Sir Tom Courtenay is 89 years old and telling a story about the day Alec Guinness showed him the script for a peculiar science fiction film he wasn’t quite sure about.
“He seemed uncertain about it,” Courtenay recalls. “But there was something he could smell in it.” The film, of course, was Star Wars. It made Guinness fabulously wealthy.
This is what a conversation with Tom Courtenay is like: an almost offhand tour through the entire span of postwar British cinema and theater, conducted by a man who was present for most of it.
He worked with David Lean on Dr. Zhivago — where he watched Lean hide behind a hotel pillar in Madrid to avoid having to speak to Rod Steiger. He stepped into the role of Billy Liar on stage after Albert Finney originated it, and was compared to Finney relentlessly; then, in 1983, he made a film with Finney that turned them from professional rivals into best friends.
He met Judi Dench at the Old Vic straight out of drama school. He bonded with Guinness on the set of Zhivago and stayed in touch for the rest of Guinness’s life. Queen Elizabeth II told him, at his knighting in 2001, that Manchester audiences might be better than London ones.
