David Suchet

David Suchet Trivia and Quotes

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Trivia

  • David's son Robert graduated from the University of Birmingham in July 2002. []
  • David Suchet converted to Roman Catholicism, his father was Jewish, his mother was Anglican.

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  • David Suchet's voice can be heard in the animated movie Flushed Away. He's Rita's father. []
  • David plays the clarinet. []
  • David Suchet is vice-president of the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Trust. []
  • David was rumored to be in the running for the role of Le Chifrre, the Bond villain in the 007 movie Casino Royale. However, the part went to Mads Mikkelsen. []
  • David affectionately calls his fat suit for Poirot his "armadillo padding." []
  • One of David's hobbies is photography. His grandfather, James Jarché, was a famous Fleet Street photographer. David first got into photography when his grandfather gave him a Kodak as a present. []
  • David says he always carries around with him a list of ninety-three things to remember about Poirot! []
  • Suchet was the voice of Aslan in 7 radio adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia for Focus on the Family Radio Theatre. []
  • He has won two RTS (Royal Television Society) Awards: for Best Actor in A Song for Europe in 1985, and for Best Actor in The Way We Live Now in 2001. []
  • David's mother was Joan Suchet, a stage actress, and his father was Jack Suchet, a gynecologist. []
  • In 1991 Suchet was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his performance as Hercule Poirot in the series Poirot. []
  • To prepare for the role of Poirot, Suchet read every single book and short story in which he appears, and looked up every detail, including how many sugar cubes Poirot puts in his tea! []
  • David is 5 feet 6 inches tall - just two inches taller than Poirot is in the books. []
  • (About his role as Japp in Thirteen at Dinner)

    David Suchet: I was so awful as Japp, so extraordinarily bad - it was about my worst performance I think - that it was ironic that Agatha Christie's granddaughter saw me in that - and then realized I had been in Blott which she enjoyed - and said "I want you to be Poirot". []
  • David is a council member for LAMDA, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. []
  • David says that while filming Poirot, he stays in character between takes and even when he gets home. The only exception is lunchtime, when he takes his moustache off! []
  • Rosalind Hicks, Agatha Christie's daughter, saw David in Blott on the Landscape and decided he would make a perfect Poirot. Two years later, in 1987, he was cast for the series. []
  • David has said that his favorite episodes of Poirot that he worked on are The ABC Murders and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. []
  • David was appointed the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2002 Queen's Birthday Honours List. []
  • His brother is John Suchet, an ITN newscaster. []
  • He has two children with his wife Sheila: Robert and Katherine. []
  • Before playing the role of the famous detective himself, David Suchet played Japp in Thirteen at Dinner, a Poirot TV movie with Peter Ustinov. []

Quotes

  • David Suchet: (About photography) Let the camera be an extension of your eye. How you see is how you photograph. []

  • (about wearing the Poirot fat suit)


    David Suchet: I'm a 34" waist, and Poirot is about a 43", and he must be at least sixteen or seventeen stones, and no way am I going to do a Robert de Niro, and put that weight on my own frame. I once actually did do something like that, in a film called Sunday, and I played a New Yorker who was supposed to weight 27 stones. I just ate and ate and ate - everything that I shouldn't have done. I find it very easy to pile it on - but God, it was the best part of a year in getting it all off again, and it was agony. Never again! []

  • (about perfecting the Poirot walk)


    David Suchet: When I did the film testing, I had been cast and we did some film tests just to see how it all looked -- the make-up and the costume and things before we actually went into proper filming. The producer, Brian Eastman, and I sat down to have a look at what we'd shot, and we were sort of pleased that the character was there, and he said, "Well, you know, it's nearly there, but there's something missing. There's something missing." He said, "You know, the funny thing is, David I don't know what it is. It's something to do with the movement. And I turned around and said, "Could it be the way I'm walking because maybe I'm walking too much like me and it's not reflecting the character." So we watched a bit again and he said, "You know, I think you're right." []
  • David Suchet: I like things to be symmetrical. If I put two things on the mantelpiece, they have to be exactly evenly spaced. But I'm nowhere near as fanatical as Poirot. I don't need the same sized eggs for breakfast! []
  • (on filming Murder in Mesopotamia)
    David Suchet: It was undoubtedly the most difficult shoot of my entire career because of the extreme heat. The temperature reached 139 degrees, and my costume consists of a three-piece wool suit, leather gloves, a hat, a wing collar, bow tie, and full body padding. I had to drink four litres of water every day because I was sweating so much, but even so I nearly fainted on several occasions. []

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