But if you're going to stay in the game, and not wind up like Marilyn Monroe, you learn to make that separate self your servant.
This self-described servant of the banks has been amply rewarded for his loyal service.
Lee, quite admirably, seems to be a Robert Wise-style director, the obedient, self-effacing servant of his material rather than, say – to pick his polar opposite – a Robert Altman-style conductor of chaos.
One photograph of him looking on as Blair and Nicolas Sarkozy chat seems to capture his relationship with power: he leans back against a door half smiling, at once both self-effacing servant and, seemingly, director of the scene.
But what an amazing, anything-can-happen universe they reveal: one of self-effacing servants and flamboyant deities, barnyard animals and magical beasts, deep-rooted traditions and multicultural exoticisms.
As my friend Roger Mitchell says, Christ was not merely an emperor in heaven who temporarily disguised himself as a self-giving servant--no!
One key figure is Jonathan Schwartz, a reputedly quiet, self-effacing civil servant who specialises in legal affairs.
Clueless adviser Ollie (Chris Addison) is "a little bit morally bankrupt, and a tiny bit dangerously unreliable" says self-righteous civil servant Terri (Joanna Scanlan).
"The 80s are going on for ever," declares one character blithely, while a typically self-serving civil servant sums up the mood in Whitehall: "The economy's in ruins, no one's got a job, and we just don't care, it's bliss".
Garland's focus on guilt versus innocence makes him a throwback, the kind of self-effacing public servant who believes that "the United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts," as an inscription outside the Justice Department office of the Attorney General says.
John Dudley was a typical Tudor Crown servant, self-interested but absolutely loyal to the incumbent sovereign: The monarch's every wish was law.
