Frankly, food these days has got out of hand. It's become very overblown, all about the superchefs, all about posing and posturing. I just like places that cook well. The truly great thing on this menu is the aged rib of beef for two. The brothers who own the brasserie are South American, from Uruguay, so they know everything about beef. I've been coming here since I started living in the area. It's quietly wonderful.
I love old-fashioned dishes. I used to be a member of the Savile Club in London. They had 'savouries' on the menu: Welsh rarebit, devils on horseback, kidneys. Quintessentially English fare. The really good thing about growing up on the east coast of Scotland was the fish and chips, which were fantastically good because the shops were all run by Italians.
We have friends in Norway and they have this dried reindeer and elk. They do this lamb that's almost like parma ham too. Like parma lamb! It's served with dry bread that you soften in aquavit. The methods are thousands of years old: drying, curing with salt, then washing, then start again. They've been doing it since Viking times.
There used to be a restaurant in Paris that served bat. It was an amazing place, near Notre Dame. They were out to shock you. They served hedgehog too. I don't regret not trying them. Eating cucarachas [dried cockroaches] in Mexico was an experience. It's a bit like shrimp, just very dry. It's not something I'd advise anybody to do.
In India, I had some amazing experiences with food. I was working there in the early 80s. I had dinner with Indira Gandhi. Well, I was eating, she was fasting at the time, just eating these tiny bananas. I had a mulligatawny soup, as I remember. I was touring in Macbeth, and she'd been in mourning. Her first public appearance was to come and see the show, and we had dinner afterwards. One of the great evenings of my life. Simply because of her sheer charisma. She was very sexy, very alluring, and you could see perhaps that's where her real power was.
Theatre people are lucky, because we eat late at night when places tend to get into their groove. Like Jackie Isow's, an old Jewish restaurant that used to be on Berwick Street in Soho. I was a student with Maureen Lipman, and as a treat we'd go there. Jewish food is extraordinary and there would be old Jackie telling us, 'Have these matzos, not these ones'.
The first thing I did in Hollywood was Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter. I based the role on my son. Well I based it on two things, the other being Peter Manuel who was a serial killer in Scotland in the 50s. The director, Michael Mann, kept going on about public schoolboys, and how they have this certainty about them. I thought, 'Well I don't know any public schoolboys', then I realised I did: my son. When I did the movie, he was a precocious 15-year-old, and very eloquent.
Working with Bill Murray on Rushmore was wonderful. He wouldn't speak to me to start with. He thought I was English, and he doesn't like the English. Then he found out I was a Scot, and he was OK. Very eccentric, a very interesting guy. Once he was lecturing his leading lady on set. People were saying to him, 'Don't lecture her, Bill'. He said, 'No way! I've got to tell her where she gets off. Her behaviour is unacceptable. She cannot behave like this and someone's got to tell her.' You have to understand his leading lady was six.
The Camden Brasserie, 9-11 Jamestown Road, London, NW1, 020 7482 2114
History
Brothers Julio and Enrique Turano opened the first Camden Brasserie, on Camden High Street, in 1983. In 2003, the restaurant relocated to its current position on nearby Jamestown Road. It celebrates its 25th birthday next year.
Popular dishes
Aged rib of beef (for two), £31; braised lamb shank, £15.95; slow-roasted Barbary duck with sweet sherry and lemon dressing, £15.50; blood-orange cheesecake with passion fruit, £4.95.
Who eats there?
Simon Callow, Alastair Campbell, Loyd Grossman, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.
Opens
Monday to Sunday, 12pm to 11pm
