Jack Klaff

Jack Klaff’s first movie was Star Wars: a two-day booking for which he was paid £250. Star Wars fans still write to ask him for his autograph. But to focus on that one film from 1976 is to miss the rich variety of an acting and directing career that has taken in Shakespeare, James Bond, Chekhov and Midsomer Murders, alongside writing more than a dozen one-man shows for television and the stage. He’s also been involved for thirty years in the public understanding of science, working both in a think-tank in Brussels and as a visiting professor in the US.

Brought up in South Africa and the son of a watch-maker, Jack now lives in South London, where he’s set up a home studio so he can do Zoom productions of Beckett. In conversation with Michael Berkeley, he looks back critically at the way he was brought up during Apartheid, and how he was affected when his uncle and aunt were imprisoned as political dissidents by the South African regime. And he talks about what it was like recording Star Wars – a franchise then so unknown that his agent put the booking in the diary as “Stan Wars”.

His playlist includes Schubert’s much-loved String Quintet, in a recording he loves from 1956; Yo-Yo Ma playing “Hoedown” with Bobby McFerrin; a late string quartet by Beethoven; Maria Callas in La Traviata; the African song Shosholoza; and Danny Kaye making fun of Russian composers.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3