Tom Burke was born in Kent in 1981. He is the son of actors Anna Calder-Marshall and David Burke. He starred in the television mini-series “State of Play” and stars in BBC’s “The Three Musketeers”.
Brittish Actors
Collection of Classic Brittish Actors
Chris Jury
Bobby Davro
Bobby Davro was born on September 13, 1959 in Middlesex, England as Robert Nankeville. He is an actor and writer, known for EastEnders (1985), Copy Cats (1985) and Winner Takes All (1978).
Dudley Sutton
The great Dudley Sutton was born in 1933 in Surrey. His film debut was in “Go to Blazes” with Maggie Smith in 1962. The same year he featured in “The Boys” with Richard Todd and Robert Morley, a court room drama. In 1963 he socred a huge success as a biker in “The Leather Boys” with Rita Tushingham. In 1971 he starred with Oliver Reed in Ken Russell’s “The Devils”. He had great success on television in “Lovejoy” with Ian McShane and currently appears in “Emmerdale”.
Dudley Sutton obituary in “The Guardian” in 2018.
Brimming with mischief, the gloriously uproarious Dudley Sutton was an actor who epitomised the Elizabethan view of thespians as rogues and vagabonds, “cony-catchers and bawdy-baskets”. His face provided theatre critics with years of poetic inspiration.
They described him as “a debauched cherub” and “a fallen angel”; the Guardian’s Michael Billington admired his “baby face battered with experience” in a production of Strindberg’s After the Fire at the Gate theatre in 1997, while another said of Sutton in Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class at the Royal Court 20 years earlier that he was “the only actor who can upstage a baby lamb”, spluttering insults from the side of his mouth “like a rustic WC Fields”.
Sutton, who has died aged 85, was powered by stern beliefs and a desire to upset the applecart, traits that produced well-observed turns in a vast rogues’ gallery of colourful supporting roles. His most famous television part was in the BBC’s Lovejoy (1986-94), which starred Ian McShane as a scallywag East Anglian antiques dealer and Sutton as his friend Tinker the tout.
Sutton originally turned down the role of Tinker Dill as he was written as a slovenly, dirty old scruff. Living opposite the antiques market in Chelsea, south-west London, Sutton knew how antiques dealers really dressed, and so sported a three-piece tweed suit, silk hanky and beret, making the part his own and the character a hit.
Sutton was born into a working-class family in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey; his father was a slot-machine manufacturer. Dudley won a place at Moffats, a Hertfordshire boarding school, which relocated to Lifton Park, Devon, at the outbreak of the second world war. He was impressed with the wealth of culture the school offered him, but his social background made him feel at odds with his fellow pupils. His embarrassment at being chosen to play a girl in the school play (thanks to his blond hair and blue eyes) quickly turned to excitement, however, as he fell in love with performing.
After school, he joined the RAF for five years, working as a mechanic and starring in amateur productions. He was encouraged by an RAF education officer to apply to Rada in London and enrolled in 1955, but he quickly grew bored and dispirited with the hierarchical atmosphere and plays reinforcing class stereotypes. He preferred to spend his days reading Camus and Sartre in Soho coffee bars, frustrated that the world seemed to be bursting with new ideas everywhere except at his drama school.
He visited Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop in east London, and as he stepped off the tube found himself in a land “full of pollution, with railway yards and a Yardley’s perfume factory and these little half-doored two-up two-down workers’ cottages and I thought ‘this is brilliant’ … I went to this really beat-up, scruffy theatre and I loved it … it was everything my father hated.” He took to working in a coffee bar, fraternising with “teddy boys, hookers and these amazing West Indians who were selling spliffs”, was dismissed from Rada and joined Theatre Workshop, appearing in productions including Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’ Be.
Littlewood believed not in stars but in collective genius, an ideology that Sutton stood by for the rest of his life. His political education, however, came more from his friendship with the Irish writer Brendan Behan, which flourished when Sutton appeared in a production of Behan’s play The Hostage in 1959, than it did from company members: he disliked Littlewood’s sentimentality about the working class, and she criticised him for being “middle-class, arty and public school”.
It was an exciting, fractious company and Sutton appeared alongside such distinctive actors as Brian Murphy, Yootha Joyce and Richard Harris. He was Malcolm in a 1957 production of Macbeth with Harris that travelled to the Moscow Art theatre, and adored Harris as much for his unruly behaviour as his theatrical force.
His most significant role on stage was heading the original cast of Entertaining Mr Sloane at the New Arts theatre, then Wyndham’s, in 1964. He found a kindred spirit in the playwright Joe Orton: “To fight the demon of homophobia with a West End comedy was brilliant,” Sutton thought. Sutton was vehemently committed to the legalisation of homosexuality, having seen gay friends hounded and humiliated.Advertisement
Two of his earliest roles in the cinema, in The Boys (1962) and The Leather Boys (1964), both directed by Sidney J Furie, allowed him to act on his beliefs. While filming the latter, in which he played a gay biker, he threw the producer off the set after being told he was “not being camp enough”.
In his first television appearances he found he was “giving away the family secrets” with over-expression, so instead he grew skilled at closing down his emotions, which led to a decade playing unnervingly cold fish in a variety of series. After he gave an intense performance as Eddy Black in The Saint in 1964, Roger Mooredescribed him as his personal favourite villain, but Sutton eventually tired of working on seemingly interchangeable crime series – while making a 1970 episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), he even tore up a scene and rewrote it with his co-star, Norman Eshley.
He ducked in and out of the theatre in later years, returning triumphantly alongside Albert Finney in Ronald Eyre’s production of Ronald Harwood’s JJ Farr at the Phoenix in 1987, and with one-man shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, Pandora’s Lunch Box in 2003 and Killing Kittens in 2006. He was also an entertaining poet, his work ranging from a Molière-inspired verse play to a eulogy on the glory days of London’s public conveniences.
Sutton was married four times, and is survived by three children, Peter, Barnaby and Fanny.
• Dudley Sutton, actor, born 6 April 1933; died 15 September 2018Topics
Rona Anderson
Rona Anderson was a staple of British B movies of the 1950’s. She was long ,arried to Gordon Jackson. She died in 2013.
Her Guardian obituary by Ronald Bergan:
In the 1950s, while watching a second feature before the “big picture” at their local cinema, regular British filmgoers would often have seen Rona Anderson, who has died aged 86. Anderson starred in 20 movies between 1950 and 1958, mostly well-crafted, low-budget thrillers. Opposite such luminaries as Robert Beatty, Jimmy Hanley, John Bentley, Paul Carpenter and Lee Patterson, Anderson was the classy girlfriend who helps the hero solve a murder, usually via a visit to the criminal underground, all within the hour allotted to the film.
According to the Scottish comedian Stanley Baxter, Anderson “had this incredible, porcelain-like face, too beautiful for film … The camera likes angularity, to see the edges, and I think Rona’s face was just too perfect.” Whatever the reason, Anderson made few major movies, though she appeared in many popular television series, such as The Human Jungle (1964), Dr Finlay’s Casebook (1965), Dixon of Dock Green (1966-71) and Bachelor Father (1970-71), and on stage throughout her career. She was also busy in the 1960s, bringing up her two sons with the actor Gordon Jackson, to whom she was married from 1951 until his death in 1990.
For the actor Kenneth Williams, a friend for more than 30 years, the Jacksons were a surrogate family. In an entry in his diary for 8 July 1957, Williams notes: “Gordon & Rona at 7.30 which was as delightful as ever. A sweet most delectable pair whom I enjoy enormously.” Seven years later, the more usually waspish Williams writes: “Went up to see Gordon & Rona. They gave me lunch and I stayed till about five. I had a lovely time. The boys were marvellous. They’re a lovely family.”
Unlike Jackson, for so long the token Scotsman in British war films and action movies, who later found wide fame as the butler Mr Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs, Anderson had a “posh” English accent – obligatory for British leading actors in the 50s – although she was born, raised and educated in Scotland, with a short time as an evacuee in Ottawa, Canada, during the second world war.
Anderson, born in Edinburgh, started acting at an early age, training at the Glover Turner Robertson School in her home town. From 1945 until 1949, she was a member of the Citizens’ theatre, Glasgow. Her first film role was as one of the passengers in the spy thriller Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948). Her second was opposite her future husband in Floodtide (1949), a romantic drama set and shot mainly on Clydeside.
In the episodic Poet’s Pub (1949), Anderson was Joanna, the daughter of obnoxious Professor Benbow (James Robertson Justice), the nemesis of her poet boyfriend, Saturday Keith (Derek Bond). One of her rare A-pictures was Scrooge (1951), with Alastair Sim in the title role. In a tender scene with George Cole as Scrooge’s earlier self, Anderson plays his one true love, telling him that they must part forever because “another idol has replaced me in your heart. A golden idol.”
In the cold war “quota quickie” spy drama Little Red Monkey (1955), Anderson got the chance to play opposite the Hollywood tough guy Richard Conte. After two tepid pictures in the 1960s – The Bay of St Michel (1963), about the search for Nazi loot, and Devils of Darkness (1965), in which Anderson tangles with vampires in Brittany – she had the role of Miss Lockhart, the chemistry teacher, in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), a rival of Maggie Smith’s Miss Brodie for the attention of the music teacher, Mr Lowther, played by Jackson.
From time to time through her career, Anderson returned to the stage. At the 1960 Edinburgh festival, she appeared in the Scottish poet Sydney Goodsir Smith’s epic historical play The Wallace; she was in the first stage production of Brian Clark’s Whose Life Is It Anyway? at the Mermaid theatre, London, in 1978, in a cast headed by Tom Conti and Jane Asher; and in 1981, she played the mother of Diana, princess of Wales in the Ray Cooney comedy Her Royal Highness …? at the Palace theatre, London, with Marc Sinden as Prince Charles.
Anderson is survived by her two sons, Roddy and Graham.
• Rona Anderson, actor, born 3 August 1926; died 23 July 2013
Her Guardian obituary can be accessed on-line here.
Tony Hadley
“Mirror” article on Tony Hadley from 2013:
- By Olivia Buxton
The singer says that at the height of his fame the only way he could trust himself to stay faithful to his first wife Leonie was to go on bender
Eighties heartthrob Tony Hadley had so many offers from besotted fans he would drink himself into oblivion to resist the temptation of sleeping with them.
The Spandau Ballet singer says that at the height of his fame the only way he could trust himself to stay faithful to his first wife Leonie was to go on benders.
“There were always so many beautiful women throwing themselves at us,” he says. “One time we had 40 models in our hotel suite – someone had called an agency and invited them along.
“We were mobbed everywhere we went and it was tough to resist all that temptation, so the best thing to do was get so p***** I couldn’t have done anything anyway.”
He tells how at the time he had a young family and wanted to “uphold certain standards”.
Tony’s marriage to Leonie, mum of his three oldest children, eventually broke up – but he says he never strayed during the band’s heyday.
Now happily married to PR girl Alison Evers, the 53-year-old pop legend has two more children, Zara, six, and Genevieve, 17 months.
Despite having been in the business for 30 years now, he reveals how he is still faced with endless temptation.
“Charity ladies days are wild,” he says, laughing. “Me and Davina McCall both support Action Medical Research and during events we’re on the top table.
“It’s like a wedding except all the other tables are full of 250 housewives who like to lunch.
“They start off very demurely and they’re all dressed to the nines. But then all of a sudden the wine starts flowing and the volume levels become unbelievable. They’ve been known to raid the stage when I start singing.
“No one’s ever actually given me their keys, but I have had women say, ‘How about it?’ It’s definitely not my idea of fun.”
But while Tony has never enjoyed that aspect of rock ’n’ roll life, he does admit he wasn’t a total saint.
“I went over the edge when I was in the band,” he says. “I did a lot of crazy things when I’d been drinking. One time, in a hotel, I tried to jump off one balcony to another balcony and the guys had to catch me as I was about to leap off. I’d have died if I’d jumped.
“Another time I jumped, drunk of course, on to a moving sports car and rolled across the bonnet and dented it.
“I’m lucky the guy didn’t shoot me.”
He says he did manage to resist drugs though, adding: “I’ve been offered them loads of times but I’ve never touched them. I’m fascinated by what makes people want to take drugs.
“When you see someone snorting a line off a toilet seat, it’s gross. And I don’t get how you can tie a band around your arm and inject yourself.”
With fellow bandmates Gary and Martin Kemp, Steve Norman and John Keeble, Tony had 23 hit singles, including True, Gold and Through The Barricades. Spandau Ballet sold 20 million albums worldwide.
But the band split acrimoniously in 1990 and a huge battle over songwriting royalties ended up in the High Court in 1999. Tony and the Kemp brothers didn’t speak to each other for a decade. The band eventually reunited in 2009.
“Twenty years of harbouring grudges, and 10 of not even talking was weird,” says Tony. “Looking back I wish we’d never let it get to that stage. We were just 16 when we got together, and as you get older you become less confrontational. If I had my time again, I’d have handled things differently.”
The first time round for the band, Tony would get bras and knickers thrown at him. Now he says it’s red roses and, bizarrely, cookies.
“I said once I liked chocolate chip cookies and now I get full packets of them thrown at me on stage,” he reveals. “I wish I’d said it was Cartier watches.
“Fans used to write love letters to me, but I haven’t had any marriage proposals.”
That’s just as well or Ali might have had something to say about it.
“She keeps me in line,” he laughs. “And having children at my age keeps me young. Zara is bouncing off the walls and full of energy, and Genevieve is on the go from the minute she wakes up.
“When I met Ali I was torn about whether I wanted more kids or not, but then you fall in love and it happens and it’s great. Having five children is like, ‘Wow’.”
Being a dad to young kids at his age puts him in the perfect position to comment on Simon Cowell’s impending fatherhood. “Simon is a great guy and will be a fantastic dad,” he says. “He’s the same age as me, and he’ll have plenty of energy.
“I’ve met Simon a few times through the charity work he does, and he’s great with kids. Zara loves him.
“He has a fantastic rapport with children.
“People say 53 is too old to be a dad, but I don’t think so. It’s the input you have that counts, and you’re more experienced and worldly-wise.”
With plans to release a new solo album in the autumn and tour dates lined up for October, Tony still finds time to be a hands-on dad.
He admits things were different when his older kids – Tom, 29, Toni, 26, and Mackenzie, 22 – were little.
“I’m around a lot more now because I’ve stopped doing the block tours I did with Spandau,” he says.
“Although when the album comes out I’m going to be promoting that and I’ll be in Australia and New Zealand.
“But generally I have a lot more quality home time as I’m not going off for months and months. I want to appreciate every moment with the kids now as they’re only young for a finite amount of time.”
Tony’s fans these days aren’t the hysterical teens they once were. “The majority of my fans are 30-plus,” he says. “But I have some who are in their late 60s.
“On the other side, I also get kids who are 17 or 18 who are into the whole 80s thing and like tracks like Gold.
“The reaction was incredible after it was played at the Olympics last year, but even I was sick to death of it in the end.” Tony has made no secret of the fact that he’s a big fan himself of One Direction. “They should take advantage of the money, fame and girls, and fill their boots,” he says.
While he admits that watching Harry Styles and co makes him nostalgic, he says he is happier now than he was back in the early days of his career.
“Life has come good for me,” he says. “I have a beautiful family and a great career, and I’m actually earning more now than I was in the 80s.
“When I’m asked, ‘Do you have any regrets?’ I always say, ‘No, I don’t have any’.”
The above “Mirror” article can also be accessed online here.
Michael Socha
IMDB entry:
Michael Socha was born on December 13, 1987 in Derby. He is an actor best known for his role as Tom in Being Human (2008). His parents Robert Socha and Kathleen Lyons are Jewish, his grandparents immigrated from Poland during World War 2.
Socha was a rebellious pupil who often skipped school. At the age of 11 Michael unsuccessfully auditioned for the lead role in a school musical play, but won the lead role of Bugsy Malone in another play years later.
James McAvoy
IMDB entry:
McAvoy was raised in Drumchapel, Glasgow, by his grandparents after his father, also called James and a roofer by trade, abandoned his mother when James Jr. was 7. He went to St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary in Jordanhill, Glasgow, where he did well enough and started “a little school band with a couple of mates”.
McAvoy toyed with the idea of the Catholic priesthood as a child but when he was 16, a visit to the school by actor David Hayman sparked an interest in acting. Hayman offered him a part in his film The Near Room (1995) but despite enjoying the experience McAvoy didn’t seriously consider acting as a career, though he did continue to act as a member of PACE Youth Theatre. He applied instead to the Royal Navy and had already been accepted when he was also offered a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
He took the place at RSAMD and when he graduated in 2000, he moved to London. He’d already made a couple of TV appearances by this time and continued to get a steady stream of TV and movie work until he came to British public attention in 2004 playing Steve McBride in the successful UK TV series Shameless (2004) and then to the rest of the world in 2005 as Mr Tumnus in Disney’s adaptation of ‘C. S. Lewis”s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005).
Since then he and his easy facility with accents (no, wait, what? he’s Scottish?) have been much in demand.
