Ian McDiarmid on Star Wars, working with George Lucas and his passion for theatre

It’s 16 years since Ian McDiarmid last set foot on the stage at the Crucible Theatre, when he played the title role in Edward Bond’s play, Lear.
Ian McDiarmid is in Sheffield this month with his adaptation of The Lemon Table. (Picture: Johan Persson).Ian McDiarmid is in Sheffield this month with his adaptation of The Lemon Table. (Picture: Johan Persson).
Ian McDiarmid is in Sheffield this month with his adaptation of The Lemon Table. (Picture: Johan Persson).

The theatre’s artistic director at the time was Michael Grandage, who is back at his old stomping ground to direct McDiarmid in Julian Barnes’s The Lemon Table, which the pair have collaborated on to bring to the stage for the first time.

In the one man performance McDiarmid dovetails two connected stories that offer sometimes witty reflections on mortality, ageing and the notion of silence. “The first story has a concert goer who can’t bear the fact that mobile phones go off and gets very worked up about it, and he eventually does something about it. And silence in the second one is about Sibelius’s last year where he’s struggling with composer’s block to write his 8th symphony which everyone’s been clamouring for. So that’s a different kind of silence.”

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The Olivier and Tony-award winning actor is relishing returning to the stage. “That’s my great passion,” he says, “it’s the live audience, it’s the flesh and blood, with a different audience each night where anything can happen. It will be great to get back to that.”

McDiarmid in Sheffield Theatre's production of Lear by Edward Bond at the Crucible Theatre in 2005. (YPN).McDiarmid in Sheffield Theatre's production of Lear by Edward Bond at the Crucible Theatre in 2005. (YPN).
McDiarmid in Sheffield Theatre's production of Lear by Edward Bond at the Crucible Theatre in 2005. (YPN).

McDiarmid’s career stretches back 50 years and includes long stints in the Royal Shakespeare Company and more than a decade as Joint Artistic Director at the Almeida Theatre in London, while his film credits include Sleepy Hollow, Restoration and, of course, the Star Wars franchise.

He was born in Carnoustie and grew up in Dundee, and says acting piqued his interest from an early age. “I remember at school the choir was doing Waltzing Matilda and there’s only one part in that, the tramp, and when we were asked to put our hands up if we were interested I found my hand shot up and that’s very unlike me. A few other hands went up and I arrogantly thought I could do this a bit better, and I got the part.

“At the same time my uncle took me to see the Scottish Variety Show which featured a great Scottish comic called Tommy Morgan. I was only about six and again I was excited by that and I got to meet him afterwards and seeing him backstage with all his make-up was a bit scary, but a good scary, and it fascinated me and that’s where I got the bug.”

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Even so, he didn’t become an actor straight away. He “scraped” a degree in social sciences before taking the plunge and going to drama school, training at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. “I always felt within me that this is what I want to do. I don’t know why I felt that way, it just seemed to be part of me.”

McDiarmid in rehearsals for The Lemon Table. (Photo by Marc Brenner).McDiarmid in rehearsals for The Lemon Table. (Photo by Marc Brenner).
McDiarmid in rehearsals for The Lemon Table. (Photo by Marc Brenner).

He honed his acting skills on stage at places like Liverpool Playhouse and Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre. But it was being cast as the villainous emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi that changed the trajectory of his career overnight. “It was luck, to be frank,” he says, on getting the role.

“My agent got a call one day saying they, George Lucas and Richard Marquand who directed Return of the Jedi, wanted to see me. So a car arrived and I met them during their lunch hour because they were already shooting. We had a very brief chat about nothing much, we didn’t talk about the film. It was a very pleasant meeting and I thought ‘it was nice to meet them’. But the phone was ringing when I got back home and my agent said ‘you’ve got the part.’ And I said, ‘well, what’s the part?’ and he said ‘oh, he’s called the Emperor of the Universe.’ And I said, ‘oh well, we’ll be doing it then,’” he says.

“Mary Selway who was the casting director, a wonderful woman who I knew well, had seen me playing the ageing, decaying Howard Hughes in a play by Sam Shephard. I have no proof of this but I guess she said to George ‘I know this actor, he’s in his late 30s and he plays a convincing older character’ and I think that’s what got me the part.”

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Alec Guinness, who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original films, reportedly didn’t enjoy making the films, but McDiarmid embraced his role. “I absolutely loved it, I was thrilled. I got to create this character, recreate him and recreate him again if that isn’t tautology,” he says.

“I didn’t know what he looked like until the make-up arrived. I thought he might have fancy clothes like a Chinese emperor, but not a bit of it, he just had this black gown. Initially I was a bit disappointed but later on I realised it was a brilliant thing to do because he just disappears into his own dark self.”

He was also allowed to develop the character himself. “He looked like a slimy toad so I thought I’d try and speak like a slimy toad. I had to go back and revoice most of the part and in the room was Steven Spielberg, as well as George Lucas. I don’t know whether he’d brought him along to see if he thought the voice was good enough but I remember Steven saying ‘oh my God, you’re so evil’ and I thought ‘this seems to be going well.’ So I continued being evil.

"And I was very pleased to be in the last film which means I was evil in all of the nine episodes, even the ones I didn’t appear in. So every bad act I’m responsible for and I get a weird kind of sense of pleasure out of that.”

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McDiarmid enjoyed working with Lucas, who created Star Wars. “I like George very much. I get on with him very well. He’s serious but not in any intimidating way. He’s a great figure and a very generous person, though he’s quiet about his generosity which is another attractive quality about him.”

He is similarly effusive about JJ Abrams, who co-wrote and directed two of the films in the final trilogy. “When we first met in secret in London he told me the plot outline. In fact he practically performed the whole film. He was so enthusiastic, it just poured out of him. So that was a joy.”

Some fans questioned the return of Palpatine, who had seemingly met a sticky end in Return of the Jedi. “People said, ‘he’s dead, why’s he coming back?’ and I said that to JJ and he said, ‘no, he’s the emperor, he always had a plan’. Like Walt Disney, he wanted to live forever.”

But while the silver screen made him famous, it’s the theatre that he finds most enticing. “It sounds strange but it’s like communicating with people in the dark and there’s something about that. Laurence Olivier said ‘theatre is primarily an affair of the heart’ and I think that’s true.”

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Which brings him back to The Lemon Table. “Hopefully people will be entertained. Julian’s skill is to engage with people and the main characters haven’t come on stage to confess, that’s what’s interesting about them, they’ve come to assert. ‘I want you to listen to me because this is how I feel, and maybe you’ll be able to recognise some of those feelings too.’ And that sums up why I like being on stage.”

The Lemon Table, the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, Oct 26-30. Box Office: 0114 249 6000. www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk