Why Britain's best actor remains a well-kept secret

Simon Russell Beale is not better known because his film and TV work is negligible

The London Evening Standard may have its problems, but its annual theatre awards remain a highlight of the arts calendar. The awards themselves have a long history and are regarded as genuinely prestigious within the profession. Guessing who is going to win them next Monday is risky but I will chance my arm on one of the top prizes: it will be astounding if anyone other than Simon Russell Beale is named best actor.

Long queues for returns form every day at the Donmar theatre where Russell Beale is the star of Sam Mendes' farewell season. He is one of the few actors for whom one books to see a production on the strength of his presence. My own lasting memory is of his performance in Terry Hands' Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Seagull a decade ago, and the sobs around the audience as he meticulously folded his clothes and tidied up his possessions before withdrawing to shoot himself.

But what particularly interests me about Russell Beale and the award that he is likely to win is that he is a refreshing antidote to the cult of personality. While West End producers pull out the stops to lure Hollywood stars, it is this unprepossessing-looking and, frankly, podgy British actor who has audiences queuing round the block.

Britain's finest actor is not seen on chat shows ; he will not figure in Heat magazine. Indeed, he must be the only multi-award winner who could probably walk down Oxford Street unrecognised. Actually, Kylie Minogue's biographer tells me that without her make-up the diminutive Australian singer also fails to stand out from the crowd and is sometimes unrecognised. But I digress.

The reason why Russell Beale has not permeated the consciousness of the wider public is that his film and television work is negligible. He remains a cherished secret of the small slice of the population that goes to the theatre. Such figures have a mixed fate. They are celebrated in their lifetimes, but if little permanent screen record of them survives, they tend to be forgotten as the years pass.

In the early days of the National Theatre, one of the company's stars was a lovely actress called Louise Purnell. She had numerous leading roles and appeared with Laurence Olivier. Now, barely anyone has heard of her. The reason is she did very little screen work.

The talent of Russell Beale deserves a wider audience. One answer, as I have suggested here before, is for television to have closer links with theatre. Mendes' farewell season with Russell Beale should be televised. Why, indeed, can a TV channel not produce its own Russell Beale season? A television vehicle for the man who is arguably the greatest actor of his generation is not a lot to ask. And how it would answer those accusations of dumbing-down.

*Fetching pictures appeared in the press this week of two languid chaps fishing and hiking in Norway. They were Adrian Noble, the director of the RSC, and the actor Ralph Fiennes, shortly to appear in Noble's production of Ibsen's play Brand. The pair said they had gone to Norway partly to prepare for the production and research the feel of Ibsen's homeland.

I need some convincing of the value of such research. How similar are the social mores of Norway today to the Norway of Ibsen's time? How much empathy one achieves from hiking and fishing with the intense, claustrophobic world of Ibsen's familial dramas is also open to question. I suspect the imagination is as good a research tool as a week admiring the fjords.

In the case of Shakespeare too, directors and actors often get hung up on knowing the countries he wrote about, staging Hamlet in Elsinore or visiting Italy before putting on Romeo and Juliet. But Shakespeare himself cared little about such research. One interesting point made by Fiona Shaw in her programme on Shakespeare in the Great Britons series was that he set a number of his plays in Italy but knew precious little about the country. In The Tempest he made landlocked Milan a port.

I am a huge admirer of Noble as a director; but maybe more telling research preparing for Ibsen would be to spend time as flies on the wall, quietly observing a loveless marriage or a family grappling with devastating secrets, or even living for a while in a small, rigid, isolated village community – even if Mr Noble and Mr Fiennes might need therapy at the end of it.

*The new James Bond film is the latest in a series that celebrates the rise of feminism. That is, as they say, official. When I visited the set of Die Another Day at the start of filming, I learned from Barbara Broccoli, the Bond producer, that a feature of the films had been strong women. The Bond girls, she said, had traditionally been independent-minded and risk-taking. They promoted the role of women. Little did we realise when the bikini-clad Ursula Andress emerged from the sea in Dr No that she was striking an early blow for feminist culture. We do now.

d.lister@independent.co.uk