Simon Callow
The British actor, author and director, Simon Callow CBE,
studied at Queen’s University, Belfast, and then trained as an
actor in London. He joined the National Theatre in 1979, where he
created the role of Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s ‘Amadeus’. While
still at the NT, he gave a one-man performance of all of
Shakespeare’s sonnets – a show with which he has subsequently
toured internationally. As well as numerous theatrical roles, he
has appeared in many films and TV dramas, including ‘A Room with a
View’, ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and ‘Dr
Who’. He directed the film of ‘The Ballad of the Sad Café’, among
others. His many one-man shows include his famous ‘The Mystery of
Charles Dickens’ which had its world premiere at Campbell College,
Belfast. He has also written several acclaimed biographies.
Belfast was a shock in
many ways to someone who arrived from London in 1968 – the London
of shops like Mary Quant, I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet, and Biba -
that was briefly the capital of style and sex.
Belfast, on first encounter, was grey, net-curtained,
uptight, with it seemed, a church on every block. Setting foot in
it was like stepping out of a time machine into a Britain
of half a century earlier.
My destination was
Queen’s University, and that is where I spent most of my time,
acting, drinking, making firm friendships, occasionally even
attending lectures. Slowly, I began to venture outside of the
campus and into the mirrored pubs where a different
Belfast was evident – witty, convivial, sometimes rough but
warm-hearted and full of ripe characters. Then I got to know the
city centre – not beautiful, but not without nobility either, of a
formal civic kind – the great markets, then the winding Lagan and
the still busy and majestic docks.
Then, after nine
months, I was gone – ran away to become an actor. I came back as
soon as I could, at the height of the bombing, and again and again
over the years, and watched its face change almost out of
recognition until it finally stepped out of the shadow of both
Dublin and London and became a great European city in its own
right, almost a beauty. But if its face has changed, its identity
hasn’t – it’s still witty, captious, cussed, tenacious and defiant,
which is of course why one still keeps coming back.