Ian Charleson [left] told the theater company he was
recovering from sinus surgery when he was actually dying of AIDS and had just
agreed to play Hamlet at the National Theatre. The part became available after
Daniel Day-Lewis walked off the stage mid-run, collapsing during the scene
where Hamlet meets his father's ghost; Day-Lewis later claimed he had seen his
own ghost. So, Ian Charleson took over,
and outside a few close friends only the director, Richard Eyre, knew what it
was costing him to stand up there.
He opened on 13 November 1989 and actor Ian McKellen was in
the audience that night and so overwhelmed by Charleson’s Hamlet that gifted Charleson
his own Best Actor award. But after that first night Charleson never appeared
on a stage again. He died eight weeks later, on January 6, 1990 at age 40.
But this isn’t about his brilliant performance it was about
what he did after he died, something nobody in Britain was doing in 1990:
he left instructions that his cause of death, AIDS, be made public and his was
the first show business death in the country openly attributed to AIDS.
A hero and an icon even in death.
American audiences know Charleson from Chariots of Fire,
where he played Eric Liddell, the Scottish runner who wouldn't race on Sundays.
And now Andrew Scott [right], an out gay actor and quite a handsome fella, is
playing him now in Elsinore, the story of Charleson’s life and death, which
opens in London in October and reaches US theaters in November. |