Simon Russell Beale finds it scary to play Shakespeare’s high-status characters, “the sort where you walk on stage and everyone bows”. It is surprising, given he is one of the nation’s foremost theatre actors, a king of his own realm, but also ironic because he has played most of Shakespeare’s alpha-men already: from Hamlet and Lear to Macbeth, Prospero and a brace of Richards.
Still, they’re difficult, he insists. “I think you need a huge amount of confidence.”
