Peter O’Toole

Much as I love acting, it’s rare that I feel proud to belong to the acting profession, because it’s so often such a strange and brutal industry. But occasionally you watch or read something that makes you aware of the wonderous nature of this business. I’ve just experienced that sensation watching a beautiful documentary about Peter O’Toole, called Along the Sky Road to Aqaba, which you can watch on NOW. So often these programmes seem to be hosted by film critics, but this one is joyously populated by the actors who lived with, worked with and watched O’Toole: Sian Phillips, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Stephen Fry, Brian Cox and many more. And at the end I had a surge of exhilaration – not just because I once had the unbelievable good fortune of being able to sit down for a couple of hours to chat with the man – but because of the thrill that I was still in the same business, with the same glistening hope of stumbling towards what he so gloriously exemplifies.