In the first of a new series of personality profiles CHARLES HUTCHINSON the king of cool

DESCRIBE Leslie Phillips OBE in six words. Hello. Ding Dong. Moustache. English bounder. He is forever associated with playing an upper-class filly-chaser, and yet out of a career stretching towards 110 films, only six of them were in the Carry On and Doctor series. Such is his image that you would expect the totals to be far higher.

The "three Doctor films and three Carry On's", as he calls them, are mentioned only halfway through the credits list in his programme profile for the world premiere of John Mortimer's new courtroom drama, Naked Justice, a play that has brought him to the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds to play a kindly old judge with his own version and vision of justice.

As much out of habit as necessity, he is sucking a medicinal cough drop - "they are a bit compulsive", he says - as he settles into a corner leather sofa in tweed jacket, open polo shirt and spotted braces at the Leeds hotel that will be his suitcase home for five weeks, (keeping him away from the 200-year-old Ibiza farmhouse that he is restoring with his actress wife, Angela Soutar).

At 76, the trademark fruity voice is as velvet and refined as ever, and still in demand from television and film companies, advertising agencies and friends, who ask him to record his famous "Hello" for their answer-phone message service. "The funny thing with my voice is that it hasn't changed, and that I still seem to have youth in it, so I'm used to doing things that are not my age, particularly adverts," says Phillips, whose latest stage character is a decade his junior.

"Use of voice is very much the actor's stock in trade and with me that is especially so. They hear my voice and they know everything about me."

At least 'they' think they do. That voice was acquired through stagecraft: Leslie Phillips was born in working-class London, the son of a Tottenham shopkeeper, and his early child acting days had him speaking in a Cockney accent.

"I was brought up in another world, and I moved into a totally different world, and that's the way it is today. I live one type of life; my family another," he says. "Life has changed for an actor since I started. Now you can be born in Leeds, have a broad Leeds accent and use that as your stock-in-trade and get through your acting life like that, but I couldn't.

"You could not have a regional accent, and so I changed gradually into what I am now - I don't think I have an accent of any sort."

That 'accent' is best known from the light comic roles in the Carry On and Doctor capers, a situation that he tolerates but not with great joy. "I'm not ashamed of that work; those films are sent around the world but I don't get paid for that. I got very little when I did them and, because I did very few of them, it was an infinitesimal part of my life," he says.

"Considering I've made more than 100 films it's a miracle those ones should so affect my life, but it is television that's done it. Two more generations have seen them because of TV, and there's an enormous audience that only sees those films."

Suave Phillips has no qualms, however, about being generally perceived as a comic actor. "It doesn't matter really. It's a part of life. It only matters if they think it's all you can do, and if they think that then they'll never know anyway!"

Phillips - whose stage career includes a year in the York Theatre Royal repertory company immediately after wartime service as an officer in the Durham Light Infantry - has acted with the likes of Sir John Gielgud, Anna Neagle, Rex Harrison, Peter Sellers, Gene Kelly, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, Kathleen Turner, Bruce Willis and John Malkovich. It is a diverse collection that confirms his own diversity.

In the 1970s, Phillips took the bold step of cutting off the steady oxygen supply of light comic fare in pursuit of more substantial, challenging work. The policy led to roles in Lindsay Anderson's 1983 production of The Cherry Orchard; Tennessee Williams's Camino Real; his favourite play, Passion Play by Peter Nichols and Falstaff in The Merry Wives Of Windsor. "I used to follow my nose, but 30 years ago I decided to go after certain things, which I've now fulfilled, so now I can afford to do lighter things and go back to heavier work."

That means he can make a film such as the Chekhov adaptation August with Anthony Hopkins in 1995, his favourite filming experience of all time, and this year take roles in such highly commercial projects as the first Harry Potter film (in which he is to play Sorting Hat) and the new Tomb Raider movie.

Retirement will only come should illness ever stop him from performing. He still loves acting and he retains aspirations of playing King Lear, and his thoughts on his craft reveal a man working diligently in pursuit of his pleasure.

"If you're a good actor, you listen and then reply. If you don't listen then you're not very good. I listen powerfully to what is going on, and the more you listen, the more you get out of it," he says. "It's like the more you give, the more you get from your fellow actors. It can never be a selfish profession."

- Leslie Phillips is appearing in Naked Justice at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until February 24.

Box office: 0113 213 7700.

Updated: 12:04 Friday, February 09, 2001