INTERVIEW
Will Keen: How I turned myself into Putin
The actor tells Dominic Maxwell about becoming the Russian dictator for Peter Morgan’s play Patriots
Will Keen as Putin in Patriots
MARC BRENNER
The Times
The next time you see Vladimir Putin on television, keep an eye out for what he does with his hands and feet. Last summer, when the Russian president was seen tapping his foot in a meeting with his defence minister, there was speculation that his fidgeting was a sign that he was losing control of his faculties.
In fact, says Will Keen, the actor who last month won an Olivier award for playing Putin in Peter Morgan’s play Patriots, the opposite is true. For Putin, tapping his foot, as with so much in his life, is strategy rather than accident. As part of his preparations for the show’s first run at the Almeida in north London last summer, Keen, 53, watched all sorts of
