NAME :
Tom Read Wilson.
OCCUPATION :
I’m an actor, a presenter, and writer.
WHERE ARE YOU FROM :
I’m originally from Pangbourne in Rural Berkshire, It’s the town where The Wind in the Willows is set.
WHO OR WHAT INSPIRES YOU:
Oh gosh, the arts endlessly inspire me. I always think that the arts are the sort of crystallisation of humanity at its best, that the audience in the theatre are sending out a wonderful kind of laser beam energy from their wishbones and the actors are doing the same and, in the middle, art is created and it’s true in galleries and it’s true at the ballet and the opera and especially seeing a play. Those interpretive powers are part of it, and the art wouldn’t exist without them. I think that’s when you see how beautiful humanity is.
WHERE WERE YOU TEN YEARS AGO:
Where was I 10 years ago? What would I have been then? Twenty-seven. I was a struggling thespian still in this wonderful city in Stockwell in South London, having a ball. But as my dad would say, living off the smell of an oily rag.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE IN 10 YEARS TIME:
Oh gosh, that’s a good question. You know, I think I’ve learned from the last 10 years, funnily enough, that planning sort of gets you nowhere in the arts, specifically because it doesn’t have the same trajectory as other professions like law or medicine. You know, you don’t climb a prescribed ladder.
WHAT’S YOUR GREATEST LOVE:
Oh, I think my sproglets when all is said and done. I’ve got three heavenly, heavenly nephews who are eight, three, and one, three divine godchildren who have cleft my heart in twain, but they’ve just immigrated to Canada, and then one little baby godson who’s still in London, and so I’m very, very spoiled to have them. They are near Toronto in a suburb called Oakfield, which I gather is very pretty and very easy to get to the city. And I’m thrilled it’s adjacent to that city because again, it’s so rich in the arts and so many things that are out of town in preparation for Broadway are there because it’s only an hour by plane.
YOUR GREATEST FEAR :
Cynicism. It’s curiously addictive being cynical, and it’s often mistaken for intelligence. You know, it’s harder to be a cock-eyed optimist. It’s one of my favourite lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. [Sings] When the sky is a bright canary yellow, I forget every cloud I’ve ever seen. So, they call me a cockeyed optimist, immature, and incurably green.
IF YOU COULD SPEND THE DAY WITH ANY AUTHOR ALIVE OR DEAD, WHO WOULD IT BE:
Oh gosh. I’d love to pick George Bernard Shaw’s brains because he seems such a progressive, you know, Mother Courage and Pygmalion. I think that he was incredibly liberal, incredibly modern. Writers like Oscar Hammerstein used to fantasise about adapting his work for musicals because it was so lyrical and so musical I’d love a day with him.
YOU ARE HEADING TO THE ISS (SPACE STATION) CHOOSE 3 CELEBRITIES TO ACCOMPANY YOU :
I think I’d have to have Legends of Broadway. I take Judi Dench because she’s so much fun and such a darling and so naughty and so twinkly. I’d take Julie Andrews because then I’d have all the tales of Broadway about her meeting Maria Callas and backstage at My Fair Lady, and oh, that would be heavenly. And then, so we’ve got a great Shakespearean, a great Broadway diva. I need something else, a juxtaposition. Oh, they’re all dead, all my favourite people. Oh, can I take Ella Fitzgerald? I have one resurrect.
WHO WOULD PLAY YOU IN A MOVIE :
I don’t know. It would have to be somebody androgynous, probably somebody English. I don’t know. People will have to suggest.
YOUR FAVOURITE DESTINATION :
Oh, that’s very hard. I have just come back from Paris because I was there for the very rump of the Olympics and I saw breaking and I saw cycling at the velodrome, which was fabulous. And I always leave a little tranche of my heart in Paris when I go there. I used to nanny a little French boy called Gabrielle. And one year, I was sent to convey him back to his mum in Paris. His dad lives in London. Four times a year and I had four long weekends in Paris, and it dazzled me. I was in my early 20s, and it was just an assault on the senses, and I’d love to spend more time there.
LEAST FAVOURITE DESTINATION :
There are places that I don’t have much interest in going to. I mean, I don’t think I’d like to go to Las Vegas very much. Places that have a big, big carbon footprint and a sort of plastic. I’m mad about Elvis, and I love everyone that has ever played there, Celine Dion, the whole gamut. So, from an artistic perspective, I love it. But I like places that have history and a juxtaposition of architecture and nature.
WHAT MAKES YOU CRY :
Very surprising things make me cry. Injustices make me cry, which is a bit more obvious, but sometimes beauty makes me cry. Sometimes a piece of art or a piece of music or a play that’s so exquisitely crafted that I’m sort of dumbfounded by it. I’ll find myself leaking liberally.
WHAT WAS THE LAST GIFT YOU GAVE SOMEONE :
Well, I have developed a habit of giving fewer material gifts and gifting experiences if you like. So, I gave a machine gun volley of theatre trips to my little nephews. So, we saw There’s a Monster in My Show at the Riverside Studios, not very far from here, Zog and the Flying Doctors at Cadogan Hall, and then I took the older one to see MJ the Musical because he’s dotty about his whole back catalogue. So I think what happens then is that those experiences together become bonding experiences and they are indelibly seared on the mental retina for all concerns.
WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ :
The last book I read was Tallulah Bankhead’s autobiography, which was absolutely brilliant and totally outrageous, considering it was published in 1951.
WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED :
It was with the nephews. It was Bad Boys
4. COFFEE OR TEA :
Coffee…. Come rain or shine, it’s an iced Americano because I’ve got this curious theory that in the bleak mid-winter, it makes you feel like the coldest sting and therefore makes the air around you feel warmer. I’ve got a little wasp friend. Hello. And in the summer, it calls you. So, it seems to kind of run the gamut.
URBAN OR RURAL :
I have to have both. I suppose, ultimately, I always pick urban areas because I need to be near the theatre.
CATS OR DOGS :
Oh! I sort of am a bit of a rejection junkie so I do like a cat for that. I am an ailurophile. I mean it’s such a curious word because I mean, canophilist, which is the dog version, has a bit of canine in it. The ailurophile has some obscure Greek roots that you wouldn’t recognise.
WHAT’S THE CLOSEST YOU HAVE COME TO DEATH :
Oh god, there was one time. My father is an intrepid adventurer and we were at Kimmeridge in Dorset and he went off with my sister over these sort of boulders around the cliff edge and I was trying to follow behind rather gingerly and my grandma who couldn’t have possibly at that stage traversed the boulders stayed behind and I fell between two and got wedged upside down with my legs kicking out. I think I was probably seven and the tide was coming in and it was washing my hair and my dad, my dad was way off and I was – it sounds ridiculous and hokey but it’s absolutely true. I was rescued by a shepherd with a crook. I was fished out and I could see my grandma through a tiny crevice, and she said, “I’m so sorry I can’t get over to you.”
IF YOU HAD A BOAT, WHAT WOULD IT BE CALLED :
Well, I’m going to pinch my dad’s boat name because he has a boat called “Footloose”. It was sort of his retirement present and is short for footloose and fancy free because he suddenly was after a life of very hard work, and I think it’s lovely.
YOUR WORDS OF WISDOM :
Well, we touched upon it, but I think that paths, in my industry especially, but in all walks of life, only make sense retrospectively. So, I think therefore the answer in life is to brightly, breezily, dynamically, zestfully approach everything that you’re offered and given because it might not be what you had forecast or what you had chosen, but it will end up defining that path, retrospectively, and you’ll be glad for having had that outlook, I think.
@tomreadwilson
@pretty.ae
