By Luaine Lee.

Scripps Howard News Service.

Published: May 11, 1999.

BEVERLY HILLS -- They don't make men like that today, says actor Timothy Dalton across the table in a hotel dining room here. "Julius Caesar was a completely surprising man. You can't think of a modern example. Modern men aren't like that anymore."

Caesar was not only a ruthless politician and a smooth adjudicator but a military genius, says Timothy Dalton, who will play the Roman leader in "Cleopatra" airing in two parts on ABC May 23 and 24.

They don't make many like Timothy Dalton, either. The man who slipped into James Bond's Italian loafers for two films is both articulate and shy – a winning conversationalist who embraces acting but distrusts fame.

Dressed in a gray jacket, blue chambray shirt and Levi's, Timothy Dalton seems like an amalgam of two worlds: the up-tight Britain, where he grew up and the pragmatic America, where he usually works.

Born in Wales, he lived in Manchester where his father was in advertising Timothy Dalton, 53, resists talking about himself. He wonders what all the fuss is about. "I admire friends of mine who are doctors and lawyers. Why an actor?" he shrugs.

"Acting is great, being in the cinema is great, and I love it. But if you get ill and your friend's a doctor and he'll pop over and give you a pill and put you right; I think that's better," he says.

"I think it's rather narcissistic to talk about yourself. Certain people often confuse what people do on the screen and the language they speak on the screen with the person who's portraying them. And that can be a problem."

Timothy Dalton became the dashing flavor-of-the-month when he debuted in "The Lion in Winter" with Katharine Hepburn. But that wasn't good enough for him.

"I thought to myself, 'I don't deserve this. I'm not experienced enough. This is all happening too soon.' I was wrong. Because it was happening at exactly the right time because I was who I was at that time, and people who were employing me were making, in a sense, the right judgment call. I, on the other hand, being 23, 24, thought to myself, 'Hey, here I am, I've got lead billing in four international movies, it can't be right. I'm going to go learn my craft or improve my craft in the theater. Which is what I did. I stopped doing movies."

When he returned four years later no one remembered him. "So that wonderful thing called momentum or a roll had 'momentumed' itself way out," he says.

"There was a whole other bunch of young actors in the forefront of movies. The other side was, yes, I was a much better actor. I was a much better man. I had improved, but it was a question of getting started again. So I had to start all over," he laughs a deep, hearty roar.

Slowly he scaled his way back. He co-starred in "Sextette" with Mae West, a film that "should probably stay locked in the annals of cinema history," he grins. TV's "Centennial" and the feature "Agatha" with Vanessa Redgrave followed.

It was during this time that he enjoyed a celebrated love affair with Vanessa Redgrave. But today he refuses to acknowledge that, or any other liaison, except his current one with Ukranian Oksana Grigorieva.

Oksana Grigorieva, who trained as a concert pianist and has also acted, has been with Timothy Dalton for four years and is the mother of his 2-year-old son.

He says he waited so long to have a child because of contraception.

"Nowadays two people have got to sit down together and decide (on children), and how often do you get two people who are equally confident about themselves and their future? One day it might be one person doing it, and the next day it might be the other. But you have to have an absolute coincidence of desire and, while I sort of make light of it, it's true."

Having his little boy altered him forever, he muses, a private smile lighting his face.

"I think (it changes) the breadth of warmth toward other people. You suddenly realize everybody else in the world was like this beautiful, precious, young life. It creates a tolerance and warmth toward people."

Though Timothy Dalton has starred in movies like "Rocketeer," "The Beautician and the Beast" and TV's "Scarlett," he's best known for the Bond movies "The Living Daylights" and "Licence To Kill." While he was well seasoned when those were released, he says he wasn't prepared for the tidal wave of adoration that followed.

"The truth was I had no idea how potent or desperate the need of the media for something to do with James Bond. But it all focused on the guy that's playing him. ..Even your Schwarzeneggers or your Stallones or your Harrison Fords -- people who've been in hugely successful identifying movies -- there still seems to be a recognition that they're actually an actor doing it. But Bond, it's astonishing!

"People lose their minds. Journalists want you to say, 'I drive an Aston-Martin and drink martinis.' Truly," he laughs.

"What I did not realize -- that however well you work yourself to preserve your own identity, however well you think you're accomplishing that -- what you don't realize is how ineluctably shaped you are because everybody else is besieging you with James Bond. You're almost trapped in a world of everybody else's perception."

He was driving down the Sunset Strip one day when he spied the mammoth poster of Pierce Brosnan as the new James Bond. "I saw Pierce holding that gun. I suddenly felt a wonderful release. I suddenly felt free, felt a weight falling away from my body.

"Only then I realized I'm back to being myself again, free. Me."

LONDON - "I've never worked on a set so big ........ever," says Timothy Dalton

"Driving in my chariot from one end of this huge city to the other lingers in my mind," says Timothy Dalton, describing his imperious Caesar desending on Alexandria. "They built the heart and essence of a city which we've never seen. It's tremendously exiting."

Dalton, 53, whose roles range from Marc Antony (twice) on the London stage to James Bond on screen ("The Living Daylights," "License to Kill") to Rhett Butler in the 1994 miniseries "Scarlett" for CBS, calls Caesar a remarkable man. But he quickly makes the distinction between someone who is great but not good.

"I would not admire someone who wanted to dominate the world," said Dalton, very un-Caesar-like in a rumpled T-shirt with sunglasses hanging around his neck. "You admire that tenacity, that ruthlessness, that ambition, that political skill--from a distance. It was important to remind the audience that he did have quite a searing ambition to be almost a god . . . [in a scene] by the Sphinx when he talked about not wanting to be remembered in crumbling stone, that he was going to shape the world for history to come.

"Caesar nearly loses to Cleopatra, nearly loses his focus. He says in our movie, 'I have to go. When I'm with you, I lose myself.' Antony never has the strength to do that."

After two films starring as the celebrate secret agent agent of his gracious majesty, which is shown this evening on France 2, Timothy Dalton has given up his 007 costume. He has prepared himself for a new step in his career: to portray Julius Caesar. "I do not regret my past in the role of the secret agent but I do not have any nostalgia concerning James Bond, confesses the 53 year-old actor. I travelled in seven countries on three continents for Licence to Kill, especially from Morocco to Australia then to the USA. I stayed in the palaces. This was the great life. But I am a comedian and I prefer to live like the people of the show. This is why I gave up on Bond." This year Timothy Dalton gives up his James Bond personality for Julius Caesar in Cleopatra, a mini series produces by the American ABC chain. "It makes me forget 007. After wearing a tuxedo I find myself wearing a Roman toga." To prepare for his new role, Timothy read many works about the history of the Roman empire.

"I realized I was completely ignorant in this matter. The life of Caesar, who pretended to be a successor of Venus and became one of the most illustrious Romans. I discovered he manipulated than he abandoned Cleopatra without the least bit of remorse." At Timothy Dalton's side is Leonor Varela who was chosen to incorporate the Egyptian queen. The actress, of Chilenian origin has taken part in a French film 'Les infortunes de la beaut?' aka 'The Bad Fortunes of the Beauty' with Arielle Dombasle and Tom Novembre. After Caesar, Timothy will slip into the skin of a priest in "Possessed" "I have sworn to myself I will never interpret an English secret agent until the end of my days!"

Timothy Dalton: "That fascination with any woman who could change the nature of the world through love is one of the reasons for the enduring quality of the story and its great excitement and fascination."

Timothy Dalton: "A huge sense of reality. It feels real; it looks real. The soldiers have travelled. They are battle worn, they're hard, and yet there is the light and the change of color and the action and the movement. You get a tremendous sense of glamour that does not rely on the Hollywood glitz. It is born out of a reality, a size, a breadth, and that is great, too."

Timothy Dalton: "I mean, this…this should be a huge movie. You know…it's Cecil B. de Mille…but better." (Timothy laughs.)

"It feels real, it looks real. It's Cecil B. DeMille, but better." (Timothy Dalton)

"I'd never ridden a chariot before so the main thought is just staying on." (Timothy Dalton)

"History is littered with great stories, but this is one of them." (Timothy Dalton)

"We filmed in the place called Ouarzazate, across the Atlas Mountains, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. I filmed the first Bond movie… we filmed there. And the studios aren't really studios…there's no roof or anything. Nothing's got a roof. It's just like three walls and the fourth wall is open Sahara Desert. It was marvelous. I mean, it reminded me of what Hollywood might have been like in the 30's or 40's. I'm sounding silly, I know! There are childish pleasures, and this is one of the best. It was just fantastic. It was thrilling." (Timothy Dalton)