He is not Simon Cowell or Stephen Fry. Top drawer character actor of stage & screen, writer & director- Simon Callow is in a large percent of my top favorite films: Amadeus (he was the original Mozart in the play’s stage premier), A Room With A View, Maurice, Howard’s End, Shakespeare In Love, Notting Hill, Angels In America, 4 Weddings & a Funeral . Along with Ian McKellen, Callow is an out gay actor who has successfully made the transition from respected theatre actor to film star. Callow is also prolific writer: 2 volumes of memoirs, 3 volumes of the biography of Orson Welles, Charles Laughton, & Oscar Wilde.
Gay films are few, & most films featuring gay people are “important” films like Philadelphia or Brokeback Mountain, sad & stately affairs, with no true specifically gay sensibility. I tend to like the films with less agenda & where gays are part of the world at large. Callow has a role in what I find to be one of the most important gay themed films- 4 Weddings & a Funeral. Callow plays Gareth, flamboyant but not camp; he doesn’t fit any stereotype; & he dos not die of AIDS, which during that era was ravaging the gay community. Gareth dies of Scottish dancing.
Gay films are few, & most films featuring gay people are “important” films like Philadelphia or Brokeback Mountain, sad & stately affairs, with no true specifically gay sensibility. I tend to like the films with less agenda & where gays are part of the world at large. Callow has a role in what I find to be one of the most important gay themed films- 4 Weddings & a Funeral. Callow plays Gareth, flamboyant but not camp; he doesn’t fit any stereotype; & he dos not die of AIDS, which during that era was ravaging the gay community. Gareth dies of Scottish dancing.
Callow: “When I read the script, it was immediately evident that this was a new kind of a gay character in films: not sensitive, not intuitive, kind & somehow deeply sad, nor hilarious, bitchy & outrageous, but masculine, exuberant, occasionally offensive, generous & passionate. He was also deeply involved with his partner, the handsome, shy, witty, understated Matthew. In the original screenplay, they were glimpsed at the beginning of the film asleep in bed. In the final cut, the film-makers removed this sequence, in order to allow their relationship to creep up on the audience. They were right to do so: before they knew it, viewers had come to know & love them individually, & were hit hard, first by Gareth's death, then by Matthew's oration ('with a little help from another splendid bugger, WH Auden').”
Callow turns 63 years old today. He is single & lives in London. He will always be Mr. Beeb in A Room With A View to me. Callow is certainly an actor who is more than the sum of his parts.
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