'Darling boy, call me Larry'

Dennis Quilley, who died last October, looks familiar, but currently I can't place him. However, this article has a very funny anecdote about his time with Olivier and Anthony Hopkins.

In 1972, I was treated to a display of another aspect of Larry's protean personality - his monumental anger. Anthony Hopkins was playing Macbeth, Diana Rigg was Lady Macbeth, and I was playing Banquo. Tony is a wonderful actor - but by his own admission he lacked the mental and emotional stamina needed every night in the theatre. On top of this was his freely admitted over-reliance on the booze to keep him going.

During early rehearsals his Macbeth seemed to be developing well, but at some point he lost it, and on the opening night he was not good. He knew he was not good, and most of the critics agreed with him. On the second night, he arrived in the wings, floating gaily on a bottle or so of vodka, and boomed loudly in that stirring Welsh baritone: "I wish I was a thousand bloody miles away from here, boyo!"

The stage manager's nightly report revealed that the performance lasted 25 minutes longer than usual. During that time, we were at the receiving end of a feast of quite incompatible ingredients: endless pauses; long passages of improvisation (some meaningful, some not); flashes of blazing brilliance and long stretches of the bored, colourless delivery of someone just going through the motions.

This went on for about a week. Then one Tuesday morning, Larry came up to the rehearsal room where we were working on The Cherry Orchard, and beckoned me across to him: "Darling boy, can you play Mackers on Friday?"

"No. Why - what's happened?"

"Tony's fucked off."

"Ah. I see. Well, I'm sure you've spoken to him, but would it help if I rang him and asked if he can hang on until I'm ready?"

He went purple. I thought he was going to have a stroke. Then the voice burst out with all the force of the entire brass section of the London Symphony Orchestra: "Don't go near the fucking phone! I never want to see the little bastard in this building EVER AGAIN!"