जीवनी

Alfred Burke

He and Barbara Bonelle had two sets of twins: Jacob and Harriet, born 1956; and Kelly and Louisa, born 1960.
During the Second World War, he registered as a conscientious objector and was put to work as a rural labourer.
Appeared at the National Theatre in London in Jonathan Kent's production of Oedipus. Burke, aged 90, played The Shepherd.
Joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in his late 60s and continued on for nearly two decades.
He spent 3 years with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

I think nowadays you're more responsible for yourself as an actor. You are expected to take more responsibility for yourself and you do. And your own opinions for instance, nowadays would be much more important than they were in my time when your own opinion didn't count for much. You did what you were told or what was suggested to you. The sort of thing you did was imitate older actors actually.
What makes people a good director, it's a mystery. I mean, I did a lot of directing in my day, at Farnham, I've no idea what sort of director I was but these were people, they were good organizers, they were well read, cultured used to be the word, they knew what they were doing, they knew their history of the theatre.
In weekly rep of course you had to learn a new act every day, every night, after the show. You'd go home and you'd go to bed and start learning your lines for the following day so you'd rehearse an act a day and you had to learn all the lines for one act in one fell swoop. That really was hard work but somehow you know everybody did it. I don't think people would do it now.