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The fool increases words; a man does not know what will be, and what will be behind him, who will tell him? Kohelet 10:14 |
Steven Berkoff (born 3 August 1937) is an English actor, writer and director. Best known for his performance as General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy, he is typically cast in villanous roles, such as Lt. Col Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II, Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop, and Adolf Hitler in epic mini-series War and Remembrance.
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Berkoff was born Leslie Steven Berks, in Stepney, in the East End of London, on 3 August 1937, the son of Pauline (Hyman) and Alfred Berks (Berkovitch), who was a tailor. His family was of Romanian Jewish background. He attended Raine's Foundation Grammar School (1948-50), Hackney Downs School, the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art (1958), and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq (1965).
As well as being an actor, Berkoff is a playwright and director.
He joined the Repertory Company at Her Majesty's Theatre in Barrow-in-Furness for approximately two months in 1962.
His earliest plays are adaptations of works by Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1969); In the Penal Colony (1969); and The Trial (1971); these complex psychological plays are said to be nightmarish and to create a disturbing sense of alienation in their audiences.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote a series of verse plays including: East (1975); Greek (1980); Decadence (1981); West (1983); Sink the Belgrano! (1986); Massage (1997); Sturm und Drang; and The Secret Love Life of Ophelia (2001).
Critic Ned Chaillett has described Sink the Belgrano!, a critical take on the Falklands War, which premiered at the Half Moon Theatre, in Stepney, on 2 September 1986, as "a diatribe in punk-Shakespearean verse"; and Berkoff himself described it as "even by my modest standards ... one of the best things I have done" (Free Association 373).
Berkoff employs a style of heightened physical theatre known as "total theatre". Drama critic Aleks Sierz describes his Berkoff's dramatic style as "in yer face":
In an August 2010 interview with guest presenter Emily Maitlis on The Andrew Marr Show, he said he found it 'flattering' playing evil characters, saying that the best actors took on the roles of villains.
In the late 1980s, he directed an interpretation of Salome by Oscar Wilde in the Gate Theatre, Dublin and later in the United Kingdom.
In 1998, his solo play Shakespeare's Villains, premiered at London's Haymarket Theatre, was nominated for a Society of London Theatre Laurence Olivier Award for Best Entertainment.
In 2011, Berkoff performed a one man show at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith called One Man. It consisted of two monologues; the first was an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" and the second was a piece written by Berkoff called 'Dog', which was a comedy about a loud-mouthed football fan and his dog.
In Hollywood films, Steven Berkoff has played villains such as the corrupt art dealer Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop; gangster George Cornell in The Krays; the sadistic Soviet officer Col. Podovsky in Rambo: First Blood Part II and General Orlov in the James Bond film Octopussy. (Berkoff has stated that he takes Hollywood roles only in order to subsidise his theatre work. He regards many of the films he has appeared in as lacking artistic merit).
He also appeared in the 1967 Hammer film Prehistoric Women, in the 1980 film McVicar alongside Roger Daltrey and in the Australian biographical film on the early life of Errol Flynn entitled Flynn (1996) (entitled My Forgotten Man in some markets).
In Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975), Berkoff plays a police officer and a gambler nobleman (Lord Ludd), respectively.
In 1994, he starred in and directed the film version of his own play Decadence. Shot in Luxembourg, it co-starred Joan Collins.
He also appeared in the independent feature Naked in London (2006) and in the 2010 British gangster film The Big I Am playing "The MC". He played the role of antagonist in The Tourist (2010) with Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany.
As a television actor, he had an early TV role in an episode of The Avengers. He also had an early role as a regular playing a Moonbase Interceptor pilot in the Gerry Anderson TV series UFO. His other television roles include: Hagath in the episode "Business as Usual" in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; Stilgar in the 2003 miniseries Children of Dune; a gangster (Mr Wiltshire) in episode 8 of the BBC's Hotel Babylon series; a lawyer (Freddie Eccles) in an episode of ITV's Marple entitled By the Pricking of My Thumbs; and Adolf Hitler in the mini-series War and Remembrance, role he originally baulked at taking, primarily on moral grounds; he later relented.
Berkoff also appears as himself in the "Science" episode of the British current affairs satire Brass Eye (1997), warning against the dangers of the fictional environmental disaster "Heavy Electricity".
Berkoff presents the BBC Horizon episode of Infinity and Beyond (2010)
Berkoff speaks the voiceover in "The Mind Of The Machine" single for UK by dance-music band N-Trance which reached #15 in the UK Singles Chart in August 1997.
Berkoff appears in the opening sequence to Sky Sports' coverage of the 2007 Heineken Cup Final, modeled on a speech by Al Pacino in the 1999 film Any Given Sunday.
With Andy Serkis and others, he provides motion capture and voice for the PlayStation 3 game Heavenly Sword, playing one of its main villains, General Flying Fox.
Also with Serkis, he appears briefly in a cameo in the 2008 film The Cottage.
In 1996, he appeared as the Master of Ceremonies in a BBC Radio 2 concert version of Kander & Ebb's Cabaret.
He appears in the British Heart Foundation's two-minute public service advertisement, Watch Your Own Heart Attack, broadcast on ITV, on 10 August 2008.
He is also patron of the Nightingale Theatre, in Brighton, England, a fringe theatre venue.
According to Annette Pankratz, in her 2005 Modern Drama review of Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance, by Robert Cross, "Steven Berkoff is one of the major minor contemporary dramatists in Britain and – due to his self-fashioning as a bad boy of British theatre and the ensuing attention of the media – a phenomenon in his own right." According to Pankratz, Cross "focuses on Berkoff's 'theatre of self-performance,' that is, the intersections between Berkoff, the public phenomenon and Berkoff, the artist."
In the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy, struggling actor Dexter King (Jeff Goldblum) auditions unsuccessfully for an imaginary 'Berkoff play' called England, My England. In the audition, characters dressed as skinheads swear repetitively at each other, and a folding table is kicked over. Afterwards, Dexter's agent Mary (Anna Massey) muses: "I think he's probably mad..."
"I'm scared of Steven Berkoff" is a line in the lyrics of "I'm Scared" (1992), by Queen's guitarist Brian May, released on his first solo album Back to the Light (1993). Brian May has declared himself to be great admirer of Berkoff.
In 1996, Berkoff prevailed as the plaintiff in Berkoff v. Burchill, a libel civil action which he brought against Sunday Times journalist Julie Burchill, after she published comments suggesting that he was "hideously ugly"; the judge ruled for Berkoff, finding that Burchill's actions "held him to ridicule and contempt."
Berkoff is a committed Zionist, and an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, who believes that being a Jew is inseparable from being a Zionist: Berkoff equates Zionism with being Jewish, stating in The Daily Telegraph in January 2009 that " Zionism is the very essence of what a Jew is. Zionism is the act of seeking sanctuary after years and years of unspeakable outrages against Jews." On his own website, Berkoff says that "the flak" that Israel received over the Gaza attack was "appalling."
Journalist Simon Round, in The Jewish Chronicle January 2009, recorded Berkoff's belief that "the great outpouring of anti-Israel sentiment over the Gaza operation is motivated by something darker."
Berkoff also believes the British are deeply anti Semitic. In The Daily Telegraph (January 2009) Berkoff spoke of the British "inbuilt dislike of Jews...They quite like diversity and will tolerate you as long as you act a bit gentile and don't throw your chicken soup around too much. You are perfectly entitled occasionally even to touch the great prophet of British culture, Shakespeare, as long as you keep your Jewishness well zipped up."
Speaking to The Jewish Chronicle (10 May 2010) Berkoff expresses blunt and severely critical views of the Bible, but believes "it inspires the Jews to produce Samsons and heroes and to have pride." Berkoff goes on to say of the Talmud in the same article, that "as Jews, we are so incredibly lucky to have the Talmud, to have a way of reinterpreting the Torah. So we no longer cut off hands, and slay animals, and stone women."
In a Daily Telegraph article he wrote on Israel (10 June 2007), Berkoff expressed his support for the Melanie Phillips book Londonistan, calling it "gripping" and "quite overwhelming in its research and common sense."
He lives with his companion Clara Fisher in east London.
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