, Warner gave no impression of struggling after anything much at all.
Fame and acclaim interested him not; it was said that he read all his reviews for Hamlet but kept only the bad ones. He was motivated, he said, by “a driving lack of ambition” and claimed: “I don’t think I’m on anyone’s wavelength, even my own.” Reluctant to take his profession too seriously, his advice to younger actors was simple: “Don’t run with scissors.”Peter Hall
’s groundbreaking Hamlet, he was a very modern student prince in long red scarf, spectacles and Aran sweater. “David’s gentleness and passivity chimed absolutely with flower power and all that,” noted Hall. “He was wonderful.” Warner acknowledged the unpredictable quality of his own performance: “I’m a bit erratic. Sometimes I can hear the others thinking, ‘What’s he up to tonight?’” In 2001, the Telegraph decided that he had been “the finest Hamlet of his generation”, though the actor was characteristically slow to accept such praise. “It’s not for me to say … I just don’t know – I didn’t see it. The only thing I can say is that the kids did go to see it. It brought a whole new generation to Stratford.
David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave in Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment, 1966, directed by Karel Reisz.His distracted handsomeness, golden locks and formidable jaw could have made him a viable romantic lead were it not for the languid oddness that set him apart, sharpening gradually into menace as he became a popular screen villain.