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Like Olivier, who also has a busy old age, Gielgud sometimes gives the impression that out of that dread he will go anywhere, do anything, so long as he has a speaking part. He is probably the only great actor ever to appear in a porno pic, Bob Guccione's Caligula. "They offered me the part of the Emperor Tiberius, and I turned it down, saying, 'This is pure pornography.' Gore Vidal, who wrote the original script, then wrote me a terrifically rude letter, saying how impertinent it was of me to refuse it and that if I knew what Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee said about me, I wouldn't be so grand. Terrible vituperation. Then they offered me another smaller part that wasn't dirty, and I rather shamefacedly took it. I played a whole scene in a bath of tepid water. It took three days to shoot, and every two hours some terrible hags dragged me out, rubbed me down and put me back into the water again. Most extraordinary proceedings."
Until ten years ago, Gielgud had a house behind Westminster Abbey. A lifelong bachelor, he was a constant on the London scene, going to all the good parties, seeing the new shows and attending important art exhibitions. Then he moved to an elegant 18th century carriage house near Oxford, where he gardens, keeps an aviary of parakeets and cockatoos and looks after two Shih Tzus. "I used to love parties and meeting new people," he says. "Now I'm amazed to find how little I miss the bright lights. You make a new life for yourself when you're old. I sleep in the afternoon, I play my records, do my crossword puzzles, read masses of books, watch television for an hour after dinner, then go to bed early. I'm a very contented man."
Though he seems to read almost everything, what he enjoys most is "trashy American novels. Harold Robbins is a great read, and Judith Krantz is a joy! Have you read Mistral's Daughter? Oh, you should, you know. I can't wait for the next. One always wonders how many pages the publisher demands between sex scenes. I've never managed to read Barbara Cartland. She is too pure. I like all the filthy details."
Such thoughts turn him to the partly eaten cold crab on his plate. It is too tough, he pronounces, and if he finishes it, he will probably get hiccups—"so humiliating." At that his quicksilver mind jumps to his Victorian parents and to Victorians in general, who, by his estimation, ate so much that they must have burped, belched and behaved rather badly after every meal. "When I first went to America in 1928," he remembers, speaking of bad manners, "there were spittoons everywhere. I remember avoiding spit as it flew past me in Times Square. Very unattractive." Still, that did not prevent him from learning to like the U.S. and New York City. "I adore New York. It's still rather wondrous to me."