| When he's not battling with James Bond, Toby Stephens surrenders himself to the surrealism of David Lynch and The Simpsons. Dream believer Film My favourite Bond movie is From Russia With Love, the first one that I saw. There is a wonderful scene with Robert Shaw, who is brilliant as the henchman, when he has Sean Connery over a barrel and you think that Bond is a goner, even though you know that there is going to be another (Bond) film. I fell in love completely with David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I realised that his obsession is to try to recreate dreams on film. Eraserhead was really disturbing and strange, like a very bad dream. Amores Perros was incredibly profound and poetic, and I loved Y tu Mamá También with Maribel Verdú. It is a brilliant study of adolescence. The two actors in it are phenomenal, you desperately like them and the loss of their friendship when a woman comes between them is so believable. Music I find Coltrane and Miles Davis calming, although I cannot claim to understand jazz. I love all the old Count Basie stuff because he makes me nostalgic. If I am feeling stressed I will chuck on something classical, such as Purcell or Beethoven, as a form of escapism. Modern music is where it becomes quite messy because I dip in and out of loads of different styles. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a kind of revamped American blue grass, is beautiful. Theatre I go in gluts. I can binge on 12 productions in succession, but if I’m working I can’t seem to find the enthusiasm. The Breath of Life was very interesting, and I much preferred it to Zinc Bed, the last one from David Hare. But I would like to see it again because when I see mum (Dame Maggie Smith) in a preview I am normally chewing my fingernails and getting nervous for her, so it is hard to judge when you are in that condition. The King Lear that my father (Sir Robert Stephens) did at Stratford just before he died really moved me. He had obviously lived through a lot of stuff that he could bring to the role and I thought he brought so much humanity to it. I remember turning around and people throughout the theatre were crying. Television Having lived in America, where they don’t really have documentaries, I found myself missing what the BBC and Channel 4 do. I love The Simpsons, though. It has such a broad canvas and the plots can go on enormously surreal twists. I can’t watch soap operas: I find EastEnders relentlessly grim and I have never made it through a whole episode of Coronation Street. I have tried because Julie Hesmondhalgh, who plays Hayley, is a friend. But whenever I put it on she is not in that particular episode. Books I have just finished Mansfield Park (Penguin, £3.50). I had never read Austen before because I thought it was just for ladies and that I was never going to get it. There was terrible male snobbery going on, but I felt that I ought to read one so I could have an opinion. Initially the sentences seemed so laboured, but after the first 60 pages I loved it. It is beautifully written and well-observed and I completely identified with it even though it is set in the 18th century. I was obsessed about whether Fanny Price was going to marry Edmund. Art I had never seen his earlier work, so to see a whole load of Lucian Freud’s paintings together at Tate Britain was extraordinary. Pet hate Those endless cookery and gardening programmes. Nobody cooks anything from them or thinks: “Ah, that’s how I will lay my patio.”
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