Will Clay Pull Off A Romantic Hat Trick? By Charles Bacon  
The answer awaits us in 'Evil Under the Sun'


"Well, hello. How are you?" Nicholas Clay smiled, exuding charm like nobody's business. Clay, you will recall, shot to stardom last year as Lancelot in Excalibur and as Mellors in Lady Chatterley's Lover, and is now out to complete his romantic hat-trick as the dastardly, slimy ladykiller Patrick Redfern. Redfern may not rank with Lancelot or Mellors in the literary stakes, but he was penned by one of the most successful authors of all time - Agatha Christie. The film he appears in is Evil Under the Sun, the cast is headed by Peter Ustinov (as the irrepressible inquisitor Hercule Poirot), Jane Birkin, James Mason, Roddy McDowall, Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith, and Clay is our interviewee.


Relaxed in body and alert in mind, the actor in turn appeared friendly, philosophical, angry and pensive, but always debonair and always on the ball. And prepared to talk about anything. Although we started, predictably enough, with Evil Under the Sun.


A whodunnit in the tradition of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin's all-star brow-knotter is set on an Adriatic island resort where mayhem is committed.


"One is not quite sure about Patrick," Clay reflected on his character· "whether or not he quite made it. Or has it. He has all the right ingredients. And he certainly has a terrific eye. He notices things. In a quick scan he'll take you in. And see what is right and what is the thing to do.


"And again," Clay continued, "you're not quite sure why this popinjay, this brilliantly turned out, superbly articulate, capable man is married to the rather dowdy, dull, boring, neurotic, upset, eternally temperamental, traumatised Christine Refern, as played by Jane Birkin."


"He's attracted by her mind?", I proposed.


"Maybe. But there's still something odd about it. The commonest supposition is that he married her for her money."


"Ah. Of course." There is a pause. "So how did you go about making Redfern credible to yourself?", I asked.


"I just breathed him."


"Is there any side of Redfern you can identify with then?"


"Sure. All of It. He's such a charmer. 'Oh, hello. How nice to see you. How are you today? How's your mother? And the family? Ah. Oh, yes. That's lovely. What car did you say you had just bought? Oh a BMW! How marvellous!' Before you know it you have been charmed an are absolutely delighted. You're taken along. You're moved. Patrick Redfern is a great con-artist. And a gigolo. Of the highest order. You should know that about him, but no more."


Born in London to a Regular Army man, young Nicholas Clay found himself carted half-way round the world (Scotland, Vienna, Cairo, Suez), and studying at no less than 23 schools before landing up at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the fine company of Lisa Harrow, Richard Beckinsale, David Bradley, Desmond MacManara and their like. Stints with the Notthingham Playhouse and the National Theatre followed, pIus roles in the films The Night Digger, The Darwin Adventure (in which he top­billed), Baron Frankenstein, Zulu Dawn, Tristan and Isolde and Excalibur, the last-named proving an international hit. Stardom had happened.


Although it was rated by American critics, I found Excalibur a little too ambitious for its own good. For director John Boorman to try and squeeze the Grail legends into an acceptable two hours of film seemed to me to be an essay doomed to failure. And although visually stunning and embellIshed with some exemplary performances - ­especially from Nicholas Clay and Cherie Lunghi as Lancelot and Guenevere - the film, I felt, eventually missed out too much, crammed in too much and emerged fractured and episodic.


I told Nicholas Clay so.


After listening intently, the actor responded: "I have nothing to add to what you say and have no wish to argue with or to invalidate anything you have said. You have a very real appreciation of the film. But I thmk as a film-maker one has to put one's backside on the line and one is bound to expose oneself. Because one is making a statement. And it's clumsy sometimes. It can be awful, crass. Just like Life. Like you, Like me. Sometimes we are awful, awful creatures. And that is mostly what others see in us. They don't see our magnificence or our brilliance. They don't see what we want them to see in us.


"So as a film-maker, or as anybody who cares, the risk is that you might expose yourself. And in that sense Boorman didn't care. Excalibur was outrageous. It should not have worked. It should not have been successful - given today's climate. But maybe that's what people want more of now. More foolishness; more and more declarations of a ludicrous nature.


"Some of the statements in Excalibur were awful. But that's about what human beings are all about. 'Warts and all'. I love it. I want more of it. I want it bigger. I want people to really emerge, in a way that they have not emerged for a long, long time. People now are too scared, timid, frightened ... But Boorman is giving it out. Wow! 'Take a look. Here you've got me. This is who I am. This is what it looks like from here. I don't ask you to agree with it. Don't do anything with it. This is it. Here I am'.


"If Boorman's film-making is about anything it's about that."


Whatever reason audiences queued up in their millions to see Excalibur for, they won't have been disappointed by Clay's performance. And I have an idea not too many people will object to Patrick Redfern either. He's too charming for that. But then so is Nicholas Clay.