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STRATFORD -- It may count as something akin to lese-majeste, but it has to be said nonetheless.
Off-stage, the one-time King Of Kensington has become a mere shadow of his former self. These days, Al Waxman would have to stand up twice to cast the shadow of a mere duke.
Ill health? Stress? Personal woe?
Try none of the above.
As Waxman explains over a lunch that's more salad than substance, the weight loss was purely personal choice, motivated only in part by the fact that he's about to open as Willy Loman in the Stratford Festival production of the Arthur Miller classic, Death Of A Salesman.
"Willy Loman's got enough baggage, without Waxman's excess weight," one of Canada's most enduring actors says, glancing somewhat balefully at the thin tortillas pressed into service today as sandwich bread.
"But the main incentive was I've got a lot of good work I want to do in the next number of years."
At 62, Waxman isn't even close to slowing down -- quite the contrary, in fact, as he prepares to make his Stratford debut at an age where most people are concerned with bowing out.
"I would not have felt complete as a Canadian actor," he explains, "if I hadn't acted here.
"Now, it's turned out to be the perfect time -- the perfect role -- for me."
He does want to set the record straight on one thing. He's been quoted as saying that he is Willy Loman -- and while he admits that those words came from his mouth, he wants to clarify them somewhat.
"The way I work, it's an actor's right -- and maybe his obligation -- to consider that he is the character he's playing," he says.
"I am Willy Loman, with one important distinction: I am a winner."
He'll get few arguments on that score from people who have watched him move from television to movies and back again, as easily as he's juggled the roles of actor, director, teacher and poster boy for the too-often beleaguered Canadian entertainment industry.
"I've been a so-called hyphenated talent, which may have cost me," Waxman says, adding that it's too late to worry about the cost now.
"If my grandmother had wheels, she'd have been a wagon," he says in colorful dismissal.
Still, it's been a good 30 years since Waxman set foot on a theatrical stage -- and he's coming back in a vehicle with a higher profile than the Pope-mobile.
Of those 30 years away from the stage, Waxman says there was no inner hunger for it.
"I always wanted to do what I was doing," he insists. "I was always turned on doing movies and television because I always thought it was a medium of now."
And even when his thoughts turned to working at Stratford, it wasn't as an actor.
"The original conversations (Richard) Monette (Stratford's artistic director) and I had were for directing," Waxman recalls. "But when Willy Loman came up, I wanted to act that."
And so far, with opening night looming, the frequent director has had no trouble surrendering directorial control, a surrender, he says, that's "not hard when she's someone as gifted as Diana Leblanc. I love her."
As for his castmates -- the legendary Martha Henry, Roland Hewgill, Lewis Gordon and Geordie Johnson, to name a few -- Waxman calls them all "wonderful people -- a wonderful family, but that's how I feel about this whole place."
Even though he's served on the Festival's Board Of Directors for three years, Waxman has learned new things about the place since he's been there as an actor.
"It's stunning the number of good people working here," he confides. "It's wholesome. It's a good feeling.
"In the best sense of the word, it's like belonging to the studios in the 1940s.
"I just finished a voice class before I saw you," he says proudly.
Salesman is Waxman's only gig at this summer Festival, however. Although he did Shakespeare "as a kid," he figures that Loman is more than enough work for one summer.
"They offered me (a role in a Shakespeare play) this year, but I said no," he says. "I'm pretty single-minded. But I was a pretty good Toby Belch as I remember."
Relaxed and expansive, but still oddly combative, in a way that suggests that it is not easy being a celebrity in a country unused to celebrity, Waxman demurs on only a few conversational topics.
The first is any sort of serious character analysis of Loman, beyond the most superficial observations about background and attitude.
"I think he's motivated by continuation," actor says of character. "He thinks he's a good father; he wants to be a good father.
"It's a continuing search that goes on," he explains, before breaking off. "So much of what I do is my own private ammunition now."
The other is his professional plans beyond the end of this season. On a personal level, he and wife Sara, restaurant critic elsewhere in this paper, plan to visit their son, who will be teaching English in Japan, but beyond that: "We'll have this conversation a couple of months from now," he says firmly. "When the season is over -- the word complete doesn't mean it's over -- I'm going to keep working."
But whatever he does, his heart will never be far from home and the country he loves.
"I don't think you take your country for granted, just like you don't take your career for granted, just like you don't take your marriage for granted," says the newly-minted member of the Order Of Canada.
"I'm a very lucky man. I've got a great partner, two wonderful kids. Life's pretty good, because we're trying."
Not to mention thin.
More Death of a Salesman in the Jam Theatre Database