Michael Gambon had a mechanical bent. When not acting, he absorbed himself in making things, specialising in replicas of antique guns. He was a dedicated maker, and good at it. Some of his creations were so convincing, he told interviewer Mel Gussow, that they were bought by dealers who sold them as genuine to other collectors. “Really, I’m a faker,” he said. “It’s pulling the wool over one’s eyes.”
Craft and complicity, the act of making something that feels more than real – it is tempting to find an image here of the actor’s art. Audiences embrace authenticity in the faker’s craft, and Gambon brought heft and delicacy, mischief and pooling emotion to roles from Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht and Beckett to Pinter, Churchill and Ayckbourn.
