Toby Stephens: ‘I lost my dad to cirrhosis. The only difference between us was that, tragically, he couldn’t stop drinking’

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The actor on missing his late mother, Maggie Smith, being mistaken for Damian Lewis, and looking ‘like a fridge’ Born in London, Toby Stephens, 57, is the son of actors Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens. He trained at Lamda and, in 1992, made his film debut in Orlando. In 2002 he played the Bond villain in Die Another Day. His television work includes One Day, The Split and Black Sails. On stage he has performed for the RSC and the National Theatre, and he is currently starring in Equus at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, until 4 July, and then Theatre Royal Bath, from 14-25 July. He is married to the actor Anna‑Louise Plowman, with whom he has three children, and lives in London. What is your greatest fear? To be completely alone. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/BhbEa2J via IFTTT
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‘I lied to get the part’: Melvyn Hayes on his ‘angry young man’ beginnings – and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum

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He was tipped to be the next Richard Burton – but ended up as crossdressing Gunner Gloria in the now controversial sitcom. As his breakthrough classic returns to the screen, Hayes looks back

One day in 1957, Melvyn Hayes was on the set of a film called Woman in a Dressing Gown when a man sat down next to him. “I was getting paid £5 a day and I’d been on location for three days,” the actor recalls. “All I had to do was walk up to a house and put a newspaper through a letterbox. That was my part. Finished. I said to this bloke, ‘I can’t believe the waste of money on this film. Take me. You could have got a newspaper boy on £1 a day to do what I’m doing.’ Then I said, ‘What do you do then, you lazy bugger?’ And he said, ‘I’m the producer.’”

Hayes, now 89, giggles at the memory of the cheek of himself at 23. Back then, £5 a day was a decent whack. His first job in showbiz, in the early 1950s, was as assistant to The Great Masoni, a magician who tasked Hayes with “disappearing twice daily for £4”. His chief film role so far had been in the 1955 drama documentary The Unloved, in which he played a boy in a home for delinquent kids.

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