BITS AND PIECES AS AN ACTOR

(second time around)

Guest appearance  in “My Parents Are Aliens” Granada TV

H.H. Munro (Saki) in  “The Double Life of Saki” BBC TV

Readings, Radio 4 “Night Waves”

Dad in “Love, Homoeroticism and Mummy” (short film)

Voice acting, The Pre-Raphaelites (BBC TV documentary series)

Doctor O’Brien in  “Comply” (short)

The Propaganda Voice in “The Library of Burned Books” (short)

The Warden in “Short Stop on the Way” (short)

The Actor in “Scene 9 Take 2” (short)

Voice Actor, “Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet” (video game)

A lot of the theatre component of my original acting career can be found at Theatricalia. In terms of TV appearances, there weren’t that many. However, I did turn down quite a lot of jobs – in error, I now think. Throughout my career I always said I turned down more parts than I took on, because they weren’t good enough – but then when I needed the money I did anything that came my way… Not the cleverest way to develop a career. By the end of 1979 I was out of love with acting and gave up theatre work, though up until 1984 I took on some small/any old TV parts when they could be fitted in. Thereafter, for 20 years I rejected the occasional offers of acting work that came along until, finally, in 2005, the producer Bernard Krichefski offered Jo and me those husband and wife parts in an episode of ‘My Parents Are Aliens’.

GALLERY

The Warden in “Short Stop on the Way” (2012), written and directed by Dimitar Dimitrov. A man is having a heart attack. He is resuscitated – and taken to the electric chair to die.

Publicity still from “No, No, Not Yet!” – a farce by Richard Harris and Leslie Darbon, Palace Theatre Westcliffe-on-Sea 1972. I was a Welshman convinced that orgies were going on all around him. I don’t think I was ever typecast, and certainly not here. Just for the record, I was about 20 years too young for the part.

The Actor in “Scene 9, Take 2”, a film made by Harjinder Grewal in 2014

FRAGMENTS FROM

AN ACTING CAREER

Left to right, Susan Tebbs, Peter Dennis and RD in “The Promise”, Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds 1969.

Comments

    “Too nice to be an actor”   Michael Wilding, actor, 1912-1979

                                 “Too intelligent to be an actor”   Frank Hauser, director, 1922-2007

                                             “Walks like Lawrence Harvey”   Richard Gale, actor, 1921-1983

Right: Twelfth Night”, opening season of St George’s Elizabethan Theatre, 1976. Lynn Farleigh, Viola, standing behind her brother, Sebastian (me). I have eyes only for Sarah Badel (Olivia)

Publicity photo by Pete Bartlett

Saki (“The Double Life of Saki”) - photo by Rolf Marriot

Foreground: Mark, the troubled GI, in “Kennedy’s Children”, Bristol Old Vic 1977