John Wilson

All the nourishment I was getting as a young adult was all coming from France.

In the 1980s and 90s, it was a wonderful period for French theatre.

You had people like Patrice Chéreau.

You had Luc Bondy, who's in fact Swiss.

You had this great conversation going between...

the German theatre, the French theatre, the Italians a little bit.

I would come back to England and I'd go to the theatre and everything would be so beautiful and completely precise and for an audience.

And you go to France and as an audience member, you better keep up.

You're being asked for a lot more.

And you found that exciting?

I found that really thrilling.

And stimulating as an actor as well because it offers you a different kind of...

Yeah, I mean, I didn't work that much in the theatre in France before.

I mean, Prince basically put a stop to that.

But then when I really went back to the theatre, when I was 40, the first thing I did was Berenice, which is a Racine play in Alexandrin.

I absolutely loved it.

I probably murdered it.

It was probably disastrous, but it was an extraordinary thing to do.

And it opened, of course, it opened the door for the theatre here.

So I was able to come back to England.