The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 421

CM 0. Sir Ralph Richardson Actor, Oldster, Biker BY BART MILLS 111 dience. I believe this. You must force yourself. You must dream to order." Sir Ralph prepares each part meticulously before ever turning up for rehearsals.

Td be too frightened not to. It's probably not a very good thing, but I've always done it I can do it no other way. I mostly make a track of my own, to guide myself. I dont I hope stick to it too obviously. I accept good influences from Mr.

Hall." Hall himself comments: "I hate pre-preparation if the actor then does nothing else and the whole production has to be fitted around him. Ralph isnt like that at all. He's extremely open, and he's able to take a hint and turn it into pure gold He's first a professional and second a gentleman. It's terrific to work with him, because the better the actor, the better the director." Does Sir Ralph think his work is as good as it ever was? "I see my own defects. Whether people would guess them I dont know.

I've never been a very good film actor. I havent learned the trick of television I feel uneasy. In the theater, I dont think Til ever again try the great classic parts which would interest me. I tried them and I failed in several of them. I havent enough courage to attempt them again, really, such parts as Macbeth or Othello.

"One forgets how old one is. One forgets very easily. I was talking to someone not so long ago and said Let's do Julius We talked about it, and Mr. Redgrave said to me, "What part would you play?" I said, Td play my old part if you like HI play Mark Would you play Mark Antony? In that case how old would you reckon Brutus would have to be? Td completely forgottea One forgets how old one is." Like overage starlets, old actors never retire they just arent given parts any more. Sir Ralph still gets plenty of offers.

Even so, does he ever intend to pack it in? "I do not There's so much to learn." Yes, but there must be a time "Must be. I cant go on forever, I suppose. Perhaps I shall. Be an exception." He has a bicycle, but he prefers his motorcycle. "Yesterday I went out toward Denham.

It was about 20 miles. I enjoy it keeps my reflexes good I'm the better for a good spin on the bike. I like a big bike heavy sits down on the road. A light bike makes me nervous. Vm not as good on the bike as I used to be.

I cant water ski on the thing the way some of these riders can." Isnt he ever afraid of accidents? "Of course I have been killed many times." Sir Ralph enjoys being facetious, making something out of nothing. He always has fua His work on the stage is serious stuff, but most of his movies he describes as "rather amusing, a piece of fua" Of "Tales From the Crypt," a 1971 horror quickie, he says, "Say I did it for fun. Call it a kind of security." His latest picture is "Rollerball," an American actioner starring James Caan, in which Sir Ralph plays a forgetful librarian. He was at the studio just a couple of days. "You're paid a bit more for your name than you are for the actual work you understand what I mean?" He doesnt mind if the films he does arent literary masterpieces.

Films are so easy, they hardly matter. Work in the theater is hard, and it matters. "If it weren't difficult, it wouldn't be possible to do it It's the difficulty that makes it possible and keeps it interesting. "I always think I dont like the work when I havent got it When I do get it, it's like being an engine driver when he climbs into the cab and thinks, "My God, IVe got to drive this bloody train to Scotland' He has a difficult job requires intense concentration intense. You've got to be on your toes.

You've got to know, not where each foot is each toe! "At the same time, you must make believe. The people watching believe, and you must believe it yourself partly. You cannot believe the whole thing from start to finish. But you must believe bits. Not the same bit in each performance.

But some bits in every performance. If there's no actor belief, you never hold the au 8 in O) CM cc CL LONDON An old man can do as he pleases. A young man careening about town on a 750cc motorcycle is expressing a socio-political position. Sir Ralph Richardson on his motorcycle is expressing nothing but his quirky self. A young man would write a 2-ton treatise called "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," but Sir Ralph would just glance at it and turn back to the latest Dick Francis horse-racing thriller.

At 72, he does as he pleases. He chooses to live in modest splendor at the end of a magnificent row of houses overlooking London's Regent's Park. Light streams in at the windows of his third-floor study, where he sits, wearing slippers, reading at an old desk among numerous old clocks. They've just chimed noon, and the sherry is laid out incongruously, on a Woolworth plastic tray. Sir Ralph rules himself and his surroundings with a firm hand, not fussy, knowing what's best Visitors he orders seated on his left, to aid his hearing.

His greeting is warm, with more eye contact than most people are used to. He's direct, abrupt, unapologetic He's learned to make people deal with him on this terms, and like it He once made director Peter Hall ride pillion on his motorcycle, and still he turned down Hall's plea to play Falstaff one last time. Sir Ralph has kept clear of "great parts" in recent years. He's preferred to create new characters, sometimes seeming quixotic in his choice of roles. He put his own money into Joe Orton's "What the Butler Saw," which shocked some people five or six years ago.

He and Sir John Gielgud made David Storey's unpromising "Home" an instant classic. He took John Osborne into the West End of London for the last time with "West of Suez." He added respectability to William Douglas-Home's commercial success by appearing in "Lloyd George Knew My Father." He took numerous small film roles, some in pictures that mercifully havent been released. He fared better in a larger part, in "0 Lucky Maa" "It's a waste of life," he says, swigging a glass of sherry in two gulps, "if no creation is going on If I could afford not to, I wouldn't work if there were no creative factor. I can play in a marvelous play which you exhaust. The material can cease to be plastic.

Some plays are like a sausage machine. I find George Bernard Shaw, great as he is, once you play it technically well, it's like a straitjacket. Other plays 'Lloyd George Knew My I find it endlessly fruitful. I spent two years in that part and still found new things every performance. I could play it again I might they've still got the scenery in America.

I'd like to work with William Douglas-Home again. I got an idea for a play for him, which he told me he'll try." Sir Ralph's speech is slow and careful, while he keeps his pipe going and the sherry circulating. He's a master of the uninterruptible pause which should come in handy in his next play, Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land," which will also star Sir John Gielgud. All concerned expect an American tour if it succeeds in London. "I've always wanted to play in a Pinter play.

I've never met him. When The Caretaker' was presented, it puzzled some people but it was completely clear to me. I told J. B. Priestley, who knows him, that the play was completely clear to me.

Priestley told Pinter I admired it. Pinter said, 'How "All Pinter's plays are boxes of mystery. This new one I know what it's about I don't think I'll tell him what I think. I know what it's about but I don't think Til tell him." Sir Ralph's tone rarely varies from the solemn. Yet it's clear he's being mischievous nine-tenths of the time, He takes sly delight in the idea of withholding from Pinter the real meaning of his new play.

He loves games verbal and competitive. He isn't quite as physically active as he once was. He takes an afternoon nap these days after lunching at his club. He's finally given up squash. One game he still plays is "old tennis," which involves a hard ball on a marble floor.

Sir Ralph plays it at Lords Cricket Club. "The courts are always full. You can play it into your 80s. Some do." like a big heavy on the rood. A light bike makes me have been killed1 many times.".