The alchemy of a career …

… The Great Actor Who Hated Acting by Fintan O'Toole | The New York Review of Books.

The press have been sounding the same note for many years—ever since I went to Hollywood in the early fifties, in fact—that I am or was potentially the greatest actor in the world and the successor to [John] Gielgud [Laurence] Olivier etc. but that I had dissipated my genius etc. and “sold out” to films and booze and women. An interesting reputation to have and by no means dull but by all means untrue.