Poirot and Me by David Suchet

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been enjoying all of the excellent “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” television series starring David Suchet in the title role. I’ve been impressed with the overall quality of the show, most especially with the way in which he so accurately captured the ‘real” Inspector Hercule Poirot, just as Christie wrote him (as opposed to the way he is usually portrayed in a somewhat cartoonish way). I’ve also been impressed that a single actor would continue to portray the same character time after time for 25 years and 70 films, most of them two-hour feature-film quality events, covering every Poirot story (novel and short story) ever penned by Dame Agatha. So when I saw this book on the store shelves I made the very unusual decision, for me, to engage in an impulse buy.

So glad I did! I rarely read autobiographies of actors but for me, just as with so many millions of people around the world, David Suchet is Poirot. He covers a lot of ground that you might expect in this book, including the very interesting manner in which he created his version of Poirot, how he captured his look, his walk, his voice, his mustache, etc. He takes us through the seasons and the angst which he and his wife experienced through 25 years of filming the shows, never knowing at the end of each series whether or not the next would happen. Because of these gaps in filming, we get to see what projects he worked on, mostly in the theater in London, while he waited for news. One theme which I did not expect to encounter runs throughout the book: what it means to be a character actor versus a “star”. I now have a much greater appreciation for that aspect of an actor’s craft.

But the major theme of the book is the unreserved and deeply held love that David Suchet feels for the character. Just where the character stops and the actor begins is something he jokes about but his need to preserve the character and make Dame Agatha proud is the mark of true professional. For me, as a voracious reader of fiction, I doubly appreciate how he tries to stay true to the character and fight against tendencies to “update him for today’s audiences”.

This is a pleasant read, eye-opening in some respects, but fundamentally rewarding. Recommended for all fans of the television series or for those interested in the profession of acting.