An Actor with a Brain

In this era when actors spout off to look like “good guys” in the face of terror, Herbert Lom (remember Inspector Dreyfus from the Pink Panther films?) sounds a very different tune at age 87. But then the one-time Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru of Czechoslovakia has “been there, done that” when it comes to totalitarianism. Here’s Lom in his London apartment now speaking to a reporter from The Independent:

“I have spent my life learning other people’s lines,” he says. “Now I want to say some of my own.” He then reads the following from his own scrawled notes. “We are constantly told that our prime minister is a charlatan, a liar, a cheat, a poodle. Not once but 15 times a day. I have lived in Czechoslovakia, France and England and I have never known anything like it.” He looks up from his note pad. “You know,” he adds, “I am as scared of Clare Short as I am of Saddam Hussein. She can bring this Government down, I think. As a woman I find her very attractive, but she is a pain in the arse. Tony Blair is a brilliant and brave prime minister. It must distress him that chopping off heads, which has become fashionable among those villains in the desert, is not considered as wicked as failing to find the so-called weapons of mass destruction.” (hat tip: Sheryl)