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Adrian Lester: 'The best thing about success is that I don't have doors slammed in my face any more'

Adrian Lester - Marc Brenner
Adrian Lester - Marc Brenner

Adrian Lester grew up in Birmingham, the son of Jamaican parents. He attended Rada and has been lauded for his work in theatre, winning a Laurence Olivier award.

The 53-year-old is a regular on TV and has appeared in Hollywood movies from Primary Colours to The Day After Tomorrow. He is married to actress and playwright Lolita Chakrabarti, whom he met at Rada. They have two daughters.

Best thing about your childhood?

Sunday lunch was a big thing for me as a child with all the family coming together. The kids would all eat first and then break out and go and make noise, leaving the adults to eat and talk in peace. Growing up you saw everyone all the time. I still have this idea of when I’m older and greyer than I am now, of sitting with a large family. That’s important to me.

Best celebrityencounter?

An encounter makes you think it was brief, but I did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with James Earl Jones and I was kind of astounded. He’s an amazing actor. The honesty and energy with which he reinvented every performance every night was inspiring. We had a long scene on stage, and every time he would almost improvise the scene while ­sticking to the lines. He did not miss a performance and he was committed to every single one. As a younger actor I learnt from him that every audience is precious and you do not let a line go to waste. You make yourself do it properly for everyone who has paid a penny.

Best thing about success?

It’s that you worry slightly less about being able to sustain what you’ve got. There’s always more to get and always more responsibilities that we have, but somehow you worry slightly less about it. And you feel more comfortable about picking and choosing the work you want to do. A lot of people say would you like to go back to your 20s or 30s, and while you’d have that youth and energy, there’s also a big suitcase of worry for the future that I no longer have. That’s the good thing about having some kind of reputation now. My ideas for the future have become about opportunity and hard work, rather than having doors slammed in my face, which is what I worried about when I was younger!

Best thing that’s happened in the past year?

My first play on Broadway, The Lehman Trilogy, which is weird at this age, having done so much theatre. The best thing was taking the final curtain call knowing we’d got through all the performances, despite Covid, while all the other productions around us were cancelling. At the final performance there were people in the audience who had seen the play five times, and the response was phenomenal. As I stood there taking bows I thought: “Wow. My Broadway debut.”

Best thing about coming home?

My last trip to the US was for three and a half months. It’s nice to come home to familiar surroundings. What marks me getting home is when I’ve completely unpacked. I’m not the sort of person who can leave it for a week.

Best thing about the world today?

That we’ve learnt to appreciate people we would normally not care about. People who deal with our bins, our deliveries, retail, care workers and hospital workers. We’re beginning to understand just what it takes to do their job and how grateful we should be that they keep everything going.

Best moment of your life?

When my kids took their first steps. I remember my eldest daughter pulling herself up on the sofa and using it as a ­balance point. I was calling to her across the living room. She looked at me and wanted to come to me and she looked at the floor and was scared she might not make it, but then she toddled quickly across and fell into my arms. It was ­amazing. The look on her face!

Adrian Lester is in Trigger Point, on ITV this January