David Oyelowo

I did a show with Alan Bates.

I worked with actors who were awe-inspiring when you were on stage with them.

They had mastered the craft.

And what I mean by that is...

is when you get on the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage in front of, I think that stage is about 100, well, 1,500 people or on the Olivier, which I think is maybe 1,200 people.

When you see someone be nervous in the wings, someone who you watched in the rehearsal room

Playing with language like Shakespeare, that is four to five times our vocabulary and finding their way to the truth of it, finding their way to the meaning of it and finding different interpretation time and time again, and then watching them nervous in the wings before they go on and become supernatural on that stage.

When you're around that enough, it gets intense.

And then when you're with them after the fact, and they're talking about when they were on stage with Gielgud or Olivier, because there is something, and this is more in the British tradition, it is lauded, it is something that is celebrated, and it is a tradition that is very much outside of financial remuneration.

The gift is the doing of it.

And I think that in and of itself,

creates this aura of camaraderie and being part of a tradition that has been ongoing.

And so there is something, and I sound so pretentious saying this, but there is something celestial about... I remember being...

21, 22, being in a rehearsal room with a guy who had been on stage with Olivier and just going, okay, just soak it all in.

And what I mean is it gets on you.

And what then happens is as you climb the ranks of being a spare carrier, playing Decretas like I did in Anthony and Cleopatra with my seven lines.

And then within about three years, I was playing Henry VI.

Right.

In that same theater.

Speeches that you will never conquer.