I’ve been a BBC film critic for 40 years – these are the rudest celebs | Films | Entertainment

It’s happened to the best of us. That heartstopping moment you come face-to-face with someone you know whose name has vanished into thin air. So imagine the horror of veteran BBC film reporter Tom Brook who found himself in this situation on the red carpet at the 2011 Oscars opposite one of the world’s most famous actors, Colin Firth.

Bridget Jones’ very own Mr Darcy was riding high, nominated for Best Actor as King George VI in The King’s Speech (which he would win later that night), and fresh from acclaim for his role in 2009 film, A Single Man. But as Tom gazed at the tall, dark and handsome man standing before him, he couldn’t fathom who on earth he was.

“It was awful, my mind just went blank,” reveals the presenter of BBC’s Talking Movies with a smile, still cringing at the memory. “For some reason I just didn’t recognise him at all. He had just been in The King’s Speech and looked really different from that and my mind just went completely blank and couldn’t think who on earth he was.

“So instead, I had to just ask all these really generic, boring questions like, ‘How do you feel to be on the red carpet tonight?’ hoping it would come back to me who he was. It was so embarrassing but he was polite of course and pretended he hadn’t noticed.”

Thankfully, it was a rare lapse for the journalist who has interviewed many of the world’s biggest film stars – from Bette Davis and Jimmy Cagney to Meryl Streep and Lady Gaga – plus the odd British prime minister too.

A special edition of Talking Movies will celebrate Tom’s incredible 50 years at the BBC. The 72-year-old joined the Corporation as a trainee reporter in 1976 and has no plans to stand down after reaching the amazing milestone.

“I never want to stop doing what I do,” he smiles, speaking from the basement of the Groucho Club in London’s West End. “I won’t retire until the BBC sack me. I have never lost the quest for a good story. Put a microphone in my hand and it is almost an animalistic urge to get a good quote.”

Tom, who sports a bushy moustache and an urbane manner, lives in New York in a “tiny apartment” on Central Park West with his husband, pathologist Sam Wahl. He arrived at the BBC in April 1976, aged 22, as a news trainee working in Belfast, Birmingham, and Manchester before becoming a producer on Radio 4’s Today programme two years later.

In January 1980, he was posted to the BBC’s office in New York as a news and current affairs producer, where he reported on the death of John Lennon. Tom raced to the scene on New York’s Upper West Side on the night of December 8, 1980, as news broke of the former Beatles’ murder at the hands of Mark Chapman.

“The US staff correspondent was away on a rather insignificant job miles away so I was sent to the Dakota Building,” he recalls. “I was a huge John Lennon fan and not used to keeping my emotions in check on camera. Weeping fans were gathering and playing his songs on boom boxes. It was absolutely tragic and a surreal scene. I remember speaking to one fan who said she felt like she had been punched in the stomach and I felt that too.”

He adds: “I felt cold for about two weeks afterwards, just like I had when my father died.”

Since 1985, Tom has reported on the US film industry, working on the top-rated Film… series presented by Barry Norman until his death, and covering the world’s top film festivals, including Cannes, Sundance, Toronto and London. He has attended nearly all the Oscar ceremonies for the past 30 years, reporting live from the red carpet for major BBC news programmes. For the most part, he finds stars stick to their scripts and “rarely go off-message”.

But when he has challenged a big shot in the film industry to say more than they want to it has occasionally backfired.
“I was interviewing the director Paul Verhoeven about his film Basic Instinct once and it went badly wrong,” he reveals. “He was trying to make out it was an art film and I said to him that surely it was a commercial film and he got up and walked out.”

The 1992 erotic thriller starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone famously included a scene of the actress crossing and uncrossing her legs in a very revealing manner during a police interrogation. A major box office success despite, or perhaps because of, the scene, the film grossed $117million dollars in the US alone.

Tom also found Men in Black star Tommy Lee Jones “very difficult”. “He always seems to be in a foul mood at press junkets and he can be intimidating to younger journalists which I think is pretty mean,” he explains. Likewise Joker star Joaquin Phoenix, whose work Tom admires greatly, proved to be something of a disappointment in real life too and “difficult to engage with”.

Not so Tom Hanks though who our Tom reckons is “the ideal interviewee, always ready with an articulate quote”. Then there are the funny encounters like when he got the giggles interviewing Emma Thompson.

“We were in this hotel room for the interview and whoever was in the room next door kept flushing the toilet,” he laughs.“I do love a bit of toilet humour but I’m not sure Emma knew what was going on.”

Tom adores the old school stars of Hollywood, in particular Bette Davies although he found her pretty scary in person. “She looked at me as if I were vermin but I have a lot of respect for her. She made it in the 1930s in what was a very male-dominated world.”

Lauren Bacall who, in later life, he says, could be counted on to say exactly what she thought, and Marlene Dietrich, is another favourite. More surprising is his admiration for The Sound of Music. “I recently went on a Sound of Music open top bus tour in Salzburg and everyone was singing along,” he smiles.

Tom was born in London and studied Economics at Cambridge University. Starting out as a news reporter, one of his first interviews was with Harold Wilson who in 1976 had stunned the nation by resigning as Prime Minister shortly after turning 60.
“When I walked in he was sitting in this room alone, sort of staring into space,” recalls Tom.

“It was quite surreal and I couldn’t believe I was going to interview a former Prime Minister. But as he started talking I realised I didn’t understand a word he was saying and wasn’t aware he had early stage dementia. There were moments of clarity but most of it didn’t seem to make any sense. Then to make matters worse, my tape recorder started spilling tape all over the floor!”

It was known at the time that strong magnetic fields from Underground trains on the Bakerloo and Northern used to erase analogue magnetic tape recordings, and Tom was tempted to use this excuse with his BBC bosses after the disastrous interview.

Instead, he called on the help of a sympathetic editor who helped him painstakingly razor cut and stick the tape back together.
“By some miracle, she made both me and the former Prime Minister sound coherent which was no mean feat and I was even congratulated by a boss for a great interview,” he laughs. “That’s what I love about the BBC. There is usually someone who will help you out.”

Tom is also full of praise for the British film industry and its low-budget films often backed by the BBC. But he is less enamoured with modern day Hollywood. “The big studio films have for the most part lost any spark of originality,” he says. “I think we’ve had enough superhero movies now. It does feel creatively bankrupt. There is a production slump in LA right now and cinema attendance is still below pre-Covid levels.”

But he still has hope for the future of cinema. “The other day I went to see [sci-fi action film] Project Hail Mary at this little cinema in New York,” he says. “It was really good and the place was full of kids enjoying that communal experience of cinema.”And, of course, popcorn was part of the experience. “I was enjoying myself,” he smiles. “Which is what it’s all about, really.”

• Talking Movies: Tom Brook’s 50 Years with the BBC, will air on the BBC News channel at 1.30pm & 8.30pm on Saturday, April 25 and 1.30am on Sunday, April 26; also available to stream on BBC iPlayer