DAVID SUCHET – POIROT
David Suchet is renowned for his uncanny ability to lose himself in the roles he plays.
If you didn’t know better, you might believe that he’s French, what with his accent in Poirot and his continental surname – but you’d be wrong! He’s not even Belgian, as he so often insists when playing Poirot, but a thoroughly English gentleman who’s not only a fine actor but also a devout believer.
“Once you have stood up publicly and said, ‘I turn to Christ’, by the very utterance of those words you are confessing your faith – and that is quite something,” he says. “I had been through 21 years of real struggle to come to this place, and now I have a faith that is the most important thing in my life. It governs how I behave, how I think, and makes me who I am.
“I’m a Christian by faith. I like to think it sees me through a great deal of my life. I very much believe in the principles of Christianity, that one has to abandon oneself to a higher good. I think to accept the now and to live in the present is the most important thing for all of us to learn to do, to be able to live in the present and not let the quality of the present be coloured by the fear or anxiety of the future or the pain of the past.”
While faith can be a pretty private thing, it’s refreshing to see someone so firmly in the public eye standing up for his beliefs. When you ask David Suchet about his faith, he’s unequivocal and unashamed, which makes him the perfect figure to speak up about the increasingly perilous state of the Church in Britain. “I do feel that Christianity is being marginalised by other religions in Britain,” he explains.
“I won’t tell you the name of it, but a charity I work for got turned down for government funding recently because it was a Christian charity, even though it had been funded by the government for several years.
“Don’t misunderstand me. We should embrace all religions and marginalise none. But we seem more concerned with marginalising Christianity, and not offending other faiths. We are in danger of losing the importance of the Christian faith in our own country.”
The importance of faith is not something David, 66, himself looks set to lose any time soon though. In fact, it’s something he’s helped promote by taking part in The Monastery – a TV series in which celebrities spent time in a monastery and recorded their responses to the silence and solitude.
For David, it was no surprise that the idea proved popular. “There’s a huge hunger for spiritual peace. I think there are times when all of us need to have silence and solitude. It’s good to find one’s own space for a little while.
“I have always believed that we go to the gym to exercise our bodies, we read and do crosswords to exercise our minds, but we do very little in this cynical, secular age to exercise our souls. On retreat, I was able to be alone to reflect and pray. Not to have to talk and feel on show was very important to me.”
For someone whose faith obviously forms such a key part of their life, it’s interesting to hear how it all started. “Having been through a conversion experience at the age of 40, my only experience of any form of faith prior to that was at school, and I always considered that religion was for examination!
“I was lying in a bath in my hotel, thinking about my grandfather. And I remember thinking, ‘Isn’t it interesting that I feel my grandfather is with me and yet I don’t believe in an after-life?’
“So I went straight out and bought a Bible and read St Paul’s letter to the Romans. The Bible, I’ve always said, sadly, is the biggest selling yet most under-appreciated – and possibly one of the least read books cover to cover. St Paul describes how to be a Christian, and it slotted right into what I had been searching for: something beyond, something quite mystical, but also a way of being that I could relate to.
“By the end of that letter, I had seen and read about a way of life to which I wanted to aspire. I thought, This is what I have been looking for all my life’. But I then had to study Christianity because I couldn’t just accept it on face value. I have never had blind faith in anything.
“The journey of faith is not an easy one, and my wife and I did go through difficult times because of it. But as long as you are not fanatical about it, and if your faith can make you loving and kind, then it’s a bonus to a marriage and family life.”
Faith might have required research for the meticulous actor, but research is something he’s well accustomed to! “I think my worst quality is perfectionism. I’m not satisfied with anything less, which means I’m never satisfied,” he says. “It makes me difficult to live with. I’ve never, ever suffered fools gladly. I can be very, very tough professionally as well. If people are being sloppy, I’m not very nice to be around. I will demand that standards are kept, and I am a bit of a taskmaster.
“I think some people would find me very difficult to work with, but I’m only ever like that if I feel that people are not prepared, or not ready to work in the right way. Before I accept a role, I always meet the director and want to know who the others in the cast are. It’s important.”
This penchant for perfection has taken its toll on David in the past as he’s delved deep into the characters he’s played – so deep that he forgot himself. “You do very much open the doors to the dark side of your life, and I was aware of my fault in letting characters overtake me and not quite knowing how to deal with it,” he remembers.
“My friend came backstage and said, ‘You really, really can’t do this and survive’.
I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. So he said, Tell me your address, your telephone number, your children’s ages and where they go to school’. I couldn’t. He told me how to de-programme my mind and remind myself who I was before I left the theatre. I still follow that technique, and it has transformed me.”
But it’s not just acting that gets David’s full attention. His marriage to Sheila a shining example of enduring commitment – is another area of his life marked by great effort. “I love being married and I think marriage is a wonderful institution. I have always said, ‘Happy wife, happy life’. And although we have had long periods apart because of my work, I have tried to make Sheila happy by cherishing her and laughing with her.
“But marriage won’t work by itself. You have to work at it. It’s not about candlelit dinners every week, but about having struggles, coming through them the other side and believing in what you first believed in when you met.”
Barnabas Ministries UK 