Smash hit

“An optical illusion, eyes. The sun is amazingly powerful, the pupils shrink to tiny little pinpoints, like a cat. And if you’ve got dark all round them, you’ve got these terrible old things glaring at you. They look as if they’re doing deep and penetrating and mystical and strange thoughts, but, in fact, they’re thinking about maybe a touch of claret about sevenish and a piece of haddock.” I half-suspect him of choosing the rather garish sky-blue slacks he changes into after the photoshoot as a sort of visual pun on his famous peepers.

Unlike some actors, he seems quite happy to watch his old films. “I invited myself along to a showing of Lawrence of Arabia at the Imperial War Museum less than a year ago.” As for The Lion in Winter, he watches it “from time to time. I saw it a few years back, but the print was off, so I left”. He caught a bit of My Favorite Year on television a while back, “and it’s very good”. Does it not feel like having his life flash in front of him? “No, it doesn’t work like that at all,” he says. “You learn very early, or you learn never, if you’re an actor. You sit in front of that mirror at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, in 1958 and learn that that is the meat.” He pulls at his face. “You can’t be self-conscious about it. If you are, you’re dead. The rest is self-consciousness and nightmare. I’ve watched actors I know — who are not really actors, but they get away with it in the movies — and they spend their life not being able to bear their profile, poor sods. It’s the vain who get f***ed up. I’ve never thought about it.”

O’Toole is not an easy man to talk to, at least about himself and his work. He is not prone to self-analysis and is resistant to the idea that he and Maurice have much in common. “In what regard? We obviously do the same job.” A refusal to grow old? “I am old! I know my age, I know my limitations. He knew his age and his limitations. That’s one of the reasons we like him.” All right, then: the positive outlook, the sunny disposition? “No, that’s not me. I’m a ratty old bugger.” He is mistrustful of the idea that Venus could in any way be seen as a landmark in his career. “No, no,” he says. “It’s another good job. Last year, I played a blinder on television in Casanova. And I do movies. That’s not bad.” He has since gone back to cameos, playing the king in a film called Stardust, directed by Matthew Vaughn. But the extraordinary daring of Venus feels like the perfect book end to his golden-haired desert warrior, right down to Maurice’s quotation from Macbeth (“Is this a dagger...”).

His producer, Kevin Loader, draws me aside and says he’s “not sure if Peter understands that nowadays, winning an Oscar is like running for office”. I pass this on to O’Toole. “They always were!” he says. “Always. Don’t forget, the best thing if you want to know who’s going to win the Oscar is to ring the Las Vegas bookies, because there are 100 members of the Screen Actors Guild who back horses. It’s what I’ve done since 1962.” Did he ever put a bet on himself? “Only once, because I was favourite, and I thought I might do it. I’ve always been an outsider.”

Venus opens in January

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