Like Arthur Ransome, I have ‘lived many lives in one.’ He also wrote, ‘Memory picks and choses’. Here are a few unusual ones:
This gave me a fright: I was watching the ITV police series Broadchurch when I saw a photograph of me, aged seventeen, featured on screen. Only it wasn’t me. My face had been photo-shopped to look like a young Charlotte Rampling. Above is a screenshot. Here is the original:
No one had asked my permission, but what can I do but take it as a compliment?
Around this time I was briefly involved in the HTV series Kidnapped. I played a boy. But opposite David McCallum (The Man From U.N.C.L.E), so who was I to argue. And I was paid.
I got the part in an odd way. They had forgotten to cast anybody for the role, but the producer had previously cast my sister in Arthur of the Britons and knew we lived only a few miles from the location. I agreed on the morning the scene was shot.
I later stood in for the little boy who played Gerald Durrell in the first BBC drama series of My Family and Other Animals. Brian Blessed thought it hilarious. I was working behind the camera by that time but was skinny enough to squeeze into the costume.
I was once on a train when the director of Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners asked if I could get to Gloucestershire to clear out my mother’s attic. I ended up filming with him for the next three or four days. It was exhausting – and unpaid – but a lot of de-cluttering got done. Check the apron from Seville. I’d bought it on honeymoon.
Piratøen – is the title for Swallows and Amazons in Danish – seen here on a flier that I only came across recently. I’d just had my DNA analyzed to discover I am 3% Danish due to admixture a few generations back. Do I look Danish?
Although I’ve worked on over 100 films and tv programmes, I have mostly been behind the camera, so don’t expect anyone to know who I am. They don’t. The marketing executive at StudioCanal had not, at first, wanted me to help promote the remastered DVD of ‘Swallows and Amazons’, which is understandable as Dame Virginia McKenna has the star billing. Then she must have watched the ‘filmen for hele familien’. I ended up giving Q&As at twelve cinemas. Some had audiences of 250 and the screenings were so popular that customers were being turned away.
And yet when a friend of mine told a lady that I was in ‘Swallows and Amazons’ she smiled apologetically and said she’d keep ‘an eye out for me.’
‘Why are you here?’ I was asked at Windermere Jetty in Cumbria. We had gathered to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the release of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in cinemas. How should I have answered that question? I replied saying, ‘I’ve been asked to give talk.’
You can now listen to the story of how the original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ was made on Audible.
The HTV series ‘Kidnapped’ (1978) is available on YouTube. Blink and you miss me, but the music is wonderful.
Sophie Neville 
These backstage glimpses are priceless!
Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment. One day I hope to weave these random points into a 3rd edition of ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’. I feel if I don’t list them now they will be forgotten.
Love these backstage snippets! Did you ever appear on screen in My Family and Other Animals or was it just for setting up shots etc? I loved that series (as well as Swallows and Amazons obviously!)
We shot the scene of the Durrells arriving at the pink villa rather late one afternoon. The boy who played Gerald Durrell was aged 13 but had to leave the set at 5.00pm to comply with child work regulations. I think you can just see me in this costume in the long shots, but I’d be partially masked by other members of the family. After that, I found a little boy who lived locally to play Gerry in a few long shots, such as driving off in the Dodge with Spiro.
I would often read Gerry’s part in scenes when the other actors were in close up. This was a standard aspect of my job. It made it easier for the adults as they knew me well, I didn’t fidget like a boy, and I could ‘give’ to them by being natural in delivery of the dialogue. So I was there, but not seen or heard.
What a life you’re living! I’m getting the feeling that when someone asks, “who wants to …” your hand is already raised. How wonderful!
I didn’t volunteer my photo for ‘Broadchurch’! No one else will notice, of course, but it gave me quite a shock. I was ill in bed with Covid, catching up on missed drama series, and was jolted to the core.
Oh yes, what a strange thing! And Broadchurch is such a tension-filled and suspenseful show, and then to see your own photo in it! I cannot imagine. Thanks for sharing your stories!
Mum was playing Charlotte Rampling’s infirm mother living in a seaside nursing home. It was so expensive that it forced her to return to work as a lawyer. The photo was used after her mother had died and she was going through memorabilia. There we were in an unexpected close up.
A wonderful insight into so many aspects of film and TV production. I worked for a film unit some years ago and it really is a trier of patience when a shot takes so long to set up, then the sun goes in and someone has to run back to the lorry for the reflectors! Thank you for sharing.
You are right! One learns lessons in perseverance and tenacity. Do let me know if you have any questions.