L. A. Xavier

Harriet Walter: “Alan was never a nobody. Even when he was an unknown 32-year-old, when I first met him in the bar at the old Bush theatre, he seemed like somebody. “Oh, I’ve heard about you,” he drawled in that beautiful voice. His searchlight gaze had fallen on me and for that moment he made me feel like somebody. The first play I did with him was The Seagull at the Royal Court. I didn’t have to act Nina’s fascination with Trigorin. We also did a restoration comedy together. He was brilliantly funny both on and off stage. I don’t think he was easy to direct. He was too much of a director himself. You wanted to do your best for him. Praise from Alan, even then, counted far more than any critic’s review. I remember a phone call with him around that time, gossiping about any jobs we had been offered. I had plumped gratefully for the first thing that came my way, while Alan recited a list of roles he had turned down. He was paring down his choices with what I soon learned was an acute sense of where he was heading and where he was supposed to be. If this sounds offensive, it wasn’t. He was a rocket that was perfectly prepared but hadn’t yet been launched. When the part of Obadiah Slope in Barchester Chronicles came his way he recognised his moment and he pounced. Then there was Les Liaisons Dangereuses and then there was Die Hard playing Bruce Willis’s nemesis. Wow! My old mate Alan had become a film star – a fully fledged Somebody – and he took to that status as the proverbial duck to water. His generosity and kindness were legendary as was his brilliant sense of humour – a unique combination of wry sophistication and silliness that is evident in many of his film roles. When I worked with him again in Sense and Sensibility, although our characters didn’t meet we spent plenty of social time on location. Alan took care of me, made sure I dined with him and the top cast at the top tier hotel restaurant and paid for the cab back to my not quite top tier hotel some 10 miles away. He threw a birthday party for me in the year my partner died from cancer. He knew it would be a hard one for me. Alan elevated friendship to an art form. His friends grew in number throughout his extraordinary career but he never dropped his old pals in favour of more starry ones. He was unusually loyal. I marvelled at how he managed to see nearly all of our performances and wine and dine us afterwards. Stardom didn’t change him because he had always been a star, albeit a very well-grounded one. So much has happened in the world in the 10 years since he died. I miss his piercing intelligence now more than ever. It is terribly sad for all of us that he has gone but I am almost happy for him that he left when he did.” (‘The Guardian’, 14 January 2026)