Michael Gambon’s authorised biography brings his pranks into view

By Tom Whitfield

Jasper Rees’s authorised biography of Michael Gambon was published three years after the actor’s death, pairing nuanced accounts of major performances with dozens of stories of tomfoolery on and offstage.

Rees covers Gambon’s work in Shakespeare, Beckett and Pinter, as well as The Singing Detective and the Harry Potter films. He also dedicates chapters to Gambon’s hands and feet. Brian Cox described the hands as “the biggest you’ve ever seen on anybody”; Rees describes the feet as similarly enormous.

The joke inside serious work

In Rees’s account, David Hare’s 1995 play Skylight is set in a draughty flat, and a dish of spaghetti is cooked onstage. At the National Theatre, Lia Williams used the kitchen cupboards to hide when Gambon’s goofing got to her; he adopted a different accent or spoke in tongues during a scene.

Williams said that “when he made me laugh it was hell on Earth because there was nothing I could do about it”. She called him “one of the funniest people I’ve ever met” and continued: “One time I laughed so hard that my Tampax fell out and I had to deal with that for an entire act.”

A dinner that ended in corpsing

Rees’s account describes Ibsen’s Ghosts as a “hot potato” when it was first staged in 1882 because of its scandalous plot involving syphilis and incest. For an 80s BBC television version, Elijah Moshinsky envisioned a tense, sombre dinner scene.

Gambon played the self-righteous Pastor Manders beside Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh, with Natasha Richardson passing the potatoes around. “I’ll just have the usual eight,” requested Gambon. The co-stars began corpsing and left the set. “We couldn’t control ourselves at all,” confessed Dench.

Dumbledore and the fart machine

Rees jokes that not every actor’s biography includes “fart machines” in the index, and lets fake and real toots run through several chapters.

When Gambon took over the role of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, he and Alan Rickman pranked Daniel Radcliffe by triggering a fart machine during a close-up of the young star in a sleeping bag alongside fellow Hogwarts students.

Radcliffe said: “I was initially really annoyed,” before concluding that if Rickman and Gambon had engineered it then “that is pretty funny”.

Lear and the red-nosed Fool

Rees recounts that, when Gambon played King Lear for the RSC in 1982, Antony Sher wore a red nose as the clownish Fool. Their poster presented them as a sort of double act, and Sher was widely seen as stealing the limelight.

Rees likens Gambon’s attempt on what is often called an “actor’s Everest” to another climber “clambering frantically up the same rope”. Director Adrian Noble said Gambon “joshed [Sher] mercilessly”. During the storm scene, Gambon reportedly bellowed: “Come on out, you little red-nosed fucker!”

The fabricated De Niro note

Rees recounts that, while appearing in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, Gambon kept a signed photograph of Robert De Niro on his dressing-room table, with words of admiration for Gambon’s work. The pair would appear together in The Good Shepherd in 2006, but had never met by the time of the stage production.

Rees says the fake autograph and note were apparently written by Gambon himself. The message read: “I loved working with you Mike, you’re great – love Bobby”.

Makeup as a four-letter message

Anthony Higgins remembered one festive season in the late 60s, when Gambon starred in the Christmas show Hans, the Witch and the Gobbin at Birmingham Rep, much to his annoyance. Rees describes Gambon as a prodigious swearer who added words to his stage makeup.

“One night he’d written on one eyelid ‘fuck’ and on the other ‘off’,” said Higgins. Gambon blinked each eye to deliver the message, and artistic director Peter Dews had to give him a warning.

Chocolate cake in The Caretaker

Rees records that, in a 2000 revival of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker, Gambon played the tramp Davies and revelled in repelling theatregoers. The brothers in the play were played by Douglas Hodge and Rupert Graves.

Rees says that one night, with his back to the audience, Gambon buried his hand in his trousers, where he had hidden a serving of chocolate cake. He withdrew his smeared fingers and sniffed them, making his co-stars crack up. Hodge recalled: “Rupert was in terrible trouble,” and added: “Rupert wet himself regularly.”

Mirren rejects the Cleopatra story

Rees says Gambon loved to supply journalists with tall tales and see who believed them. He once told an interviewer that he and Helen Mirren prepared in the wings for their RSC roles as Antony and Cleopatra.

According to Gambon’s version, Mirren got into character by performing a mime in which she prepared a dish of ham and eggs for Antony. “Absolute rubbish,” Mirren told Rees, though added: “It’s a lovely story.”

Michael Gambon: The Authorised Biography by Jasper Rees is published by Century and priced at £30. Orders through guardianbookshop.com are intended to support the Guardian, with delivery charges that may apply.

What does this change for theatre history?

The answer is modest but consequential. Rees broadens the authorised portrait from Gambon’s performances to his effect on the conditions around them. The pranks made Williams lose control of her laughter, Radcliffe object, Dench and her fellow actors leave a set, and Hodge report a colleague’s distress.

Evidence remains uneven. Several anecdotes arrive through one person’s memory and carry hedges such as “apparently” or “reportedly”; others have no exact date in the account. The pranks do not replace the record of Gambon’s work in Shakespeare, Beckett, Pinter, The Singing Detective and Harry Potter.

The useful change is specific: future accounts of Gambon’s legacy can place his disruptive comic persona beside his credited roles, but should treat the pranks as testimony to check rather than a ready-made verdict.