Monday 4 November 2013

Britain is no longer a country for an old Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, played by an old actor, David Suchet

As the last tv episode of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, 'Hercule Poirot', airs this month, David Suchet, who has played him for a quarter of a century, over 70  episodes to 700 million viewers worldwide, bids farewell to one of his "very dear best friends”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmx6dQJf_rk

Things you possibly didn't know about David aa Hecule, that he :

* first donned the iconic moustache in 1988 filming 'The Adventure of the Clapham Cook' and makes his last appearance on 13 November with : 'Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case' which he filmed after going on a nine-month diet and sheding two and a half stone to play the detective as a much older man, confined to a wheelchair and dying.

* is said, by Michele Buck, the Executive Producer, to know Hercule "inside out” and "has read all the books and written on a bit of paper every single detail and nuance that may affect the character” which he carried with him at all times during filming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo8b6wyV_2U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZJpGq6W1bw

* is also said by Michele to be "the most charming, avuncular, witty, generous man. He’s really collaborative, he cares. He knows his lines. He researches. He does these huge 10-page denouements, and to deliver it with conviction and correctly takes an awful lot of work.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ficM-ibey7Q

* was picked to play Hercule by the Christie Estate and said he had made a promise to the writer’s daughter Rosalind Hicks, not to make Poirot a caricature and told  : “You can smile with Poirot but we must never laugh at him.”

* filmed the last episode as the first, so he did not become too emotional and waved 'goodbye' with a poignant last shot and then had a two-month break eating the weight back on.

* filmed the last scene of the final episode, 'Dead Man’s Folly' in front of Agatha Christie’s house and walking through the front door said: "Who am I now? Am I David Suchet walking into Agatha Christie’s house or Poirot walking into the location ?"

* is considered to be the definitive Poirot, who was first played on stage by Charles Laughton in 1928 in the ‘Alibi’, followed with Austin Trevor on screen followed over the years by seven more, including Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney.

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