question you hear in the multiplex. In the theatre it’s another thing entirely. Whatever the reception for the show...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Director Emma Rice

Based in a collection of barns on a cliff top near Mevagissey on the south Cornish coast, Kneehigh theatre company has always looked defiantly away from London and out towards the sea and the wider world. This streak of independence runs right...

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What Was it Like...? Ballerina Tamara Rojo on Dancing to 12,000 People

Last weekend ballerina Tamara Rojo performed to the largest live audience ever to watch the Royal Ballet, at London's O2 Arena. But what was it like facing 12,000 people, and trying with her partner, the Cuban star Carlos Acosta, to tell the...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Neeme Järvi

Honour your senior master conductors: there aren't so many of them left now. Abbado and Haitink spring most readily to mind, but orchestral musicians may also nominate Neeme Järvi, who celebrated his 74th birthday last week. A passionate patriot and...

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Q&A Special: Actor Nigel Lindsay

His only previous visit to musical theatre was as Nathan Detroit in the Donmar’s West End production of Guys and Dolls. And now Lindsay sits in the sumptuous dressing room – it feels more like a small flat – at Drury Lane once occupied, he is proud...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Seasick Steve

Seasick Steve Wold (b 1941) has achieved widespread popularity over the last five years with his raw, rootsy, blues-flavoured sounds. He's also renowned for his customised guitars, such as one featured on his new album, You Can't Teach an Old...

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Interview: Film Director Ron Peck

The identity of British independent film, and its future directions, has always been a matter of some contention – and with the ongoing transfer of authority on funding issues from the now-defunct UK Film Council to the British Film Institute, it’s...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Nicholas Parsons

Nicholas Parsons in celebratory mode on 'The  Arthur Haynes Show': 'I was taking the role of the straight man to the comedian into a different direction'

Nicholas Parsons has been an actor – he is most adamant that he is first and foremost an actor – for almost 70 years, so it’s not surprising, given the erratic nature of his profession, that he has been obliged to assume a number of alternative...

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Stephen Fry: In Confidence, Sky Arts

When a celebrity lets their public mask slip, something wonderful and also disconcerting can happen: they can noticeably become someone else. If they’re lucky, that change can be so marked that they become just another face in a crowd. Of course, if...

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