With more than 100 roles to his name it may come as no surprise that Timothy Spall no longer feels the need to audition.
The British actor, 66, said he has been around ‘long enough’ for casting directors to know whether or not he is a suitable fit for a character.
Spall has featured in the Harry Potter franchise as Peter Pettigrew, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Damned United and Mr Turner, for which he won multiple awards.
His TV career, which kicked off in 1983 with Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, has been equally as prolific with roles in Summer of Rockets, Hatton Garden and Blandlings.
More recently he was set to play the detective Atticus Pund in Magpie Murders but it fell through owing to a ‘personal matter’.
Star: With more than 100 roles to his name it may come as no surprise that Timothy Spall no longer feels the need to audition
Upcoming: Spall’s latest TV role sees him taking on Peter Farquhar in BBC series The Sixth Commandment (pictured)
He told Radio Times: ‘On the whole, you’re a hostage to fortune as an actor, unless you develop things yourself, which I do a little.
‘Luckily, I don’t have to self-tape: set up lights and do a bit of acting to get a role. I’m not going to do it. It might be arrogant of me, but I think I’ve been around long enough.’
Spall’s latest TV role sees him taking on Peter Farquhar in BBC series The Sixth Commandment.
Mr Farquhar, a retired teacher and novelist, was murdered by his former pupil Ben Field in his home in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, in 2015.
Field duped Mr Farquhar into a relationship and had been drugging him in order to inherit his fortune after getting him to change his will.
He was also accused of plotting to kill Mr Farquhar’s neighbour, 83-year-old Ann Moore-Martin, with whom he also seduced into a relationship.
Field was jailed for a minimum of 36 years in 2019.
Spall, who studied Mr Farquhar’s diaries on landing the role, said he hopes the series will help to help those suffering from loneliness.
Confident: The British actor, 66, said he has been around ‘long enough’ for casting directors to know whether or not he is a suitable fit for a character
Actor: Spall has featured in the Harry Potter franchise as Peter Pettigrew, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Damned United and Mr Turner (pictured), for which he won multiple awards
Talent: His TV career, which kicked off in 1983 with Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, has been equally as prolific with roles in Summer of Rockets, Hatton Garden (pictured) and Blandlings
‘By the very nature of crime, often the perpetrator becomes the celebrity,’ he said. ‘We rarely see the victims…
‘What’s so tragic is the optimism and hope that was instilled in these elderly people. It’s so much about loneliness and love, and dreams being fulfilled that are actually too good to be true.
‘There’s much talk these days of a loneliness epidemic, particularly among older people…
‘The spotlight has come upon it, perhaps because of Covid, but there has always been horrendous loneliness. We all have moments, but some people are wretchedly stuck in it.
‘There’s less stigma about it now, and one only hopes that, in the process of talking about it, something can be done.’
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk