Fields takes centre stage

If all the world's a stage, then Bert Fields plays Macbeth. He is "Hollywood's scariest lawyer", in the estimation of the New Yorker magazine, and, in his own words, the man "who has never lost a case".

He would relish the comparison with Macbeth, partly because he knows that an intimidated defendant is a defendant ready to pay-up, and partly because the oddest thing about Fields is that he is a Shakespeare buff.

When not settling Hollywood's most fractious disputes to great profit - the house in Malibu, the art collection, the smooth hand-tailored suits - Fields, 79 at the end of this month, has written two scholarly works on the Bard.

And over lunch in Manhattan's Ocean Club, he once confided that his favourite play was not