John Le Mesurier - Approach To Acting

Approach To Acting

The character he cumulatively created will be remembered when others more famous are forgotten, not just for the skill of his playing but because he somehow embodied a symbolic British reaction to the whirlpool of the modern world—endlessly perplexed by the dizzying and incoherent pattern of event, but doing his best to ensure that resentment never showed.

Le Mesurier took a relaxed approach to acting, saying, "You know the way you get jobbing gardeners? Well, I'm a jobbing actor ... as long as they pay me I couldn't care less if my name is billed above or below the title". Although Le Mesurier played a wide range of parts, he became known for playing "an indispensable figure in the gallery of second-rank players which were the glory of the British film industry in its more prolific days". He felt his characterisations owed "a lot to my customary expression of bewildered innocence" and tried to stress for many of his roles that his parts were those of "a decent chap all at sea in a chaotic world not of his own making".

Philip French of The Observer considered that while playing a representative of bureaucracy Le Mesurier "registered something ... complex. A feeling of exasperation, disturbance, anxiety constantly lurked behind that handsome bloodhound face". The impression he gave in these roles became an "inimitable brand of bewildered persistence under fire which Le Mesurier made his own". The Times noted of him that although he was best known for his comedic roles, he, "could be equally effective in straight parts", as evidenced by his BAFTA-award winning role in Traitor. Director Peter Cotes agreed, adding, "he had depths unrealised through the mechanical pieces in which he generally appeared"; while Philip Oakes considered that, "single-handed, he has made more films watchable, even absorbing than anyone else around".