Editing Michael Hordern (section)

==Approach to acting==

Hordern was a self-confessed "lazy bugger"<ref name="HORDERN92">Hordern, p. 92.</ref> when it came to role preparation. He did not regret his lack of formal acting training, and attributed his abilities to watching and learning from other actors and directors. He said: "I am bored of the intellectual view of the theatre. Actually, it scares the shit out of me, my view being that an actor should learn the lines without too much cerebral interference."<ref>Hordern, p. 162.</ref> In 1951, he asked Byam Shaw how best to rehearse unfamiliar roles. The director advised him to "never read up on them"<ref name="HORDERN92" /> before going on to say "read the plays as much as [you like] but never read the commentators or critics".<ref name="HORDERN92" /> It was advice which Hordern adopted for the role of King Lear, and for the rest of his career.<ref name="HORDERN92" /> The critic [[Brian McFarlane (writer)|Brian McFarlane]], writing for the [[British Film Institute]], said that Hordern, despite his relaxed attitude, "had one of the most productive careers of any 20th century British actor".<ref>[http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/470152/ "Hordern, Sir Michael (1911–1995)"], by [[Brian McFarlane (writer)|Brian McFarlane]]. BFI Screenonline, [[British Film Institute]], accessed 27 August 2015.</ref>

{{Quote|1=After all the great parts I have played in my career, Prospero, Lear, Sir Anthony Absolute, George in ''Jumpers'', after all the accolades, the CBE, knighthood, honorary degrees, mixing with the great and the good, I was brought down to earth recently by a small boy whom I had noticed having an intense argument with two other small boys outside my phone box. I seemed to be the centre of discussion. When I stepped out of the box, one of the boys came up to me, looked up earnestly, and very politely asked, 'Excuse me, aren't you Paddington?' I felt gratified.|2=Michael Hordern|3=''A World Elsewhere''<ref>Hordern, pp. 169–170.</ref>}}

Throughout his 1993 autobiography ''A World Elsewhere'', Hordern exhibited his pride on being able to play a wide range of parts, something which made him a frequent subject among theatrical critics. The author Martin Banham thought that many of Hordern's characters shared a general identity of "an absent-minded, good-hearted English eccentric".<ref>Banham, p. 497.</ref> The American journalist Mel Gussow, writing Hordern's obituary in ''The New York Times'' in 1995, described him as "a classical actor with the soul of a clown".<ref name="NYTOBIT" /> The actors [[John Hurt]] and [[Michael Bryant (actor)|Michael Bryant]] considered Hordern "the [[Austin Princess]] among British actors",<ref>"Sir Michael Hordern obituary", ''The Times'', 4 May 1995, p. 23.</ref> which implied to the author [[Sheridan Morley]] that Hordern possessed an element of "reliability but [with] a faint lack of charisma".<ref name=dnb /> Morley, who wrote Hordern's biography for the ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]'', went on to describe the actor as being "one of the great eccentrics of his profession, perched perilously somewhere half way between Alastair Sim and Alec Guinness".<ref name=dnb />