Samuel Beckett smoking a French cigarette: John Haynes’s best photograph

‘I was absolutely petrified of the man’ … Samuel Beckett in 1973. Photograph: John Haynes

I knew Samuel Beckett’s reputation. He didn’t like photographers. He didn’t want them around really. It’s hard to believe I took so many photographs of him. During the 1970s, I photographed him and his rehearsals at the Royal Court theatre in London, and eventually did a book with his biographer James Knowlson called Images of Beckett. In 2015 my photographs of him and his plays were projected on to the chapel of King’s College Cambridge as part of its 500th anniversary celebrations. It’s been a long, unexpected association.

I remember taking Beckett’s portrait in 1973. I was absolutely petrified of the man. It was just me and him on the Royal Court stage, completely empty apart from the one chair he was sitting on. It was like being in one of his own plays. He was wearing sunglasses. Everything was black right down to the fur collar of his coat, except for the light on his lap.