Bill Roache joined Coronation Street as Ken Barlow in 1960 and has been there ever since.
Bill Roache will not retire from Coronation Street – and believes he can keep going well into his ‘90s thanks to the power of his mind. The 94-year-old actor has played Ken Barlow since the very first episode of Corrie and he holds the record as the longest-serving soap star in the world.
Bill has no intention of walking away from Weatherfield and he intends to keep going battling the ageing process with his positive thinking. He said: “I try not to think about the years, I just think about getting on and enjoying life.
|I would want for the future just more of the same. I think to quite a large extent ageing is a belief system, you know. As you get on people say, ‘Oh, take it easy, you shouldn’t be doing that.’ So, you start taking it easy. And then it’s, ‘Well, I think you should give that up.’ So, you give that up and it goes down, down you go.
“Actually, as you get older, you should start doing more, not less. We’re lucky to be here, as we are, so make the most of it. Life is a miracle. Our actually physical body is a miracle and it’s capable of so much more.”
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Bill made his debut as Ken in the very first episode of Coronation Street, broadcast on December 9, 1960. He broke the record as the longest serving actor in a soap opera back in 2010 and is unlikely to ever be beaten.
The longevity of his stay in Weatherfield means it is hard for even him to know where the acting starts and he ends as himself.
He said: “It’s pseudo-method I would say. If you’re playing a character that’s vastly different from yourself you’ve got all sorts of things to learn and do. I didn’t have that. I was just playing me as Ken Barlow.
“In my book I don’t act, I just do, and I believe it. That’s it. I don’t think about acting at all. I just absorb, take it all in, feel that’s who I am, that’s what I’m doing, and do it.
“Over the years in Coronation Street there’s only been a couple of times, one time in particular, when it hasn’t worked. That’s because I took it personally, I was personally involved. It wasn’t Ken, it was me doing this but under the name of Ken.
“Ken had an illegitimate child by a hairdresser and he was looking after this child on his own and was very protective of it, was fighting for it tooth and nail. Suddenly, not in just one episode, but in one scene the mother of the child comes along and takes it away and he says okay. I said, ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t do that.’ I’d been so involved with protecting, keeping and looking after this child, suddenly in one sentence. The producer said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s a bit sudden, I realise it.’ It was too late to change it. That was a big wrench.
“I took them all personally. As an actor you shouldn’t do that, if you’re doing different parts all the time you’d be all over the place.
“I feel I’m Ken’s protector, I feel I’m looking after him. His caretaker rather than protector. That’s what I do.”
Bill also insists that after all this time, learning lines comes easy and is not something he has to worry about too much.
Appearing on the Session 7: Interesting Lives podcast, he explained: “People ask about learning lines as an actor, but it’s not like poetry is it? It’s an exchange, ‘You coming to the Rovers? What do you want to do afterwards? Do you want to have a meal? By the way you know I’ve having an affair with your daughter?’ Or something like that, or whatever it is that’s going on.
“You get the sequence of the story of whatever is going on.
“The writers are amazing on Coronation Street. I respect writers tremendously. If you just keep reading it and you feel what is happening the words just gradually sink and then you just polish up on them.
“I don’t have an actual technique. We don’t have much time really. You get the scripts about a week or two weeks before, but you’ve got others as well.”
The soap is now shot in High Definition in a purpose built studio, with a fast turnaround of scripts and scenes to cope with five episodes a week and lots of characters to cope with the scale of the storylines.
When Bill began there would be two episodes a week and audiences of over 20 million, something no TV show can manage anymore.
“Those early days were totally different,” Bill admits.
“We all knew each other, we cared about each other. They used to get a little bus and throw a crate of beer in the back and we’d all go to London or somewhere.
“Nowadays the cast is just too big, you just can’t do that.
“I think I prefer the method of filming that we do now where you just turn up and do your scenes. Before it was rehearse like a full play and then done like a full play. If there was one mistake in one film we had to go back and do a whole quarter up until the commercial break. So, from a technical point of view, I definitely prefer the system we have now.
“But each era I’ve been in has had its own special thing and I have just loved it.
“I think the ‘70s and the ‘80s, looking back on the old ones, seem to be very popular with people. “
Away from Corrie, Bill has been honest about his spiritual beliefs in the past and his belief in reincarnation was a great comfort to him after the deaths of his daughter Edwina in 1984 aged 18 months, and his wife Sara in 2009.
And Bill has now revealed that he believes in one true God and that the human souls lives on after the death of the physical body.
He said: “I have my own understanding about life and what goes on. I know that life, to me, carries on. I know that life goes on.
“I believe there is one God who is loving, totally loving and we’re all looked after in that sense. That’s it. I want to keep it as simple as that.”
* The full interview with Bill is on the Session 7 podcast, out now.
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