John Standing is 90 on 16th August – ‘I’m older than God!’ he jokes. He is still basking in the glow from his appearance alongside Michael Caine in The Great Escaper (2023), long-listed for a BAFTA Film Award.
In the film, based on a true story, Caine, 90, plays Second World War Royal Navy veteran Bernie Jordan, who broke out of his south-coast nursing home to attend the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations in Normandy in June 2014. Standing plays Arthur, an RAF wartime veteran who befriends Bernie.
Despite their long and distinguished acting careers, the duo’s paths had crossed only twice before. First, when Standing appeared with Caine in the film The Eagle Has Landed (1976), about a fictional German plot to kidnap Churchill during the Second World War. Secondly, when the duo played tennis against each other in Beverly Hills ‘a million years ago ... and he beat me,’ says Standing, sighing in mock disappointment.
They immediately bonded while making the moving drama.
‘Despite being the most unlikely pair, we struck up a real rapport – in part, perhaps, because we’re both old soldiers, although he fought in the Korean War whereas the nearest I got to any action was dodging bullets in the Welsh hills on a training exercise,’ says Standing.
He is wearing a cravat (to keep his neck warm), cords and cardigan. We meet in the rustic-style kitchen of the home in Pimlico, London, where he lives with his glamorous second wife, Sarah, daughter of the late film director Bryan Forbes and his actress wife Nanette Newman (who has herself just turned 90).
‘One day, I said to Michael, “You talk about the Elephant and Castle, where you were brought up, and what your mum and dad did, but the great thing was that you had a happy childhood,” and he replied, “[Standing puts on a Michael Caine voice] Yeah, I did, I did.”
Standing says, ‘We got on so well that someone even suggested that we should present a podcast together.’
Despite being born to wealth, the Eton-educated Standing – or, to give him his full title, Sir John Leon, 4th Bt – had a much less than happy childhood in some respects. His stockbroker father, Sir Ronald, was the son of Sir Herbert Leon, the builder of Bletchley Park. His actress mother, Kay Hammond – who starred in the original stage version of Blithe Spirit and reprised her role in the 1945 film – ‘insisted on living in Park Lane and my father bought her a flat there’.
But his parents divorced when he was a boy and his once ‘stonkingly rich’ father ran his business into the ground ‘through drink’ and was dead at 60. Standing’s inheritance? A mere 60 quid, though he thinks being left so little was a blessing because it forced him to ‘stand on my own two feet’. Both his mother– ‘I spent much of my childhood in theatre dressing-rooms’ – and grandfather
Sir Guy Standing– who appeared in several 1930s Hollywood films, such as The Lives of a Bengal Lancer – were actors, as was his stepfather, Sir John Clements.
It’s no surprise that John should follow in their footsteps. His first acting role was as a spear-carrier in Peter Brook’s 1955 production of Titus Andronicus, with Laurence Olivier and his actress wife Vivien Leigh.
‘For some reason, Vivien asked me to join her, Larry and some friends at a dinner to celebrate his 50th birthday,’ he says. ‘But Larry didn’t utter a word because he was so depressed at the thought of turning 50!’
After a stint in rep, Standing worked his way up the showbusiness ladder and has since appeared in a string of hit plays, often in the West End – earning him the nickname West End Johnnie – such as Private Lives, Hay Fever and Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance.
‘I’ve got to play opposite all the dames of my vintage – Maggie, Eileen and Penelope Wilton,’ he observes.
But despite spending ‘nine tenths’ of his acting career on the stage, he’s occasionally ‘sashayed into films to do the odd job – I was brought up to believe that cinema was the medium for people to make a lot of money.’
One of his earliest movie roles was in Cary Grant’s last Hollywood film, the romantic comedy Walk, Don’t Run (1966). ‘After we’d finished filming,’ he recalls, ‘Cary said to me, “I’m not going to make any more movies because I don’t get the girl any more!”’
He also had parts in The Elephant Man (1980), Privates on Parade (1983) and Chaplin (1992). His most successful role outside the theatre was in the ITV sitcom The Other ’Arf, in which he played
an upper-class Tory politician in a relationship with a Cockney model (Lorraine Chase), which ran for four series in the 1980s. More recently, he appeared in The Crown as Captain Imbert-Terry, the owner of Castle of Mey, which the Queen Mother bought.
So what’s the secret of a long life? ‘It’s just down to good fortune,’ he says wryly. ‘I used to suck down French cigarettes, which I absolutely loved.’
But when he was 43, he went ‘cold turkey and quit’ but admits ‘it was difficult’. He drank a fair bit in the army too, ‘because gin was nine shillings a bottle and whisky 12 shillings a bottle’, although nowadays he has just ‘the occasional glass of red wine’. Walking up the 21 steps to his second-floor studio helps keeps him fit, he says.
Surely having a glamorous younger wife has helped keep him sprightly too?
‘Undoubtedly,’ says Standing. ‘Although when I started dating Sarah in 1980, I was so much older than her that I didn’t dare lay a finger on her for months. I initially thought I was just going to be her obligatory “older-man fling”, but love blossomed and we married in 1984.’
Forty years on, they’ve got three grown-up children (he also has a child from his first marriage, to the late actress Jill Melford), two grandchildren and a third on the way.
‘Sarah, who is spectacularly sweet, and I are amazingly close,’ he adds. ‘I’m a lucky man, and the fact that she is 25 years younger than me is just by the by.’
So imagine his shock when Sarah, despite being so much younger, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2020 and needed chemotherapy, which made her hair fall out.
‘It was a frightening time – she had something the size of a rugby ball inside her – the most ghastly time of my life,’ admits Standing. ‘I was on tenterhooks for months, but thankfully she’s now completely free of the disease, and firing on all cylinders again.’
So is he excited to be turning 90? ‘Not particularly, because I’m inching ever closer to not being around any more – but the thing to do is not to dwell on numbers because that’s all they are.’
He adds with a chuckle: ‘And if I don’t drop dead, I very much hope I’ll still be acting in a few years’ time – it’s either one or the other!’
