Jeremy Brett Information :: Fact File

JB Fact File: Sir Robert Stephens

Robert's Yahoo Biography Profile: here.
Robert Stephens IMDb page: here.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Original trailer): here.
Sir Robert Stephens, obituary by Adam Benedick: here.
Sir Robert's honoured with blue plaque: here.

Robert Stephens, known simply to his thoroughly working class family as ‘Our Bob’, was born in Bristol on the 14th of July 1931.
His father, Reuben, was a shipyard labourer, and his mother, Gladys, was a factory worker (working for Fry’s Chocolate).

Robert had a terrible childhood: with no money, no prospects

and very little love. His robust father - though moved to

tears by touching radio plays - was prone to fits of violence

towards his wife. Robert was an unfortunate, and regular,

witness to his father’s brutality. In turn, Gladys, not the most

maternal of women, took all her bitterness and frustration out

on her son.

The only reprieve for young Robert came on Weekends, which

were spent with his doting grandparents.

One day, when Robert was still very little, his Nan feared that

Gladys had broken her grandson’s back, because his mother had

whacked him so hard with her boilder stick -- Robert would grow up

to find all manner of unnecessary physical violence abhorrent.

In 1949, Robert won a free two-year scholarship to Bradford Civic Theatre School, which was run by Esme Church. Esme was very insistent on the fact that Robert needed to develop appropriate thespian diction, if he were to play Shakespearian classics with any conviction, and so the process of removing his regional accent began.

After a lot of mediocre work with the Caryl Jenner Mobile Theatre and
Morecambe Repertory - avoiding National Service due to flat feet - he
joined a touring production of ‘Not a Clue’ in 1953, where he met actress
Tarn Bassett, and fell head-over-hills in love.

Robert joined the Manchester Library Theatre in 1954 as a character
juvenile, where he met the 21-year-old Jeremy Brett. Robert had
never met anyone so elegant, so charming, so ‘Etonian’ as Jeremy
in his life - he was fascinated. Robert, a man that could not have had
a more different upbringing to his own, equally intrigued Jeremy.
Jeremy and Robert were to balance up the classes between them,
becoming life long friends.

"Jeremy snuggled up to me and to Tarn. We became inseparable
best friends" (Page 22: Knight Errant)

The two actors did not share a very glamorous existence together; they
rented a chilly and noisy two bedroomed flat over the last letter A, in the
Astoria's neon sign. Fights would break out downstairs in the ballroom
every weekend, and their rooms would be dark blue with damp and fug
in the winter. Despite all this, both actors were having the time of their
lives, and could not have been happier.

In April 1956 Robert Stephens married Tarn Bassett at Saint Columba’s Church, Pond Street, Chelsea (with Jeremy Brett as best man). In the same year: Robert joined the Royal Court in
London for important plays such as Look Back in Anger and
The Crucible.

Film roles were to follow shortly afterwards, in Pirates of
Tortuga (1961), and A Taste of Honey (1961). Then after a brief
appearance in Cleopatra (1963), he played Charles Napier
in Morgan! (1966).

Robert's marriage to Tarn was to end in divorce in 1967. Robert had fallen in love with Maggie Smith, and had made her pregnant, testing Tarn’s patient and forgiving nature to breaking point.

Maggie Smith was to become Robert's third wife, they were to have two children together: Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin.

It was during his turbulent marriage to Maggie Smith - who he claimed - became an intolerable Drynamil addict (after filming The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1969), that Robert began turning to the bottle for solace, and became a full-blown alcoholic.

In 1969, troubled Robert, landed the lead role in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. However, the movie was not to be his golden ticket to on-screen success. Director, Billy Wilder, an extreme perfectionist, became quite literary obsessed with making the Holmes spoof utterly prefect, making Robert time putting down an object at the exact syllable in a word. During the gruelling twenty-nine weeks of production, Wilder’s demands on Robert became increasingly severe and ludicrous. No scene was ever wrapped up until every word was exact, no matter how tired and frustrated Robert appeared to be, Wilder only stopped when he got exactly what he wanted. The strain of filming, combined with his increasingly troubled marriage, culminated in Robert’s first nervous breakdown.

By 1971, Robert was drinking more heavily than ever. He decided to tell Maggie Smith that he had been having affairs with other women, which only made her treatment of him worse. Shortly after this, on the persuasion of Brian Kanarek, Robert booked himself into a private nursing home:

"The only really constant friends I had through all this were Christopher Downes, whom Maggie liked very much and Jeremy Brett, whom Maggie did not like at all. They really were my life-savers. Everything seemed to be falling apart. Larry had convinced himself - quite wrongly - that Maggie and I had set up that Los Angeles production of Design for Living on National Theatre notepaper. Our days were numbered there, and I had offended my mentor, my greatest friend and hero. My private life was a shambles. I was rock bottom.
Jeremy took me to the nursing home, where they wouldn't accept me at first because I was drunk; I was so desperate I had found a bottle of vodka in Jeremy's flat where I had stayed the night before, and swallowed most of it. But eventually they took me in and gave me a shot of sedatives. Two nights later I skipped out and went to find Jeremy at his theatre - he was appearing in John Mortimer’s A Voyage Round My Father at the Haymarket. I was very unhappy, and in a terrible state. But I went back into the nursing home until I could stand it no longer.
At this point Jeremy took me home and looked after me. People often assume that we must have been lovers, but our friendship, forged in those early days in Manchester went far deeper than that. I’m afraid that the idea of jumping into bed with a hairy-arsed sailor, let alone Jeremy Brett, who is an immensely attractive man, fills me with horror" (Page 117 and 118: Knight Errant)

Once out of the nursing home the marital squabbling continued without respite until Binkie Beaumont suggested the unhappy couple did the Noel Coward play, Private Lives, together in 1972. Their joint performance was their final attempt to salvage something of their marriage. The attempt was not to prove successful:

"Binkie Beaumont, increasingly distressed by our bickering, rang Jeremy up to ask if he could do anything to help, and I moved out of Queen’s Elm Square and went to live with Jeremy in Notting Hill for about six months. Again I was desperately unhappy and there’s no doubt that the booze was within me and I’d lost my way. But the booze was only a painkiller. My career was at the crossroads, my marriage had failed and there seemed to be nowhere for me to go" (Page 120: Knight Errant)

Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens divorce was finalised in April 1975. Maggie Smith’s marriage to Beverley Cross was soon to follow, after which, she moved to Canada with her new husband, taking Robert’s two sons with her (shutting Robert out of their lives in the process). Robert was to find himself in a mental hospital shortly afterwards, suffering from a breakdrown.

In 1975, Robert Stephens played Sherlock Holmes again. This time for a stage production revival of the William Gillette - Conan Doyle play, at the BroadHurst in New York. Even though Robert’s career was in a peculiar state of unresolved tension, his personal life was very much on the up by this time. He had met actress Patricia Quinn in early 1975 after Chris Downes had begged Robert to watch the Rocky Horror Show with him. Robert and Patricia met backstage and hit it off instantly; and a lasting bond of love, understanding and friendship was formed.

In the 1990’s despite ill-health, caused by years of heavy drinking and the devoplment of diabetes, Robert returned to the stage with huge success. He was awarded the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 1993 for Best Actor for his performance as Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV, for the Royal Shakespeare Company. And he was much praised for his chilling performance as King Lear.

Before his death in 1995 Robert was Knighted and married Patricia Quinn (pictured above). He also found time to release his memiors: Knight Errant - Memoirs of a Vagabond Actor.

Sir Robert might have been physically ill - having liver, as well as, kidney problems - at the end of his life, but he was a jolly rouge to the very end: a man who was proud to say he had lived life to the full, and had few regets. Robert died in his sleep in hospital on the 12th of November 1995 due to complications during surgery.