'Most people haven't a clue what love is' By James-Cameron Wilson 
claims Nicholas Clay who has played two of literature's leading lovers
Interviewing Nicholas Clay is not unlike coming face to face with one's psychiatrist. You casually dispose of your first question, watch aghast as it is honed down ruthlessly and then duck as it is thrown back in your face.
Your next question is more carefully prepared. Then the actor will switch into an impersonation - representing the British Cynic or a previously exposed character from the Clay stable - without prior warning, and leave you in a state of panic as to the general direction of the conversation.
"Go on then," the actor would challenge me. "Ask me a really interesting question. Ask me something I haven't been asked before."
"Er...what was it like working with Sylvia Kristel?"
Ignoring this, he goes on with reference to his challenging posture: "That is the attitude of so many of today's critics. They sit back in their cinema seats, probably wondering what's for dinner, and say 'Go on, entertain me'. Especially in this country. I don't mind if people like or dislike a film of mine, so long as they enter into the spirit of it. But then I think the English are an inherently lazy people. Because we live in an old society; because we know too much. Are you listening to what I'm saying?"
"What? Yes, of course, I..." Nicholas Clay keeps you on the balls of your toes. And unlike other "overnight stars", knows exactly where it's at.
In spite of a starring role opposite Patricia Neal in the film The Night Digger and the role of Darwin in The Darwin Adventure, it was to be another decade until overnight stardome came knocking on his door. And it happened with Excalibur. Unexpectedly cast largely with unknowns, John Boorman's belatedly realised dream of the Arthurian legends unexpectedly became a box office hit and, predictably, somersaulted Nicholas Clay (as Lancelot) into the public's eye and producers' notebooks. No sooner had he "arrived" then he was cast in the film role of one of English literature's greatest romantic figures, Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper of D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover". You can't get much better than Mellors, Lancelot and Darwin as prime examples of English fiction, mythology and fact.
Completing the hat-trick, Clay is now scaling his first all-star cast as the lead character in Evil Under The Sun, the latest Agatha Christie/Hercule Poirot whodunit, from the same people who knotted your brows with Murder On the Orient Express and Death On the Nile. In among the luminous crowd of celebrities surrounding young Clay can be spotted Mr Peter Ustinov, as the intrepid Hercule, Colin Blakely, James Mason, Roddy McDowall, Denis Quilley, jane Birkin, Sylvia Miles, Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith. Not a bad heap. And so Nicholas Clay's success for 1982 seems as set as concrete.
Stalking through the corridors of London's Lee International Studios, where Evil Under The Sun was currently being committed, I sought out my interviewee in his dressing room, where I found him dressed to the nines, tens, elevens and further, in dinner jacket and charm, every inch the part of Patrick Redfern, the conniving, slippery ladykiller he plays in the film. In mere jacket and tie, my usual assemblage, I felt positively underdressed.
"Do you feel in your gut that this is 'your year'?", I asked. "No. Life's just the same. After all, it's the same old sky up there." Clay replied philisophically. "Sure, there have been offers from America. Lots. If I wanted to pursue a film career now I could do so easily. But it's not probably what I will do next. I'm going to America to see some friends and to keep on doing what I've always been doing. Wondering who's next up for playing. That's where the interest lies. What's round the corner?"
With so many newcomers filling their heads with false promises of success, it's a relief to encounter a talent who knows the ball-game he's playing. Nicholas Clay is also an ardent man of Theatre, Literature, ESP, with a mind like a razor and a memory like a filing cabinet. And he's also a damned good actor.
In Excalibur Clay cut a dashing figure as Lancelot, in mirrored armour astride a white charger, and in the charisma stakes outshone the rest of the Knights of the Round Table. In Lady Chatterley's Lover he is still the impassioned romancer, but as different from Lancelot as lime from Edam. Versatility is not Clay's chief problem. How faithful is the film, then, to the original D.H. Lawrence novel?
"Pretty accurate. Remembering of course that the film is based on the first version of the story, 'The First Lady Chatterley'," the actor revealed. "That was such a sparser piece of writing, a quite muscular piece of 'clearness' - that is, compared to the other two versions, "John Thomas and Lady Jane" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover".
"How did you set about approaching the character of Mellors?", I prodded further. "I just found out about him. Not many people seems to realise that Mellors spoke Latin and was probably conversant in one or even more tongues. He was also a Commissioned Officer. But most people mistakenly regard him as working class. But he wasn't.
"When Mellors looks at you he sees you as clear as daylight. And that's what attracts Connie [Sylvia Kristel], Lady Chatterley. Because it's the first time anybody's looked at her and allowed her just to 'be'. To be herself. She is a human being. Neither man nor woman. Just human. Like the forest. Like the leaves. Like Nature. Touchable. Tangible. Real. She found it a beautiful and brilliant sensation.
Lawrence developed a theme at the time of how people through sex fall into love. And the books were actually to be called 'Tenderness'. And our intention in doing the film was to let 'tenderness' be the thing that developed and not anything else."
"But do you think it could be misunderstood?", I hazarded. "It always is. But that's all right. People either get the point or they don't."
"How do you, personally, feel about it, now it's finished?"
"Just perfect. I know what I did in it. I know what I'm doing, you know. People will view it the way they want to. Its sense is to have sex itself be the vehicle for love. And that's an embarrassing thing to talk about. Sex is much easier. If you talk about love people turn off. They much prefer all that other stuff where they don't have to deal with their own love for others. Most people don't even have a clue what love is. They call need 'love'. 'I need you! I love you! Tell me that you do too!' That ain't love. No way."