David Tennant

“Look at that cover, Time Bandits. Terry Gilliam was one of the Monty Python crew, team. Still is, I guess. It’s not a club that you leave. And Time Bandits I think was probably the first film of his I saw. It’s just got this extraordinary imagination. There’s just nothing really like it. It sees the world through Terry Gilliam’s brain, which is fascinating and very pleasing. Some great performances in this. David Warner I remember being very good. Sean Connery. Ralph Richardson. Ian Holm.”

“This, The Importance of Being Earnest. I’ve always loved this play. I’m probably never going to be in it now. I’m a little bit too old. This, I suppose, was kind of the acme of productions of it. It’s got the famous line, “A handbag?” Edith Evans delivering that famous Oscar Wilde line and having it captured forever on film. Michael Redgrave as well, right? A perfect telling of a great bit of writing.”

“His Girl Friday. Cary Grant, there’s something sort of otherworldly about Cary Grant. You can’t imagine he was a human being who walked amongst us. He was the perfect, ultimate movie star, and he just did his thing. He just was Cary Grant. His characters had names that weren’t Cary Grant, but he was always Cary Grant and it was a glorious thing to witness. He was like a sort of perfect cocktail. And him and Rosalind Russell in this movie are two perfect cocktails.”

“12 Angry Men might be my very favorite film of all time. I remember – I would have been 16, maybe – and this came on the TV at Christmas time, late one night, my parents had gone to bed and I sat and watched this film, not really knowing anything about it, and being absolutely enthralled. So it’s about the mechanics of an actual case, which is fascinating in itself, but then, of course, it’s also about all our inbuilt prejudices. Henry Fonda is magnificent, glorious. Lee J. Cobb. That’s him.”

“David Lean Directs Noël Coward. So there’s… Oh, there’s four movies on here. Brief Encounter is probably the one that I am most excited about here. It’s a love story, and it’s about people having an affair, an illicit affair. And yet all told through the micro-gestures and moments of eyes darting, hands touching. Beautifully shot. The sumptuousness of the black and whites and the billowing steam from the train engines, and just as a study of humanity, it’s a really beautiful film.”

“A box set here of Olivier’s three Shakespeare adaptations. As a drama student, these are the kind of things you kind of think, “Well, what… what did the greatest Shakespearean actor of all time, how did he do it? What were his choices?” Obviously, they are slightly from a different time. Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III – they’re a little dated now, in some ways, and yet there’s something in the essence of what he did and how he uses that language. He made it kind of sexy and raw.”