Anything Goes (28 page)

It didn’t take long for that party gene to kick in. We headed back to our digs and the five of us – Eve, Burn, Naoko, Gareth and I – had a blow-out night together. We drank too much, laughed too much and sang too loud. At one point, Gareth hit his head on an antique brass bell and we thought we’d killed him. The landlord complained about the noise
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and then he accused Burn of moving the bathtub. Have you seen the size of Burn? The bathtub had to weigh 500 lbs.

We told ghost stories and managed to scare the shit out of each other – so much so that in the middle of the night, I knocked on Evie’s door in my Transformer PJs (she answered in a thong and a bra). We cuddled up in bed together and protected each other from the ghoulies like a couple of terrified siblings.

The next morning, we were all a bit worse for wear when we gathered in the make-up trailer, to say nothing of what we sounded like trying to explain the nasty gash on Gareth’s forehead, which had to be covered up.

Sometimes, the crew joins us in our rambunctiousness. In one of the early episodes of the second series, Ianto has a meltdown in the Hub one night, for reasons far too complicated to go into here,
but if you’ve seen it, you’ll know. I have to admit it’s one of my favourite episodes to date. Anyway, while Jack comforts Ianto, he shifts from innocent consolation to a full-on, passionate embrace and kiss.

Gareth and I ‘assumed the position’ and went for it. The episode’s director never called ‘cut’. By the time Gareth and I were hitting the two-minute mark, my lips were getting numb and Gareth was getting twitchy.

‘You fuckers!’ we both yelled in unison, when we finally realized what was going on and pulled apart.

The delight of the crew was obvious and the joke carried them for hours through a tough shoot. Sometimes that’s the whole point of having a laugh or pulling a prank or two or three: the residual benefit of the laughter and the release of stress helps you to deal with the long day or night ahead.

Since we began
Torchwood,
Burn and his wife Sara have had a son, Max; we’ve been trying to get Naoko a boyfriend; and we’re teaching Gareth how to deal with newfound celebrity. Eve and her partner Brad, and Scott and I have both bought homes in the Cardiff area. The cast has bonded as a family, and we’ve also grown to love the important people in each other’s lives.

Once, when my niece Clare was visiting Cardiff, she and I headed down to the Bay for dinner, where we met up with Eve and Brad. Clare and Eve hit it off immediately, and we all moved together from the restaurant to a bar in town, where two of my favourite girls proceeded to have a champagne-chugging contest
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to see who could drink a bottle the fastest. Not as easy as you might imagine. I called the contest a draw when I noticed they were downing £60 bottles of the good stuff. Eve and Clare and I
were singing so loudly that night, we eventually got kicked out of the bar.

I remember Elaine Paige telling me in the early days of my career that when your work family and your real family support you equally, you’re on the right road. As Eve, Clare and I stumbled home that night, the road felt pretty steady under my feet.

‘Live, Laugh, Love’

A
fter school one afternoon in 1985, I had a conference with my high school’s guidance counsellor. As part of her responsibilities, she was interviewing all the graduating seniors and chatting with them about their career goals. My interview went something like this.

‘John, what are your plans?’

‘I’m going to be an actor.’

‘But what will you study in college?’

‘Drama and theatre.’

‘But what else are you going to do?’

‘I don’t want to do anything else.’

‘John, you need a plan B.’

She kept insisting that I think about majoring in something like English or history or business or psychology or communication, anything, anything ‘serious’, so that I could be assured of having a job when ‘the acting thing’ didn’t work out. She actually used the phrase, ‘the acting thing’. I was getting angrier by the minute.

‘Seriously, John, you need to have something to fall back on.’

‘Listen,’ I finally said, standing up to leave, ‘if I fall back on
anything, it’ll be my ass. I’ll get a plan B, if or when I actually need one.’

To date, I’ve never needed a plan B. I’d no idea that men, women and children would embrace me as a performer as much as they have, or that Captain Jack would be so popular, but I’m thankful for both. I certainly never set out to be a hero to gay men and women, although I’ve perhaps become one, as the piles of letters and emails I regularly receive attest. I’m just a regular guy, and I’m humbled and honoured by fans’ recognition. Their sentiments touch me deeply.

In the prologue to the philosopher Bertrand Russell’s
The Autobiography,
a piece I was once assigned to read in high school, Russell writes, ‘Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.’

When I was an adolescent, I could understand and even appreciate the first two, but it wasn’t until I was an adult that I recognized the existential nature of the third. Being a man of integrity and compassion in the twenty-first century is not always easy, but I do what I can and will continue to do what I can. My own passions are my family, including my dogs, my ability to entertain, and my love of life and all I can make of it.

As you’ve read, many people have shaped my passions and made me who I am at this, the midpoint (I hope) of my life. Pardon me while I spin three times again and touch all the wood I can reach. Any magpies nearby? Since I’ve known him, another Russell has taught me a similar message about living a life of integrity. With his nonchalance, his frankness, his brilliant skills as a writer, and his straightforward approach to life, love and laughter, Russell T. Davies’s friendship has been an added bonus to playing Captain Jack.

At a press conference once, Russell and I were on a panel together to discuss
Torchwood.
A journalist for one of the baser tabloids asked Russell what the ‘T’ in his name stood for.

‘Some other fucker in the business is called Russell Davies, and when he dies, I’ll drop the “T”,’ Russell replied.

He then proceeded to berate the reporter for asking inane questions. The audience, full of other journalists I might add, was eating out of the palm of Russell’s hand by the close of the session, because he responded to them with honesty, respect and good humour. Well, except for the guy he rebuked.

Two years before I left university in San Diego to study Shakespeare in England, I travelled alone to New York to visit my friend Anthony Rapp, and to see my first live Broadway shows. Anthony and I, you may remember, performed together in Joliet West High School’s 1983 production of
Oliver!
Off and on through my early college experiences, Anthony, who was a few years behind me in school, and I kept in touch.

Anthony had been acting professionally since he was quite young. In 1986–7, he was playing Freddy, the youngest of two sons, in George Furth’s family drama
Precious Sons,
at the Longacre Theater in New York. Anthony’s co-stars in the play were Judith Ivey and Ed Harris. I was psyched to be heading to the Big Apple to see Anthony perform and to see some real Broadway shows for the first time in my life.

On that trip, Anthony and I went to see Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey Into Night,
starring Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher – whom I love as an actor and who was brilliant in Sam Mendes’s
American Beauty –
and Kevin Spacey, who played Lemmon’s character’s youngest son in the play and who was also great in
American Beauty.
After this show, Anthony and I found our way
backstage and I ended up having a whisky in Jack Lemmon’s dressing room while we listened to him tell stories about Broadway and Hollywood, Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis, and about the ‘good old days’ of theatre. Kevin Spacey came down to say hello and ended up joining us for drinks.

Later that evening, Anthony, Kevin and I went for a bite to eat, and then Kevin took us to the Limelight Club, a dance club in Manhattan in a converted old church, where I drank vodka tonics with Phoebe Cates and a very young Drew Barrymore. A vodka tonic was the only mixed drink I knew back then because I’d ordered them all the time on my dad’s tab.
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On my last afternoon in New York, before I had to fly home, I went to see Rupert Holmes’s musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s unfinished novel
The Mystery of Edwin Drood,
which remains one of my favourite musicals. Despite the ominous tone of the title, the show was funny and poignant and, although I didn’t understand this until much later, it owed a huge debt to the English pantomime tradition. Characters talked to the audience, the audience jeered at and taunted the characters, and a woman played the title character, the orphan Edwin Drood. Years before I came to know her as one of my leading ladies, I sat in the balcony of a theatre on Broadway and I watched Betty Buckley perform as Drood.

No matter how many shows I’ve seen or performed since that trip to New York, no matter how many scripts I’ve read or songs I’ve sung, I often return to those days and remember how I felt that afternoon watching Betty Buckley belt it out, or recall the excitement building up inside me while I lounged on a dressing-room couch, listening to a legend like Jack Lemmon tell stories. I knew then that I wanted to be an entertainer.

Charles Dickens’s
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
has no conclusion and neither does this autobiography. My ending isn’t written yet, my show’s not over. Stay in your seats. This is only the intermission.

Timeline