Bowles pays dearly for his success

Press, 26 July 1986, Page 18

Bowles pays dearly for his success

Peter Bowles may have found success, but it has been at a price. Sleepless nights, worry, irritability and depression have all taken their toll on the actor who will be 50 in October.

It originally stemmed from lack of public recognition, and then problems arose because he was recognised. Just seven years ago, he could walk down the street and elicit no more than a “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” look. But no more.

Now, following his rise to fame in the TV comedy series “To the Manor Born” Sundays on One at 10 a.m. and "Only When I Laugh,” followed by “The Bounder,” “The Irish R.M.” and his newest foie as a Fleet Street gossip writer, Neville Lytton,, in “Lytton’s Diary,” (yet to be screened in New Zealand) women squeal when they pass him. Some even ask if he would mind if they touch him. His fan mail is huge. He is in demand. So why the sleepless nights and the worry? “It’s a long story,” Bowles says. “You see, I’ve always been very ambitious, but somehow I felt my career simply wasn’t getting anywhere. “Just before ‘To the Manor Born’ came along I was at my lowest ebb, desperately worried that I

was about to end up on the scrap-heap as an actor. I was going out of my mind with worry. “I was even thinking of giving up acting altogether. So, in that respect, I was given a certain uplift when, after the first recording, I discovered we were on to a winner.

“Yet when it really, took off in terms of popularity, I went into a most tremendous depression. I nearly drove my family crackers.”

Bowles, the father of three grown-up children, is married to a former actress, Susan Bennett.

But how could international success bring bn great troughs of despondency? He likens it to postnatal depression. “I simply wasn’t prepared for the euphoric feeling of success when it finally came. “It took me quite some time to accept that it wasn’t just a success in Britain, but practically throughout the world — all over Europe, the Middle East, Scandinavia, Australia and North America. I’m just beginning to come to. terms with it now — after all this time.

“Every day, for the previous 23 years, I’d always get up knowing what the day was about. The day was about struggling, ambition, about getting

somewhere, doing something great in this business —• getting recognition.

“It was about not going out of my mind with frustration, with being out of work, feeling that time was passing me by, that I’d missed the boat. Having passed the age of . 40,1 was panicking.” And then, with success, he had no valid reason to panic any more. “I was confused,” he says. “When I got up in the mornings, after the success, these feelings of panic had been- taken away from me, all that striving, frustration. It had been sedated.

“All in all, I didn’t know what I wanted any more. I wasn’t quite sure what the days were for, apart from learning the wretched lines. I simply sank into this awful depression.

“I think I’m just beginning to become reconciled to the situation. I’m certainly very well aware that this sort of success, the sort that ‘Lytton’s Diary’ is giving me, has to be concreted, made secure, because ‘popularity’ is such a transitory thing.”

He frowns, and then proffers a quick smile. "Who knows?” he asks. “In a year’s time it may be quite different.” — DUO copyright.