It would be misleading to suggest that the actor David Warner, who has died aged 80, struggled to recapture the success he found early on in his career. While it is true that he never again caused the sort of shockwaves generated by his radical interpretation of Hamlet at the RSC in 1965, or on screen as the troubled antihero of Karel Reisz’s comedy Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), Warner gave no impression of struggling after anything much at all.
Fame and acclaim interested him not; it was said that he read all his reviews for Hamlet but kept only the bad ones. He was motivated, he said, by “a driving lack of ambition” and claimed: “I don’t think I’m on anyone’s wavelength, even my own.” Reluctant to take his profession too seriously, his advice to younger actors was simple: “Don’t run with scissors.”
