Sir Ian Holm, who plays the title role in the "Masterpiece Theatre" presentation of "King Lear," is no stranger to the role. He starred in the Shakespeare play last year in London, winning an Olivier Award as best actor, and making it the one of the hits of the 1997 season.
What was somewhat amazing was that the director of both that run and the PBS version (which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on Ch. 7), Sir Richard Eyre, convinced Holm to return to the theater after more than 30 years away."I had what is more common than you would imagine amongst a lot of us thespians - I had a base case of loss of nerve," Holm said recently, appearing before a group of TV critics. "I mean, I'm fine now. You all look quite harmless to me. But there was a time when I just could not appear in front of a live audience. And it took me a long time to get over that.
"Fortunately, I was gainfully employed in the other two media in the meantime."
As a matter of fact, his work in movies and television have made him one of England's more distinguished actors - as evidenced by the knighthood bestowed upon him by the queen. Not that he seems overly impressed by his title - he even asked critics not to address him as "Sir Richard."
"Can I just ask you if you can drop the `Sir,' because you fought a war against the British in order to have the right not to call anybody `Sir,' " he said.
So, given his fear, why would he agree to appear in "King Lear"?
"I think (Eyre) asked me about, was it two years ago? Three years ago?" Holm said. "And I said, `Yes,' rather flippantly because I thought, `Well, it's so far ahead, I can easily get out of it.' "
But when the time came, Holm was surprised to discover that his fear had passed.
"When the rehearsal period arrived, it was completely angst-free," he said.
Holm is still at a loss to explain how his stage fright developed.
"I wish I knew," he said. "You start questioning things. You know - `What a ridiculous way to make a living,' or whatever it was. I really cannot pinpoint what it was. Maybe I was domestically unhappy. I had just worked with Franco Zeffirelli in the desert for six weeks (making the miniseries `Jesus of Nazareth'). Maybe it was that."
Holm apparently overcame all of his onstage inhibitions. He created a bit of a stir by doing King Lear in the buff in London (a scene that's rather tastefully handled on PBS). And he said there were several reasons he made that choice, in consultation with Eyre.
"One is that it's metaphorically a man who is stripping down from being a king to being an ordinary man - going through madness in order to do that," Holm said. "He starts in the first scene by removing his crown and continues when he confronts Edgar, who is naked, and asks, `Is man no more than this?' And I thought, `I think I have to be naked.' It was as simple as that.
"And it wasn't for very long, anyway. Somebody comes up and puts an old sack over me. . . . There is a stage direction that says, `Lear takes off his clothing.' So one is really only following Shakespeare's stage direction."
As to why he became an actor, Holm is succinct, if not particularly enlightening. "I have absolutely no idea," he said. "I never had any passion for acting."
Actually, his career choice came about as a bit of an accident.
"I failed all my exams at school," Holm said. "My father said, `What are you going to do now? You have to go back and re-take them.'
"And I said, `No way. . . . I'll try acting.'
"And he said, `Prove it,' which are two of the best words he ever said to me in my life. I just slowly started carrying spears at Stratford and thought, `Hey, this is quite a good way of making a living.' But I don't think that I have anything specific to offer. I mean, I feel quite humble about my pro-fes-sion."
Not to mention quite humble about the fact that he's become a celebrity.
"I don't think I have it," Holm said. "I mean, I still walk down the street in Britain and people say, `Excuse me, are you an actor?' I'm not Tom Cruise, for goodness' sake."