So at dinner in the Worsley Arms, over the sole and white Burgundy, we discussed the terrible scream that blinded Oedipus gave at the New Theatre just after the Second World War.
‘It wasn’t an “ah”, or an “ugh” — more an “err”,’ he said.
‘What was wonderful,’ I remembered, ‘was the endless pause, before you felt the pain.’
‘Hardly new. It’s exactly the same as timing a double-take in comedy. You know what I had to do to make that pain sound real? I had to think of animals. I thought of foxes screaming. With their paws caught in the teeth of a trap.’ He held out his wrists, stiff and helpless. ‘And then I heard about how they catch ermine. It was a great help to me when I heard about that.’
‘How do they catch ermine?’
‘You don’t know?’ Lord Olivier looked at me in amazement. ‘In the Arctic they put down salt and the ermine comes to lick it.’ He became a small, thirsty animal. ‘And his tongue freezes to the ice. I thought about that when I screamed as Oedipus.’
In Character: Interviews w/ Some Most Influential Remarkable Men Women Our Time
John Mortimer
Photos from: Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography
Laurence Olivier