Playboy Interview: Peter Sellers

During the arduous process of completing 16 films in five years, Peter Sellers has gained an international reputation as England's most lustrous comedian. The peerless portrayer of Lolita's malevolent Quilty submerges himself so completely in his roles (an Indian doctor, a Graustarkian Prime Minister, an unconscionable car thief, a Welsh librarian), that the "real" Peter Sellers has had little chance to stand up. People conditioned by his chameleonlike cinematic tours de force find it something of a visual and aural surprise to meet the 36-year-old Sellers off camera. Unprepossessing and painfully shy, attired in a nondescript gray suit set off by an innocuous tie, Sellers held forth for Playboy for four hours in his dressing room at Shepperton film studios in London's outskirts. During his soft-spoken answers to our queries, his eyes searched the floor through thick-rimmed glasses for some elusive wellspring of inspiration in an obviously gracious attempt to muster the verbal virtuosity associated with the acting profession. That he communicated well was more a tribute to Sellers' determination to express his thoughts than a natural loquacity. (The news, learned as we went to press, that Sellers and his wife had separated, supplies a melancholy postscript to his voiced longings for familial stability.)

[Q] Playboy: Within a short period of time you have progressed from being an English radio comedian to international star status. Do you regard yourself as a star?

[A] Sellers: No, I'm not a star. I'm a character actor. The character actor must tailor his talent to the parts that are offered. If I were a leading man, a tall, good-looking sort of chap, you know, a chap who has a way with him, who gets parts tailored for his personality, like Cary Grant, then I could regard myself as a star. I'm not a star, because I have no personality of my own.

[Q] Playboy: Hasn't success enabled you to find your personality?

[A] Sellers: Success hasn't enabled me to find out anything about myself. I just know I can do certain things. If you go too deep into yourself, if you analyze yourself too closely, it's no good for the job. You can either act or you can't. If you analyze your own emotions all the time, and every doorknob you handle, you know, you're up the spout.

[Q] Playboy: But supposing you were asked to play a character called Peter Sellers, how would you play him?

[A] Sellers: What I would do, I'd go to see all my friends, I'd go to see my acquaintances, and ask them how they see me, ask for their impressions of Peter Sellers. And then I would sift these characterizations. That's all I can do, because I am quite unaware of what I am. A politician can see himself, can see what sort of an impact he is making. I can't. I know I'm a bad conversationalist. Often I'm at parties, and people think Peter Sellers is going to do an act, and they wait, and when nothing is forthcoming, they're disappointed.

[Q] Playboy: Don't you see a concrete personality when you look in the mirror?

[A] Sellers: It's difficult but – er – I suppose what I'd see is someone who has never grown up, a wild sentimentalist, capable of great heights and black, black depths – a person who has no real voice of his own. I'm like a mike. I have no set sound of my own. I pick it up from my surroundings. At the moment I've got a South African architect working on my new flat in Hampstead, and so I tend to speak in a South African accent all the time. As for the face in the mirror, well – my appearance is fattish, a more refined-looking Pierre Laval, sometimes happy, but always trying to achieve a peace of mind that doesn't seem possible in this business. This business breeds a tension that is difficult to live with.

[Q] Playboy: What precisely produces this tension in you?

[A] Sellers: The knowledge that the business is so short-lived. Success is so brief. It's not like being part of a big business that you're with for the rest of your life. That would lead to tranquillity. I almost want the whole thing to crumble around me. That keeps me at it – making me think I've got to be good. It's a tension of thinking that unless you're number one it's no good. You do three bad pictures in a row and it's all over. The other part of the tension is the unreal life you lead. Being well-known is a problem to me. Whatever you do, somebody wants to say something about it or photograph it. But that's all part of it, part of what you want, you realize that's the life you've chosen. You're stuck with it.

[Q] Playboy: You sound as if you had very little enthusiasm for your own work.

[A] Sellers: No enthusiasm, no confidence. I don't make quite as many mistakes as I used to. But the work hasn't progressed as I'd like it to. I can't achieve what I want to achieve. There's this constant gap between what one does and what one wants to have done. You go and see your rushes and you begin to wonder if you'll ever be able to judge your own work. And there's this other thing. The more success you have, the more people want to have a go at you in the press. And I just haven't got the confidence to shrug off what is said about me. Some actors say they're above criticism. They say they don't read it. I don't believe them.

[Q] Playboy: Do you tend to veer between optimism and pessimism?

[A] Sellers: I get the same thing old Peter Finch gets. We call it the Blacks. They descend on me, the Blacks, usually after seeing the rough cut of my last picture in some private cinema. And it's the end, just the end. The whole thing looks terrible. Then I just want to pack it all in and look around quickly for a means of employment ... suicide. Who can you talk to, who'd understand your problem, who can you unload your mind to? Then, after a few days you get over it. I read, drive, try to lose myself in something, anything.

[Q] Playboy: Has driving a special significance for you?

[A] Sellers: Yes, I've got this car thing. It started when I was working in vaudeville. I'd always wanted a car. Then I bought one. Then I started to change them at an alarming rate. Since 1948, I've had 60 different cars. This chap, this car salesman in North London, opened up a showroom entirely for my benefit. I'd go to him with this mad lust for cars inside me, and see something I'd want and get it. And next day I'd be back trading it in for another car. Now I've finally got what I want. The Bristol 407. It's perfect. I didn't know such a car existed. The Bentley Continental wasn't bad for room, for speed, for comfort and silence, but the 407 combines everything. I've had it over a month now. I'm happy with it. I'll only change it if they improve the model. I just love motoring. It's a search for perfection. Probably there is a link between this search and the other one, the one in my work. One is a search for perfection in a machine, the other stems from a great sense of depression, at being unable to supply what I know I should be able to deliver.

[Q] Playboy: You also change your residence fairly frequently. Is that part of the same search?

[A] Sellers: I suppose so. My wife and I recently sold our home in Chipper field and for a while we lived at the Carlton Tower hotel. That was a sort of clearinghouse while we looked around. I liked living at the Carlton Tower. I liked the atmosphere. Now we've taken a flat in Hampstead. I want to find out if flat living is OK. We've spent a lot of money on the flat. It would be nice to stay there permanently. But my idea of permanence is about five years. I have always been restless. My grandparents were the same. Always on the move. I certainly have inherited this lack of a foundation, this lack of roots. When we moved into Chipper field, I said this is it, this is where I'm going to stay. But after a while you get this call to move on, to try something else. I think being half Jewish has a lot to do with it. That and the business. I have a feeling I'm not going to stay anywhere for very long. One tries to create roots – it's vital for the children. I want to get them settled, so that they have a feeling of belonging somewhere. But they've probably inherited my restlessness. They never seem to mind moving.

[Q] Playboy: With what kind of people do you feel most at home?

[A] Sellers: I have a small group of friends who make me feel I belong. What have they got in common? They're all in the profession, of course. They're people who've shared three phases with me – the Air Force, vaudeville and radio. And now they're sharing the film phase with me. I know they're interested in me, not because of any achievements I may have had, or because I am, if you'll excuse the word, Peter Sellers. Yes, they're all men. I don't think it's possible to have women friends. I don't believe in platonic friendship with women. Sooner or later something springs out of it.

[Q] Playboy: What do you need most – the admiration of men, women or professionals?

[A] Sellers: As an actor, what I need most is the admiration of professionals, other actors. As a not-very-attractive man, I need the admiration of women. Very tall, good-looking actors have a different problem altogether. I'm very lucky being married to a very pretty girl, but I'm very conscious of not being anything to look at. One of these very handsome stars once said to me, "Jesus," he said, "I admire your acting. Let's face it, I'm just good-looking." And I thought, just good-looking! And there he was staving off all these luscious birds ...

[Q] Playboy: Do you tend to spend freely on yourself?

[A] Sellers: Yes, very freely. I used to think: one day I can buy this and that, and now I can. Buying what I want is not really extravagance. If you bought what you don't need – that would be extravagance. But then I can always persuade myself that I need what I buy. I don't believe in being the richest man in the cemetery. As long as the family is provided for – my mum and dad, my wife, my two children – that's all right. It's fine to be rich when you're 60, but I think now (I'm 36) is the time to enjoy it. If I see some gadget or car and want it, I buy it. I have the bloody thing. Everybody's provided for, and I'm in the black with the tax people, so what I've got is my own, and I enjoy it. I certainly haven't got a guilt complex about spending. I'll go to any extreme to help other people – but I don't believe in doing charity work publicly. I don't believe in this Look-God-I've-been-good-today mentality. If I do it, I want to do it unseen, not to make my niche up in heaven a little larger.

[Q] Playboy: You're known as one of the hardest working actors in the industry. Do you feel a compulsion to work?

[A] Sellers: Well, what else is there? I don't really want to do more than two pictures a year. That's the ideal. But then you get to a position where you really get mixed up. There's all this stuff to sift through and you don't know what to do. I think there is a certain pattern an actor falls into. A lot of actors try to break it. You meet them and they say they've found it, something marvelous – like Buddhism. Some Indian bloke who stands up against a wall all day. That's it. That's the secret. And they hold up walls for a while, and next time you meet them they're back in the old routine, doing the same old job. I suppose the thing is to take off to some little place and think – that would be good. But I don't relax easily. And the moment you do stop work they all descend on you – you get all the moguls with ideas: producers, they come round and they say, this is good, Peter, this is wonderful, they say, we must do it right now, and you say all right, and most of the time there isn't even a script. These days properties are discussed and set up in a strange way. Just on an idea, not a script. I know it's exciting to have an idea, but it's more exciting to have a screenplay. Take Peter Pan. All I've ever done is to say I like the idea of playing Captain Cook, but I've never even seen a script, and everybody seems to think it's all set up. And it isn't.

[Q] Playboy: How do you go about preparing for a role after you have accepted it?

[A] Sellers: Well, having got to the stage where one sees a final script and has discussed the part with all concerned, I start with the voice. I find out how the character sounds. It's through the way he speaks that I find out the rest about him. I suppose that approach comes from having worked in radio for so long. After the voice comes the looks of the man. I do a lot of drawings of the character I play. Then I get together with the makeup man and we sort of transfer my drawings onto my face. An involved process. After that I establish how the character walks. Very important, the walk. And then, suddenly, something strange happens. The person takes over. The man you play begins to exist. I sink myself completely into every character I play, because he has begun to live in me. I suddenly seem to know what sort of life that man has had and how he would react to a given situation. Other character actors go for the makeup first and start from that.

[Q] Playboy: How does this complete identification with a part affect your home-life?

[A] Sellers: Not at all. My wife is aware of it, though, especially when it's a nasty part, as in Never Let Go. I was sort of edgy with her while we made that film. Then, while I was making The Millionairess – I played an Indian – I was very serene. But what I do do while making a film – I eat in my dressing room, not in the canteen, so as not to break my train of thought. That way I don't get out of my mood. Then on the way home I try and drive it off – and come home a half-demented, raving, shrieking idiot from the rush hour.

[Q] Playboy: What do you find stimulates you most in your work?

[A] Sellers: Seeing other people's work. The finished product. I can see perfection in other people's performances. People like Trevor Howard or, when he was still alive, Bob Donat. I thought he was a god. People like that are superb, so good that one is not aware that they are acting. Going to see a great actor makes me feel completely exhilarated and dejected at the same time. I ask myself, how did it happen, how did he do it? I find that stimulating.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever indulge in fantasies of being something other than an actor?

[A] Sellers: Yes, I often feel I'd like to be a free-lance photographer, going round the world and snapping things at the right moment. I'd like to be another Cartier-Bresson. That sort of a photographer. To be invisible and take great pictures. I've had a lot of my pictures published in Queen recently. And I'm hoping that other magazines will become interested in my work. Perhaps I'll get assignments. When I was doing Lolita, four national newspapers were after me to take pictures on the set. But it couldn't be done.

[Q] Playboy: Your attempt to direct yourself in I Love Money was not an unqualified success in the opinion of many critics. Do you still want to direct?

[A] Sellers: No, I've abdicated from that idea, at least from directing a picture in which I also appear. I have another subject in mind I'm anxious to direct, but I won't act in it as well. Never again. I might become a producer, though. That seems a good thing. You can still be part of the business, without actually being in it, so to speak ... although I don't suppose it's a more peaceful life.

[Q] Playboy: Besides your work, what do you feel most strongly about?

[A] Sellers: Well, my family, of course, and that embraces my father and mother. Apart from that, nothing. I don't take sides in politics. I have a Victorian out-look. I don't like taking part. Becoming part of some large group never does any good. Maybe that's my problem with religion. I'm going through the throes at the moment. That's because I'm nothing. I wasn't baptized. I wasn't Bar Mitzvahed. I suppose my basic religion is doing unto others as they would do unto me. But I find it all very difficult. I am more inclined to believe in the old Testament than in the New, though I believe in not doing a dirty turn to anyone. I never tell people to do anything, because I never do anything myself when I'm told to do it, only when I'm asked. This attitude comes from having been in the service. I believe in my own set of values – God is very close – God knows all. He likes to see you in church. Fair enough. But I'm not comfortable about organized religion. Sooner or later one has to make a decision. I know that. I haven't quite made it. That's the trouble with me.