Tom Conti: From Shirley Valentine's Greek heart-throb to Einstein

Conti, sixth from left, at the UK premiere of Oppenheimer, at the Odeon Luxe, Leicester Square in London (Image: Ian West/PA Wire)

"It is a devastating moment and is the emotive payload of the film, followed by a montage featuring rows of nuclear missiles, vapour trails of projectiles puncturing the sky, the planet being consumed by fire - and Oppenheimer's stricken face".

Conti, of course, had a role in an earlier Nolan film, as a prisoner locked up in an underground prison with Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises. “It was nice to go back to the days of films that were made with huge Hollywood money", Conti told the Daily Record in 2013. “The set was so gigantic – a bit of how it used to be".

Tom Conti (extreme left) at the European premiere of The Dark Knight Rises (Image: Dave M. Benett/WireImage)

The Paisley-born star, who is now 81, also cropped up in a supprting role in the live-action animated comedy film, Paddington 2. 

A role played with real spirit Tom Conti continues his love affair with the bottle as he returns to Scotland in the part of a man who was the toast of Hollywood, discovers Neil Cooper

In an interview nearly 30 years ago Conti said that he wouldn't mind if his film career were given a new lease of life.

"Mine is in a trough," he told the New York Times. "What I really need is a 'Silence of the Lambs' to kick-start me again, then everyone will want me -- for another 10 minutes". Conti, the interviewer noted, laughed heartily as he said this, and did not sound particularly alarmed.

Conti's films up to that point had famously included Shirley Valentine, in which he played opposite Pauline Collins; Reuben, Reuben (1982), for which he received an Oscar nomination; and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, a film set in a Japanese prison camp in 1942, in which he co-starred with David Bowie.

Conti's distinguished career also includes numerous roles on stage and TV (the latter including The Glittering Prizes, and two episodes of Friends, as the father of Ross Geller’s second wife, Emily). Here we look back at a few of them.

Heavenly Pursuits

Conti with Helen Mirren in the film Heavenly Pursuits (Image: Moviestore Collection / Rex Features)

Director Charlie Gormley, who died in 2005, made several fine pictures, including Heavenly Pursuits (1986), which was shot in Glasgow.

Conti plays an unbelieving remedial teacher at Glasgow's Blessed Edith Semple School who witnesses what may or may not be a miracle – this as the school priest lobbies the Vatican to confer sainthood on Edith. The cast also included a young Ewen Bremner.

Alison Rowat's week: Stop press - a star is born in The Herald

As our film writer Alison Rowat recalled a few years ago, Mirren and Conti came to the Herald's then Albion Street offices to film a number of scenes - and both drank in The Press Bar next door. 

Shirley Valentine

Pauline Collins and Tom Conti in Shirley Valentine (Image: PR)

Conti co-starred in this romantic 1989 film with Pauline Collins, directed by Lewis Gilbert from Willy Russell's evergreen stage play. Collins plays a bored housewife who is romanced by Conti's 'handsome rogue' while on holiday in Greece.

Speaking to the Daily Mail in 2014, Conti said his life changed when he met Collins at a dinner party in 1979. "She’s been one of my dearest friends ever since and was instrumental in me getting the role opposite her in ... Shirley Valentine. 

"We first met through our mutual friend, Gordon Jackson, who’d starred in Upstairs, Downstairs with Pauline. Gordon and his wife Rona invited Pauline and I and our partners – her husband John Alderton and my wife Kara – to their home for dinner. We spent most of the evening laughing.

"Pauline and I first worked together a few years later in 1983 in the play Romantic Comedy in the West End. Our friendship meant it was very easy to work together and we both wanted to repeat the experience. 

Death, dancing and dogma

"Three years later my wife Kara and I went to see Pauline in the play Shirley Valentine, and afterwards we all went for a drink. The film director Lewis Gilbert was also there and Pauline introduced us. I said to Lewis, ‘When you make the movie of this, you have to let me play Costas.’

A few years later I was working in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, when the phone rang. It was Lewis, who wanted to come and talk to me because he was finally making the movie version of Shirley Valentine with Pauline. 

Favourites take a bow

He flew out to see me and as we sat chatting in a street cafe, a man came up and asked for my autograph. Lewis said, ‘Well, if you’re that famous, I’d better give you the role of Costas straight away.’ None of this might have happened if Pauline hadn’t introduced us".

In a BBC South East interview in 2015 Conti said: "Plays or books, or the arts generally, I think don't change people's lives. I think in a way that did, for a short time at least, encourage people to look at their spouses and try and remember what it was they fell in love with, because that is what this play is about".

One Helluva Life Tom Conti in One Helluva Life, at the King's Theatre, Glasgow, in 2003 (Image: PR)Early in 2003 Conti returned to the Glasgow stage for virtually the first time in 30 years to play, to critical acclaim, the Hollywood actor John Barrymore (above).

Conti, naturally

Conti's first encounter with the play came during a dinner at the home of film director Bryan Forbes and his actress wife, Nanette Newman. They'd seen it on Broadway, and suggested it might be a good vehicle for Conti. One script purloined later, and the project was in motion, with Forbes coming on board as director.

Donovan

Tom Conti in the role of Donovan (Image: Granada TV)

In 2004 Conti, then 62, made his first foray into British television for 20 years. Donovan was a two-part thriller from Granada, in which Conti played a forensic scientist who had left his day job to become a best-selling author, only to be dragged back into his old life when a murder scene has his name literally written all over it. 

DNA reveals Conti is Napoleon relation

The Glasgow Herald noted at the time: "Like David Jason's Frost and the late John Thaw's Morse, Donovan is a seriously flawed, grumpy individual, and proof that age can be a good thing on TV. In those terms [Conti's] performance is a success.

"I can never understand why they always say they want young people to watch more television", Conti said. "I think young people should be out of the house doing other things. It's older people who watch these programmes. That is why Foyle's War has been such a hit - because it speaks to an older, often forgotten generation. I hope Donovan will appeal to them too".

Twelve Angry MenTom Conti (left) in the Bill Kenwright production of Twelve Angry Men (Image: Anton Belmonte)

In March 2014 it was reported that Conti was to replace Martin Shaw in the role of Juror Number Eight in the courtroom classic, Twelve Angry Men, and taking the role famously played by Henry Fonda in Sidney Lumet's film version. "All I can think about now," Conti said, "is learning the goddamned lines".