Some would have you believe Shakespeare is the new rock 'n' roll.

With Leonardo Di Caprio, Joseph Fiennes and Kenneth Branagh among the stars to have made films about or by the Bard lately, you can see why.

That's a far cry from the days when Bradford-born actor Edward Petherbridge was learning his craft under the formidable Esme Church.

A member of the Royal Shakespeare Company since 1979, he recalls the amused contempt with which he and his fellow bright young things regarded attempts to turn Shakespeare from stage to screen.

"She once told us, 'If you ever get to see a 1940s film of The Taming of the Shrew you will see that it begins with a caption announcing The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare - with additional dialogue by Sid Taylor'," he said.

"We all felt terribly superior to Hollywood when we laughed at that."

For the record, it was actually Sam Taylor and the film was made in 1929, but it's still a good story.

Edward has played roles ranging from Malvolio and Orsino in Twelfth Night to The Fool in King Lear. And although he believes the current fad for updating Shakespeare plays for the cinema - the latest is Branagh's modernisation of Love's Labour's Lost - is not all that new, it is no bad thing.

"An American teacher friend of mine said to me, 'You have no idea what the film of Romeo and Juliet with Di Caprio in it has done for teaching Shakespeare because his pupils finally have a handle on it'," said Edward.

Born in West Bowling, the son of a wool warehouseman, he is back in West Yorkshire rehearsing for a new production of Single Spies, a double bill of plays by Alan Bennett. He plays Anthony Blunt in A Question of Attribution, which also features Brigit Forsyth as the Queen.

Edward has met the Queen twice before in real life, so rehearsals have been a bit like deja vu. "Doing this thing with Brigit Forsyth it's rather like meeting her for a third time," he said.

"What with Alan Bennett's extraordinary portrayal and Bridget's realisation of it, apart from the brilliant comic and rather astute and funny but very sympathetic portrayal, between the lines is the curious relationship of meeting somebody royal which is all in what we actors used to call the subtext.

"The play is a great comedy of manners. These are the most brilliant and witty and occasionally poignant couple of plays but they're so substantial as well."

Unlike with his Shakespearean roles, Edward was able to research the part of Blunt by borrowing actual recordings of his voice from a contact at the BBC.

Edward has fond memories of his upbringing in Bradford and is looking forward to catching up with city during the play's five-week run at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.

"I didn't know the area very well apart from where I lived because I never had a bike and I was never one for hiking, so I was a poor little backstreet child," he said.

"I have quite a bit of family here still. My auntie is in her 90s and lives just outside Bradford, and I also have a brother.

"I haven't lived in Bradford since I left drama school in 1956. It's actually saleable now as a tourist centre. When I first found that out I suppose I was like one of those people in London who might laugh but one can see why. Bradford has actually been cleaned up to some degree and it has all these wonderful places like the Alhambra, which is a marvellous theatre.

"While they were cleaning it up they did rip a great deal of its heart out, architecturally speaking. I sometimes wonder what the benefits are of living in London, then I rediscover them from time to time."

Edward laments the loss of buildings like the Swan Arcade and believes Bradford has suffered more than most places at the hands of modern planners. "Leeds has still got all these wonderful arcades and markets. The extraordinary thing about the Victorians is that when they put up a market or exchange or anything like that they built it like a palace," he said.

"The Wool Exchange in Bradford is a palace even though it was built as a place where people go to do ordinary, prosaic things to with trade."

He has particularly fond memories of what used to be the Exchange railway station.

"I have a wonderful photograph of a works outing in about 1920 or something, probably to Bridlington," said Edward.

"My father was very shy about having his photograph taken and there he is at the back of this photograph and you can see the cobbles and the entrance to the Exchange station.

"Most of them had their Sunday suits on and bowler hats and a rain mac folded over their arm.

"I can remember that area so so well. When I was a drama student it was before the time of coffee bars. What we used to do was go to the Exchange station tea bar after we had made an exhibition of ourselves being frightful fools of ourselves."

There is little danger of Edward being stereotyped because of the huge number of characters he has played over the past 40 years - but there are nevertheless roles he is especially remembered for.

"I have played a lot of posh intellectuals. People do stop me in the street and say, 'Could I shake Lord Peter Wimsey's hand?' or, 'I've been in love with Newman Noggs from Nicholas Nickleby all my life' and that's very nice," he said.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.