“When Jeremy Brett earned the part of Sherlock Holmes, he brought a complexity to the role unmatched by others. His Holmes was mercurial, intense, sensitive, and melancholic — characteristics that were part of the detective and Brett’s own personalities. His goal, Brett once said, was to give the man without a heart (Holmes) an inner life and to show the cracks in “his marble.”
Brett’s character was a man who had extreme mood swings such as Conan Doyle’s creation often did. That he was able to realistically portray these personality shifts is undoubtedly due, in part, to Brett’s own bipolar disorder. He also portrayed Holmes as a man who could be arrogant, intolerant, and impatient, while, at the same time, being a man of self-doubts and loneliness who could have feelings toward others.
Brett, a Holmes fan, insisted that the adaptations of the stories should follow, as near as possible, the originals in both plot and characters. With one or two exceptions, his demands were met. In doing so, he created a Holmes that was different from the often stereotyped perception of him. He wore a homburg hat and suits more than a deerstalker and Inverness cape. He smoked cigarettes more than pipes. Most importantly, he was not a thinking machine who never failed, and his outer image was often shown to be a veneer.”
(via macpye)
