‘I cry easily,’ says Jonathan Pryce, with a catch in his voice. ‘I warn you, if this interview goes the wrong way I could burst into tears.’ That’s a disconcerting thing to hear from one of our greatest living actors, who has played every kind of role from King Lear to a Bond villain, from The High Sparrow in Game Of Thrones to serenading Madonna as Peron in Evita.
‘I usually like to say it’s because I’m Welsh, that’s why I’m always on the edge of crying. I cry watching television – what’s that programme where they reunite people after 40 or 50 years? Hell of a big lump in my throat watching that.’
Jonathan Pryce has played every kind of role from King Lear to a Bond villain, from The High Sparrow in Game Of Thrones to serenading Madonna as Peron in Evita
And although Pryce is partly joking, his eyes will indeed mist as we begin to talk about his new play The Height Of The Storm, with Eileen Atkins, his stunning new film The Wife, with Glenn Close – which is already being talked up for an Oscar – and the raw emotion they both inspire as he remembers his long-lost father.
‘The first time I read the play, I didn’t understand it,’ he admits. ‘The second time I understood it a little more. And the third time, I cried at the end.’
What touched him so much about it? ‘It’s the unravelling of the life story of an elderly couple. We play the parents of two daughters clearing out a house who’ve had one or two secrets along the way.’
Pryce looks younger than his 71 years. He has been with Kate Fahy (an actor in The Sweeney, Silent Witness and many other TV shows, as well as Defiance with Daniel Craig) since the Seventies, but they married only three years ago. The couple have three children: Patrick, 35, an artist; Gabriel, 32, a chef; and Phoebe, 28, an actor who starred opposite her father in The Merchant Of Venice at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2016.
Jonathan Pryce with Madonna in Evita. Pryce has been with actor Kate Fahy since the Seventies, but they married only three years ago
The Wife also features a mature couple, one of whom is about to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, while the other (played by Glenn Close) is frustrated about having sacrificed her own writing career for her husband. Does that have any resonance with his own wife? ‘We’ve been through everything together,’ he says. ‘No money and money, no money and money.’
His partner in The Height Of The Storm, Eileen Atkins, is 84 and was with her husband Bill for more than 40 years before his death in 2016. ‘We’ve both had so many of life’s experiences,’ says Pryce. ‘Everything has happened to both of us, especially loss.’
Pryce becomes emotional as he reflects on a troubled relationship with his father, a former miner turned shopkeeper who didn’t understand his desire to be an actor. ‘He was the father whose son couldn’t do anything right. I was the son whose father couldn’t do anything right.’
Then, in 1976, his father came to see him on Broadway in Comedians, in which his character had a frank argument with a teacher who was also a father figure. ‘My father saw this and told my mother he wished he had been able to speak to me in the way the teacher did to the pupil. Then my father had a stroke, and was never able to speak again.’
He has brought that experience to The Height Of The Storm. ‘I remember trying to teach my father to speak and he couldn’t do it, but he would look at me with a sense of bemusement. There’d be a faint smile, like: “This is weird, you teaching me, isn’t it?” Because he never taught me anything. We never had time together as a kid, or did all that stuff you’re supposed to do with your father. He was always at work.’
Pryce with Glenn Close in new film The Wife. The film is about a mature couple, one of whom is about to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, while the other is frustrated about having sacrificed her own writing career for her husband
He sounds almost like a child as he says that, full of longing even now. Was he away all the time like his father had been? ‘No. I made a conscious effort never to be away for too long.’
His eyes mist again. ‘I get flashes of him and my mother. I sit in an armchair exactly the same way as he would: one arm behind his head and one hand tucked into the top of his trousers. I get great comfort from that.’
‘The Height Of The Storm’ is at the Theatre Royal Bath and London’s Wyndham’s until December 1, theheightofthestorm.com; ‘The Wife’ is in cinemas from September 28