Steven Berkoff: an exclusive extract from his new memoir Shouting At Night

Finally, the film managed to begin and I continued dribbling around as assistant, desperately trying to make myself useful Initially, Wolf Mankowitz thought that the filming might inspire a documentary to be made at the same time, which I agreed to enthusiastically. However, the chaos that always seems to arise while shooting films in a foreign country was doubly increased in Israel. I arrived there with the goodwill to make myself as useful as possible; I took part in searching for actors, arranging auditions, and even coaching the miserably miscast young boy. But when Richard Harris became belligerent after I tried to give the young boy some notes, suddenly shouting out ‘don’t interfere!’, I thought, ‘What the hell am I doing in this dump?’ However, I went on to take photographs of the city of Tel Aviv, including the exotic food market, and visited Jerusalem on my days off. I found, through my new architect landlady, a room where I could develop and print my own pictures.

As General Orlov in Octopussy, in 1983[Missing Credit]

A Clockwork Orange

By the early ’70s, I was now a proper actor, with no more extras work, and one day my agent called me to put myself on tape for Stanley
Kubrick, who was casting A Clockwork Orange. This is how Kubrick worked – unusual then, but it is now commonplace. No need to interview actors in person, unless they are stars. I read for a British cop – only Kubrick could have possibly cast me as a British bobby – but he did and in the most controversial movie of the decade!

We were shooting at Brunel University, a suitably dystopic and grim building. I turned up confident and expectant and met the great man. First, he shot the scene where our hero, Alex, is being chased by his probation officer, a fairly comic scene. But the older actor playing the probation officer kept fluffing his lines. Kubrick said, ‘You should have learned your lines before we started.’ In response the actor said, rather pathetically I thought, ‘Oh, Mr Kubrick, I prefer to learn them as we block the scene.’

Kubrick responded, ‘You’re an actor, that’s your job… you learn the lines and then we block it!’ It came to my scene and, of course, I hadn’t just learned my lines – I had them practically tattooed into my skull. We did about twelve takes, each one perfect, never dropping a word. I think Kubrick rather appreciated this. While we were setting up the lights for the reverse shot, I had an opportunity to have a chat with the great master. I asked him how he had achieved certain visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey, such as the stewardess in the spaceship turning a full circle, appearing weightless. He was only too glad to explain how – as she walked, they simply turned the camera. I found him so congenial that eventually I did feel a close affinity with him. I finished the day feeling I had made a new friend.

With Malcolm McDowell (right) in A Clockwork Orange, in 1974[Missing Credit]The Krays, in 1990 and in Beverly Hills Cop, in 1984[Missing Credit]

*******

I didn’t hear from Kubrick for some years, until he started shooting The Shining, when he called me out of the blue. He asked me if any of my actors could be extras in a special dream sequence in the film where time has changed and gone back to the ’20s, and Stanley would much prefer to use actors rather than extras. I relayed this to the actors in my company and they were all very excited to be in a Kubrick film, even as background, but when I asked Kubrick what the fee would be for the week, I was shocked at how low it was. It was so low that no matter how keen the actors were, they felt like they were being exploited and turned the offer down. I went back to Kubrick and pleaded with him to increase the offer, even by a small amount, but to my great surprise he would not raise it a penny. Did he think that actors were out to exploit him? Such a shame, and then I didn’t hear from him again for some time, which is not unusual since it takes him years to make up his mind about a project.

Shouting At Night by Steven Berkoff, published by Aurora Metro, is out on October 22

Salome, in 1992; Berkoff's adaptation of The Trial, in 1970[Missing Credit]