Interview with Tony Anholt

Tony Anholt is an actor who has been involved with Gerry Anderson in two of his three major live-action productions and, in an interview conducted last November whilst he was touring in the stage version of "Dial M For Murder", he talks openly about this involvement, as well as his career in general. To be concluded next issue. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "S.I.G.": WE'RE SURE THERE ARE MANY READERS WHO THINK YOU ARE OF ITALIAN DESCENT, A COUNT. . . . .?

`Tony:`	"I'm a mini United Nations, actually. I'm half Dutch quarter Swedish, eighth Irish, eighth French and I was born in Singapore. My father's parents were Dutch and they came to Britain from Holland when my father was about fourteen. In his late teens, early twenties, he met and married my mum, her father was Swedish and her mother a mixture of Irish and French. The reason I was born in Singa- pore is because my father worked for an insurance company and went to Singapore to open a branch office out there. My mother joined him, I was born, and then the Japs arrived in 1941. He stayed behind to volunteer to fight in the Resistance Army and mum and I were evacuated to Australia, South Africa and then to Britain when I was four and a half.
`"S.I.G.":`	`WE BELIEVE, IN FACT, THAT HE DIED OUT THERE, DIDN"T HE?`
`Tony:`	"He was taken prisoner and he was one of the less fortunate ones in the sense that he was shipped up to the Burmese Railway, where they made the film "Bridge Over The River Kwai". He contracted massive ulcers on his leg and he had his leg amputated, now this I find difficult to credit, with ordinary wood saws. Apparently he survived that and he went around on crutches, and then got Malaria and the Japs, I'm quoting - I don't know this, I think it was called Nepocrin in those days, or something to cure Malaria, but they wouldn't hand it over and he died as a P.O.W. and the news came through of his death when my mother and I were in South Africa, when I was about three and a half, and it is one of my earliest memories.

SO YOU CAME TO THIS COUNTRY AGED FOUR AND A HALF ? I've lived here all my life, apart from a couple of years after I left school when I went and lived in Europe, Spain and Paris - to try and find myself or find out what I wanted to do, just see a bit more of the world, really, and not to get stuck in rut too early. Certainly, I have no Italian blood in me and I've never been to America ! HOW DID THE ACTING DEVELOP - WERE YOU IN THE SCHOOL PLAY ? For the last three years I was in the school play, and it culminated in playing Hamlet where I really thought I was the next Laurence Olivier ! Some years later I heard a recording of myself. We only did the play for three nights and it was about two weeks later we sat round in a room with a microphone and sort of read it, or remembered it, as best we could, obviously not of performance quality. I heard it some years after - it's appalling, it's dreadful, absolute rubbish. I was 17.5 then and it sort of bit me. I wanted to act but, for a number of reasons people tried to dissuade me from taking on what must be one of the most precarious jobs in the world. Nobody in my family had any theatrical connections whatsoever. So I abandoned it, I also thought I was going to get married and 'settle down'. It didn't work and I tried a number of jobs, including tea-tasting, working for an insurance company, in a coffee bar, I taught in Prep School. That's why I gave it all in and went abroad for two years and I thought no, to hell with it, what I want to do is act so, at 23, I sort of plunged in. The traditional way is to go to drama school at 17 or 18, but I decided not to do that. SO WHAT HAPPENED ? Basically, I met someone I'd been at school with. He wan- ted to be an actor himself and he'd a year in the States acting, and had got a list of legitimate credits. He was going to give it up and go into another branch of the industry - he's now a film director. He said, "Well if you want to be an actor, and you don't want to go to drama school, here's my credits, all you have to do is say you've been in the States for a year and this is what you've been doing and nobody will check up," and indeed they didn't ! So I lied my way into weekly Rep at 23, where the Assisstant Stage Managers, who had just come out of 2.5 to 3 years of drama school, were doing one line, two line butler/maid parts and shifting scenery and me, who had only ever walked on stage at school, was there playing the leads and middle leads. We did 26 plays in 27 weeks & that was how I was initiated into the theatrical profess- ion. It's certainly a great experience to jump in at the deep end provided you don't stay in that climate for too long because, if you're having to work on a play that quickly you have to take short cuts, if only to survive. WHAT WAS YOU FIRST ENTRY INTO TELEVISION ? The very first thing I did for television was a "Golden Wonder" crisps commerical ! That was how I got my Provis- ional Equity Ticket. I played an American G.I. in some American series ("Court Martial") which was being made over here and I also played in some BBC production about Lewis Carroll, the guy who wrote "Alice in Wonderland". I played some young student who eventually married the real-life Alice. That was my real beginning in television but the major beginning was later when I'd been in weekly Rep, Repertoire on tour, at Oxford, then got into the West End. The television people began to know me and from which followed four or five years of nothing but t.v. BEFORE "THE PROTECTORS" WERE YOU IN ANY OF THE OTHER ITC-ORIGINATED SERIES ? I was in an episode of "Jason King" at one point, yes. John Hallam was in it.