David Suchet

Suchet began his acting career at the Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, Berkshire; he has said that Watermill "fulfils my vision of a perfect theatre". In 1973, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1981–82, he played Bolingbroke in Richard II opposite Alan Howard. Suchet played "John" in the drama Oleanna at the Royal Court Theatre in 1993. It was directed by Harold Pinter, and co-starred Lia Williams as "Carol". He made his West End debut opposite Saskia Reeves in the Kempinski play Separation, at the Comedy Theatre in 1987. In 1996–97 he played opposite Dame Diana Rigg in the West End production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He was also featured as Salieri from 1998 to 2000 in the Broadway production Amadeus. In 2007, at the Chichester Festival Theatre, he played Cardinal Benelli in The Last Confession, about the death of Pope John Paul I.[14] In 2014, he reprised the role of Benelli in the Australian tour of the play.[15][16]

He has been starring as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde at the Vaudeville Theatre in London since June 2015 and on tour.[17]

After making his first TV appearance in 1970 and in a 1971 episode of Public Eye, he appeared in the 1980 made-for-TV film version of A Tale of Two Cities. In 1980, he also played Edward Teller, later developer of the US H-bomb, in the joint BBC-US TV serial about the US Manhattan Project called Oppenheimer. In 1983, he played the insidious half-Chinese policeman with orders to kill British spy Sidney Reilly in Reilly, Ace of Spies. He portrayed Sigmund Freud in the six-hour mini-series Freud, co-produced by the BBC in 1984. In 1985, he played Blott in the television series Blott on the Landscape, and corporate whistle-blower Stanley Adams in A Song for Europe. Coincidentally, Suchet appeared as Inspector Japp in 1985's Thirteen at Dinner, in which Peter Ustinov portrayed Poirot. In his book, Poirot and Me, Suchet mentions that Ustinov one day approached him and told him that Suchet could play Poirot and would be good at it. Suchet then spoke to Brian Eastman from ITV:[18]

As we left the restaurant, Brian said, ‘I’ll send you some of the books. Have a look at them and see what you think.’ Then he disappeared into the night, and I walked home to Sheila in a daze. Two days later, a couple of the full-length Poirot novels arrived, and shortly afterwards, a copy of Poirot’s Casebook, containing some of the short stories that Brian thought should make up the first series of ten television programmes. I was intrigued, but I also thought: I’d better know what I might be getting myself into. So I started to read them. And as I did so, it slowly dawned on me that I’d never actually seen the character I was reading about on the screen. He wasn’t like Albert Finney, or Peter Ustinov, or Ian Holm in the 1986 BBC drama Murder by the Book. He was quite, quite different: more elusive, more pedantic and, most of all, more human than the person I’d seen on the screen.But I still wasn’t sure whether I should play him. So I decided to ask my elder brother John, who was then a newscaster at Independent Television News in London. He is two years older than I am, and I’ve always looked up to him, so I rang him. [...]

‘I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole,’ John said firmly.

‘Seriously?’ I blurted out.

‘Yes. I mean, Poirot’s a bit of a joke, a buffoon. It’s not you at all.’

I gulped.

‘Well, what I’m reading isn’t a buffoon,’ I told him. ‘It’s a character that I’ve never seen portrayed.’

There was another silence.

‘It would be a wonderful challenge to see if I could bring that character to the screen,’ I said, stumbling on. There was a slight sigh. John is an enormously kind and gentle man, and would never want to upset me.

‘Of course, you must do it if you want to,’ he said quietly. ‘Good luck. Only one word of warning: it may be difficult to get people to take him seriously.’

It turned out he was quite right. But the more I thought about the man in Dame Agatha’s books, the more convinced I became that I could bring the true Poirot to life on the screen, a man no audience had seen before.

In 1988, he played Leopold Bloom[19] in the Channel 4 documentary The Modern World: Ten Great Writers, in which some of James Joyce's Ulysses was dramatised.[20] During the time, he spent days reading Agatha Christie's books about Hercule Poirot:[18]

I started to write my private list of Poirot’s habits and character. I called it my ‘dossier of characteristics’. It ended up five pages long and detailed ninety-three different aspects of his life. I have the list to this day – in fact, I carried it around on the set with me throughout all my years as Poirot, just as I gave a copy to every director I worked with on a Poirot film.

In 1989, he took the title role of Hercule Poirot for the long-running television series Agatha Christie's Poirot. In 2001, he had the lead role in the David Yates-directed BBC television serial The Way We Live Now and, in April 2002, he played the real-life barrister, George Carman (QC), in the BBC drama Get Carman: The Trials of George Carman QC.[21]

In 2003, Suchet starred as the ambitious Cardinal Wolsey in the two-part ITV drama Henry VIII opposite Ray Winstone as Henry VIII and Helena Bonham Carter as Anne Boleyn. In May 2006, he played the role of the fallen press baron Robert Maxwell in Maxwell, a BBC2 dramatisation of the final 18 months of Maxwell's life. During the same year, he voiced Poirot in the adventure game Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express.[5]

At Christmas 2006, he played the vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing in a BBC adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. He appeared in the disaster film Flood, released in August 2007, as the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at a time when London is devastated by flooding. Suchet appeared on daytime-TV chat show Loose Women on 6 February 2008 to talk about his film The Bank Job, in which he played Lew Vogel, alongside Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows. In 2008, he took part in the genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?, and discovered facts about his family history.[22]

He starred in the 2009 CBC made-for-TV film Diverted. He starred as the main antagonist, Reacher Gilt, in the 2010 Sky TV adaptation of Going Postal, based on Pratchett's book of the same name. He appeared in the film Act of God as Benjamin Cisco. In 1987, Suchet played a bigfoot hunter in Harry and the Hendersons. He had roles in two Michael Douglas films, A Perfect Murder and The In-Laws. In 1997, he starred in the independent film Sunday. In November 2011, Suchet and ITV announced that Suchet would complete the canon of Poirot novels, in a thirteenth and final series of Poirot. The final episode, "Curtain", aired on ITV on 13 November 2013. During the time the final episode was filmed, Suchet expressed his sadness at his final farewell to the Poirot character he had loved:[18]

To lose him now, after so long, was like losing the dearest of friends, even though I was only an actor playing a part. [...] Hercule Poirot’s death was the end of a long creative journey for me, made all the more emotional as I had only ever wanted to play Dame Agatha’s true Poirot, the man she’d first created in The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 and whose death she chronicled more than half a century later, in Curtain in 1975. He was as real to me as he had been to her: a great detective, a remarkable man, if, perhaps, just now and then, a little irritating. [...] As I look across at the camera for the final time, I think back to Poirot’s last words to Hastings on Friday.

‘Cher ami,’ I said softly, as he was leaving Poirot to rest.

That phrase meant an enormous amount to me, which is why I repeated it after he had shut the door behind him. But my second ‘cher ami’ in that scene was for someone other than Hastings. It was for my dear, dear friend Poirot. I was saying goodbye to him as well, and I felt it with all my heart.

Suchet has played the role in adaptations of every novel and short story featuring the character written by Dame Agatha Christie.[23]

Between 2014 and 2015, Suchet appeared in and narrated two BBC Television documentaries, undertaking an epic journey spanning the Mediterranean, inspired by the life and travels of both St. Peter the Disciple and St. Paul the Apostle.

In 2016, Suchet took on the role as the narrator in the BBC live production of Peter Pan Goes Wrong, where he serves as the sole "professional" among the cast. At one point during the broadcast, when one of the actors is electrocuted, he is asked to distract the audience. His solution is to take Captain Hook's mustache and start acting like Poirot, even delivering his lines in a Belgian accent. This prompts the director (who is also playing Captain Hook) to retrieve the mustache and dismiss Suchet.[24]

In 2017, Suchet starred as Dr Fagan in the BBC1 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, and guest starred in the role of a character called "The Landlord", for an episode of the tenth series of Doctor Who entitled Knock Knock.

His first broadcast job was to read a "Morning Story" for BBC Pebble Mill Talks producer David Shute; they had met at the Mayor of Stratford's annual cocktail party to welcome members of the Royal Shakespeare Company to their new season. Suchet provided the voice of Aslan in Focus on the Family's radio version of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. He performed as the voice of the villainous Dr. Julius No in BBC Radio 4's radio adaptation of Ian Fleming's novel Dr. No. In 1991, Suchet played the part of Henrik Ibsen alongside Martin Shaw playing August Strindberg, in a one-off documentary on BBC Radio 3 about the meeting of the two playwrights.

In 1972, Suchet first met his wife, Sheila Ferris, at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, where they were both working; he says that he fell in love with her as soon as he saw her, and that it took a while to persuade her to go out for a meal with him.[34] They were married on 30 June 1976; the couple have a son, Robert (b. 1981), formerly a captain in the Royal Marines,[3] and a daughter, Katherine (b. 1983), a physiotherapist.

Suchet is the brother of John Suchet, a national news presenter for Five News and Breakfast Show presenter on Classic FM (January 2011).[35] He is the uncle of broadcaster Richard Suchet, who is the son of Suchet's younger brother, Peter.

Suchet's maternal grandfather, James Jarché, was a famous Fleet Street photographer notable for the first pictures of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson and also for his pictures of Louis Blériot (1909) and the Siege of Sidney Street. Suchet first became interested in photography when his grandfather gave him a Leica M3 camera as a present.[34] The Jarché family was originally named Jarchy, and were Russian Jews.[7][22]

Suchet's paternal grandfather, Lithuanian Jew Isidor Shokhet (shochet means "kosher butcher" in Yiddish; derived from Hebrew), lived in Kretinga, a Lithuanian city in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire (until 1791 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; now in Lithuania). After escaping persecution to relocate 16 mi (26 km) away to Memel in the German Empire, Isidor changed his surname to the still Yiddish, but Germanized with a Slavic twist, Suchedowitz,[36] where Suched+o+witz resembles the Polish name (Slavic) construction structure of [root]+wicz with o in between when the last letter of the root is d, t, h, n, etc., e.g. Janowicz=Jan+o+wicz, made German/Yiddish-like by replacing "cz" with "tz", e.g. Janowitz; also suche means "dry" in Polish), and then to Suchet after moving to Cape Town, South Africa.[22][37]

Suchet's maternal grandmother's great-grandfather, George Jezzard, was a master mariner. He was captain of the brig Hannah, which foundered nine miles off the coast of Suffolk during a terrible storm on 28 May 1860, in which more than 100 vessels and at least 40 lives were lost. Jezzard and six others of his crew were saved by local rescuers just before their ship sank.[7]

Raised without religion, in 1986 Suchet underwent a religious conversion after reading Romans 8 in his hotel room; soon afterwards, he was baptised into the Church of England.[38][39] Suchet stated in an interview with Strand Magazine, "I'm a Christian by faith. I like to think it sees me through a great deal of my life. I very much believe in the principles of Christianity and the principles of most religions, actually—that one has to abandon oneself to a higher good."[40] In 2012, Suchet made a documentary for the BBC on his personal hero, Saint Paul, to discover what he was like as a man by charting his evangelistic journey around the Mediterranean.[41] Two years later, he would film another documentary, this time on the apostle Saint Peter.[38]

On 22 November 2012, the British Bible Society announced the appointment of David Suchet and Dr Paula Gooder as new vice-presidents. They joined the existing vice-presidents: John Sentamu (Archbishop of York), Vincent Nichols (Archbishop of Westminster), Barry Morgan (Archbishop of Wales), David F. Ford (Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge), Joel Edwards (International Director of Micah Challenge) and Lord Alton of Liverpool.[42] Following the time when he bade farewell to his role as Hercule Poirot, Suchet fulfilled a 27-year ambition to make an audio recording of The Bible's New International Version, which was released on 24 April 2014.[38]

In August 2014, Suchet was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in the September 2014 referendum on that issue.[43]

• Being Poirot[46] BBC documentary (2014)
• David Suchet on playing Hercule Poirot – Dead Man’s Folly Q&A – BFI [47]
• David Suchet Final Poirot scene hardest of my career BBC 2013 [48]
• David Suchet on Poirot's Death Loose Women ITV 2015 [49]
• Au revoir Hercule Poirot – BBC News [50]
• Poirot's David Suchet ITV [51]
• The David Suchet Interview by Studio 10 (Australia) The ultra-smooth talking David Suchet aka Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot drops by Studio 10.[52]
• Premier.tv : David Suchet talks about Poirot [53]
• Holly and Phil chat with David Suchet BBC – 13 November 2013 [54]
• Today Tonight – David Suchet Channel Seven, Perth (Australia) 2014 [55]
• David Suchet interviewed by Clive Anderson BBC, Wogan 1990s [56]
• The.Mystery.of.Agatha.Christie ITV.Perspectives.2013.[57]
• Agatha Christie BBC documentary [58]
• The Agatha Christie code ITV 2005 [59]

• David Suchet on the Orient Express (TV documentary) (2010) [60]
• David Suchet: In the Footsteps of St Paul (BBC documentary) (2012) [61]
• David Suchet: In the Footsteps of St Peter (BBC Documentary) (2015) [62]

• The One Show: David Suchet – Interview (30 April 2015) BBC [63]
• Long Day's Journey into Night David Suchet on acting, Digital Theatre Plus 2013 [64]
• Roles, Characters, Empathy: David Suchet (On) Acting 2012 [65]
• Suchet receives CBE BCC 2011 [66]
• David Suchet, Actor – A Birthday Tribute 2011 [67]
• International Emmy Winner – David Suchet BBC 2009 [68]
• David Suchet – Who Do You Think You Are BBC 2009 [69]
• Cannes Interview with David Suchet May 1997 [70]