How best to ensure that an actor doesn’t storm out of an interview, Rhys Ifans-style? Get them to interview themselves, as actor Sam Neill has done in the latest issue of Spectator Life.
As the interviewee, Neill, star of last night’s BBC2 crime drama Peaky Blinders, describes the tedium of having to answer identical questions for hours on end at promotional press junkets. “It’s difficult not to scream sometimes,” says Neill. “Or tell an enormous lie, just to see if anyone’s still awake: ‘Dickie Attenborough is an absolute bastard and is never less than roaring pissed’ — something like that.”
But he also acknowledges that the process can be just as soul-destroyingly dull for the people asking the questions. Luckily he thinks he may have found a solution. “Nowadays I take a bag of sweets to the table and award one to anyone who asks something I’ve never heard before. Amazing how well this works.”
