British Actors Archives - Page 79 of 130

Sheila Sim

Sheila Sim was born in 1922 in Liverpool. Her films include the brilliant Powell & Pressburger “A Canterbury Tale” in 1944, “The Guinea Pig” in 1948 opposite her husband Richard Attenborough and “West of Zanzibar” opposite Anthony Steel. She is the sister of the actor Gerard Sim.

IMDB entry:

Sheila Sim was born on June 5, 1922 in Liverpool, England as Sheila Beryl Grant Sim. She is an actress, known for A Canterbury Tale (1944), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman(1951) and The Night My Number Came Up (1955). She has been married to Richard Attenborough since January 22, 1945. They have three children. She died in 2016.

“Guardian” obituary:

When Agatha Christie’s murder mystery play The Mousetrap opened in London in 1952, the actor Sheila Sim, who has died aged 93, had doubts about its ability to last for six months. But the fact that she could wait until just before its 50th anniversary before publicly confessing those doubts, at a lunch at the Savoy hotel with 300 other actors who had appeared in the play, showed them to be unfounded. By then it had long passed its 20,000th performance, and it is still going strong, as the world’s longest initial run of a play.

Through starring as Mollie Ralston, owner of the snowed-in Monkswell Manor, Sim set the seal on her growing reputation as an actor. Her husband, Richard Attenborough, co-starred in the play as Detective Sergeant Trotter, who arrives on a pair of skis, and the couple took a 10% profit share. This continued to serve them very well, Attenborough eventually selling it only when trying to keep the production of his 1982 film Gandhi afloat.

Sim had made her film debut in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s memorable A Canterbury Tale (1944), a modern propaganda adaptation of the Chaucer story, in which a treacherous wartime magistrate is brought to book by a land girl, a British army sergeant and an American serviceman. She drew on her own experience for the role of the land girl, having volunteered in 1940 to work for the Women’s Land Army at harvest time, when she was posted to a farm near Hereford.

In 1945 she played a leading role in an RKO film, Great Day, about a village thrown into turmoil by an impending visit from Eleanor Roosevelt, and had a part in Journey Together, a wartime training drama made by the RAF Film Unit. Attenborough was also in the cast, and they were married at the start of the year. Sim made her television debut in 1946 in a series of plays, and was also in demand for radio work.

She appeared in the film The Guinea Pig (1948, known in the US as The Outsider), in which Attenborough played the central character, a working-class boy at a private school, and she was signed up by J Arthur Rank, then the major if not always the most imaginative of British film producers.

Sim and Attenborough also worked together in Dancing With Crime (1947) and The Magic Box (1951). She had a prominent part in the wild fantasy Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), starring Ava Gardner as a nightclub singer and James Mason as a drifter in a Spanish fishing village. It was shown in a BFI season celebrating the cinematographer Jack Cardiff in 2010.

Born in Liverpool and later educated at Croydon high school, Sim started work in a bank, but soon came to the conclusion that the routine was not for her. Instead she spent two years training as an actor at Rada in London, where she met her future husband. Her first stage appearance, in 1942, was at the Intimate theatre, Palmers Green, in Ivor Novello’s Fresh Fields. She remained with the theatre’s repertory company for six months, then went to the small but fashionable Q theatre at the end of Kew Bridge for another six months, after which she toured with Noël Coward’s This Happy Breed and the drama Landslide. She was in Landslide at the Westminster theatre in London in 1943, and played the lead in the domestic comedy To Dorothy a Son.

At the time of her marriage to Attenborough, he had just come out of the RAF as a sergeant air gunner/cameraman. A honeymoon seemed out of the question until some generous cheques arrived as wedding presents. They went to Bournemouth, which – like most of Britain in that very cold winter – was covered in snow. Sim’s parents then provided them with two rooms in their flat until their fortunes improved and they could afford a house in Chelsea, which they renovated themselves.

Sim said from the first that if they had children, she would put family before career, and she did so to look after their three children, Michael, Jane and Charlotte: her final film credit was The Night My Number Came Up (1955). From 1956, the family lived comfortably in Richmond upon Thames, south-west London.

In 1968, Sim was sworn in as a magistrate in Surbiton, joining the Richmond bench. She was also an enthusiastic member of the Richmond Society, the amenity group that contributed to the thinking behind the restoration and redevelopment of the banks of the Thames at Richmond.

In 2004, her daughter Jane and granddaughter Lucy were killed by the Pacific tsunami while on holiday in Thailand. Richard, who in 1993 was made a life peer, died in 2014. Sheila is survived by Michael and Charlotte.

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Ambrosine Phillpots was born in 1912 in London. She made her film debut in 1946 in “This Man Is Mine”. She was a wonderful character actress and was particularily effective as the icy mother of Heather Sears in “Room At the Top” in 1959. She died in 1980.

IMDB entry:

Ambrosine Phillpotts was born on September 13, 1912 in London, England as Ambrosine Marie Phillpotts. She was an actress, known for Room at the Top (1959), Hadleigh (1969) and Expresso Bongo (1959). She died on October 12, 1980 in London.

Dark-haired British character actress, from the stage. Played Lady Macbeth at age nineteen. On screen, typically played dominant, belligerent or upper-crust roles.

Carmen Du Sautoy was born in 1950 in London. The “Praying Mantis” on television in 1983 with Cherie Lunghi was one of her best known roles. Her movies include the James Bond “The Man With the Golden Gun” in 1974 and “Bert Rigby, You’re A Fool”.

Du Sautoy was born in London. She has played a wide variety of roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, in London’s West End, and in New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Madrid, Berlin and in many other major theatres worldwide. She may be best-known to film audiences for her role as the belly-dancing Lebanese temptress Saida in the 1974James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun.^[1]

She has also appeared in such films and television serials as Lost Empires, Poor Little Rich Girl, La Ronde, The Citadel, The Orchid House, A Dance to the Music of Time,Chessgame, Midsomer Murders, Hammer House of Horror, Absolutely Fabulous, and The South Bank Show

Barbara Windsor was born in 1937 in Shoreditch, London. She made her film debut in “The Belles of St Trinian’s” in 1954. In 1963 she starred as the lead in Joan Littlewood’s “Sparrow Cant Sing”. She became a stalwart cast member of the Carry On serres with “Carry On Spying” in 1964. Her other famous role was as Peggy Mitchell in the BBC series “Eastenders”.

IMDB entry:

Barbara Windsor got a glimpse of theatrical life at an early age when her grandmother took her backstage at a theatre and she decided that was what she wanted to do. She attended several professional schools before making her stage debut at age 12. At 15 she got a job in the chorus line of a London musical and stayed with the show for the next two years, although she took some minor roles in films during that time. She did become well known in the London theatrical scene, but it was the series of “Carry On” comedies that made her a star. Although she appeared in only nine films in the long-running series (she left because she thought they were getting too risqué), she made such an impression as the basically goodhearted but dizzy sexpot that many of the series’ fans believe she was in many more than she actually was. She almost didn’t get the part originally, as she and series regular Kenneth Williams took an instant dislike to each other, but that was soon overcome and they became lifelong friends.

After she left the series she continued her stage and film work, and became a regular in a long-running British soap opera, EastEnders (1985) as the matriarch of “The Queen Vic” – “Peggy Mitchell”.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com

The above IMDB entrycan also be accessed online here.

Judi Dench, although an acclaimed stage performer for many years, she not achieve major recognition on film until she was in middle age. She was born in 1934 in York. She made her stage debut with the Old Vic in 1957. She made her film debut in 1964 in “The Third Secret” with Stephen Boyd. She made sporadic film appearances throughout the remainder of the sixties and early seventies. In 1985 she begain making regular film appearances in increasingly larger roles. These movies include “Wetherby” with Vanessa Redgrave, “A Room With A View” with Maggie Smith and “84 Charing Cross Road” with Anthony Hopkins. In 1995 she began her regular appearances in the James Bond series as M in “GoldenEye” with Pierce Brosnan. She won an Oscar for “Shakespeare in Love”. Recent movies include “Nine” and “Jane Eyre” and”Philomena”.

TCM Overview:

A distinguished talent widely recognized as one of Great Britain’s greatest modern actresses, Dame Judi Dench spent much of her career concentrating on stage and television in her native England. From her early years with the Old Vic Theater Company in London, Dench proved a commanding stage performer in both classic drama and musical comedy, and at the same time, was known by non-theatergoers for starring roles on the British comedy series “As Time Goes By” (BBC, 1992-2005) and “A Fine Romance” (1981-84). It was not until Dench hit her fifties that she began finding film roles that enabled international audiences the opportunity to appreciate her commanding gifts. Dench was one of the most frequently nominated actresses in Academy Award history, earning a statue for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998) and nominations for a wide range of screen performances in “Chocolat” (2000), “Iris” (2001) and “Notes on a Scandal” (2006). A national treasure, Dench was honored by the British government with the title of Dame Commander of the British Army, and her homeland recognized her outstanding contributions to British Theater with a Laurence Olivier Award – officially proving that Dame Judi Dench was what critics had claimed for years: the modern, female equivalent of Sir Laurence Olivier, both onscreen and under the bright glare of the footlights.

The daughter of Reginald Arthur Dench, a doctor, and Eleanora Olave, a native of Dublin, Dench was born on Dec. 9, 1934 and raised as a Quaker in York, North Riding of Yorkshire. She made her acting debut in the city’s cycle of mystery plays, in which both her father and older brother Jeffrey also appeared. After graduating from London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, she made an auspicious debut with the Old Vic Theatre Company as Ophelia in “Hamlet” in 1957. The following year, Dench made a Broadway appearance with the Old Vic and remained with the troupe until 1961, excelling in such roles as Hermia in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1960) and Isabella in “Measure for Measure” (1962). Throughout the 1960s, she made one strong stage characterization after another, but only in rare instances appeared on film. She was memorable as a young wife in the little-seen “Four in the Morning” (1965) and was majestic as Titania in Peter Hall’s filming of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1968).

As Sally Bowles in the 1968 London staging of “Cabaret,” Dench delivered what many felt was the definitive interpretation of the role. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1969, spending much of the next two decades amassing an impressive body of work and earning numerous accolades. After notable roles as Lady Macbeth (opposite Ian McKellen) in “Macbeth” (1977-78) and Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1982), Dench’s screen presence increased. She held a starring turn on the television series “A Fine Romance,” starring opposite her husband Michael Williams, and on the big screen in David Hare’s provocative “Wetherby” (1985), in which she and Ian Holm played a married couple who become caught up in the personal turmoil of their friend (Vanessa Redgrave). In further film outings, she demonstrated her range with diverse portrayals of a flighty romance novelist in “A Room with a View” (1986), and Anthony Hopkins’ jealous wife in “84 Charing Cross Road” (1987).

Dench returned to the stage to play Cleopatra in “Antony and Cleopatra” (1987-88), and followed up with a pair of film roles as a materialistic mother in “A Handful of Dust” (1988) and the lusty Mistress Quickly in Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V” (1989). She was back on stage the same year as Ranyevskaya in “The Cherry Orchard” (1989-1990). The solidly booked actress showed no signs of slowing with each advancing year, taking on a starring role on the long running British television comedy “As Time G s By” in 1992. In her most mainstream role to date, she was cast as M, the superior of James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), in “GoldenEye” (1995), which unveiled a revamped version of the franchise that successfully brought the international spy into modern times. In 1996, Dench became the first actress to win two Olivier Awards in the same year; for the play “Absolute Hell” and for her musical turn as Desiree in “A Little Night Music.” In 1997, she earned raves as an aging actress in David Hare’s acclaimed “Amy’s View” and reprised M alongside Brosnan in “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997).

Remarkably, in a career that spanned some 40 years, Dench had never played the lead in a film until she was cast as the widowed Queen Victoria who embarks on a questionable relationship with her Scottish manservant (Billy Connolly) in the John Madden-directed “(Her Majesty) Mrs. Brown” (1997). The film was originally intended as a made-for-British-TV movie, with the role of the monarch earmarked for Elizabeth Taylor. When Taylor fell ill, Dench was cast and it was released theatrically. Her performance earned the actress some of the best reviews of her career to that point, including a richly deserved Best Actress Academy Award nomination. As a follow-up, director Madden cast her as another venerable British monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998). Although Dench only appeared in a handful of scenes totaling approximately eight minutes, she made such a strong impression as the Virgin Queen that she was awarded that year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

The newly minted Oscar winner took on the title stage role of “Filumena” (1998) and reprised M in the Bond offering “The World Is Not Enough” (1999). Now recognized internationally, Dench returned to the New York stage for the first time in close to four decades, reprising her triumphant portrayal of a famous actress clashing ideologically with her daughter in “Amy’s View,” for which she earned a Tony Award. Her run was briefly interrupted when she returned to England to care for her longtime husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer. At that time, she was also seen on the big screen as an eccentric artist living as an expatriate in 1930s Italy in “Tea with Mussolini” (1999). The following year, Dench headlined the HBO original “The Last of the Blonde Bombshells,” earning a Golden Globe award for playing a feisty widow reflecting on her life as a saxophone player in a WWII-era swing band. The actress agreed to provide the narration for the affecting Holocaust documentary “Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” (2000) before gracing screens again in the pivotal role of a crusty villager who welcomes free-spirited Juliette Binoche in Lasse Hallstrom’s “Chocolat” (2000). The latter netted Dench yet another Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress.

Following her husband’s death in January 2001, the widowed Dench turned in two rich, very different screen performances. Hallstrom cast her as a Canadian woman who assists her nephew (Kevin Spacey) on a journey of self-discovery in the film adaptation of the bestselling novel “The Shipping News” (2001). Dench then undertook the demanding role of British novelist Iris Murdoch in the biopic “Iris” (2001), based on the memoirs of Murdoch’s husband John Bayley. The actress rose to the challenge of playing a vibrant, intelligent woman who gradually succumbs to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. As with all her work, Dench offered an impeccable and deeply moving performance that the members of the Academy recognized with a Best Actress nomination. She was back in period clothing for her follow-up, portraying the indomitable Lady Bracknell in a remake of Oscar Wilde’s classic play “The Importance of Being Earnest” (2002). Also in 2002, Dench returned as M in the James Bond action feature “Die Another Day,” starring Brosnan and Halle Berry.

Once finished with a brief sabbatical from onscreen roles, during which she lent her voice to the animated feature “Home on the Range” (2004) and several James Bond video games, Dench made a welcome return to the big screen in 2004 in the unlikely vehicle “The Chronicles of Riddick,” director David Twohy’s sci-fi/action sequel to his cult hit “Pitch Black.” Dench played Aereon, an ethereal Elemental who helps Riddick (Vin Diesel) learn the secrets of his origin. She essayed an appropriately imperious Lady Catherine de Bourg in 2005’s “Pride and Prejudice,” director J Wright’s lively adaptation of the Jane Austen classic starring Keira Knightley. That same year, the busy actress also headlined director Stephen Frears’ “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” starring as Laura Henderson, a widow who becomes a partner in Britain’s Windmill Theater during World War II and, in attempts to provide a spark for her downtrodden nation, hopes to allow her actresses to perform in the nude. For her performance, she earned award nominations from SAG, the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards – all for Best Actress.

Dench revived M for a fifth time in “Casino Royale” (2006), her first outing opposite Daniel Craig, successor to the iconic role after Pierce Brosnan left the franchise in 2002. Though she missed working with Brosnan, she heaped praise upon the new keeper of the flame, telling The Evening Standard how “frighteningly good” Craig was in the role. For her part, Dench maintained her usually blunt and stiff-upper-lipped performance as the head of MI6, sending him on a mission to Montenegro in order to join a high-stakes poker game with Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), banker to the world’s terrorist organizations in what many critics called one of the best films in the series. Dench made a startlingly decisive departure in her next project, “Notes on a Scandal” (2006), where she essayed a treacherous school teacher who habitually stalks younger women in a desperate attempt to find love. Once again, she accrued award nominations from the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards.

Dench returned to television the following year in the 1840s-set drama series “Cranford” (BBC, 2007), earning an Emmy nomination for her performance as a financially strapped spinster in a remote village about to be thrust into the modern age with the impending arrival of the railroad. And, not surprisingly, given the actress’ loyalty and lack of vanity in regards to size of part, she returned to the Bond fold as M for the second Daniel Craig outing, “Quantum of Solace” (2008). While basking in the international success of the latest Bond installment, Dench received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie for her performance in “Cranford.” She reprised her role for the miniseries sequel, “Return to Cranford” (PBS, 2010), and received similar honors, earning another Golden Globe nomination in December 2010. Back on the big screen, she portrayed British actress Sybil Thorndike in “My Weekend with Marilyn” (2011) and was the mother of J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Clint Eastwood’s uneven biopic “J. Edgar” (2011). After reprising M for the last time opposite Daniel Craig’s James Bond in “Skyfall” (2012), Dench was part of an excellent ensemble cast in John Madden’s winning comedy “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2012), which focused on a group of British pensioners retiring at a lesser-than-advertised hotel in India. Dench’s performance as a newly widowed housewife forced to sell off her home to cover her dead husband’s debts was singled out for praise and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. Dench’s next starring role came in the drama “Philomena” (2013), the true-life tale of an elderly Irish woman’s search for the son she had been forced to give up for adoption a half-century before. The film was directed by Stephen Frears and co-written by Steve Coogan, who co-starred opposite Dench as an investigative journalist.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Rupert Hill was born in 1978 in Southampton. He appeared first as Jamie Baldwin in “Coronation Street” in 2004. He has also appeared in such series as “The Bill”, “Holby City” and “Doctors”.

IMDB entry:Rupert Hill was born on June 15, 1978 in London, England as Rupert Sinclair Hill. He is an actor and director, known for Coronation Street (1960), Family Affairs (1997) and Entity(2012). He has been married to Jenny Platt since May 11, 2013. They have one child.

Joe Absolom is one of the best young actors working in Britain to-day. He was born in 1978 in Lewisham, London. He made his acting debut in the 1991 movie “Antonia & Jane”. His other credits include “Long Time Dead” and the television series “Vincent” with Ray Winstone and “Doc Martin” with Martin Clunes.

2011 “MailOnline” interview:

What drew you to Doc Martin?

The blue skies and the surfing-golf-work ratio. Plus the chance to work with lovely people such as Martin Clunes, Ian McNeice [his screen father Bert] and Dame Eileen Atkins [who has joined the cast as Martin’s Aunt Ruth]. Eileen has so many theatre anecdotes. And she’s met the Queen.

So why did you swap the Cornish sun for the Arctic in last year’s celebrity challenge series 71 Degrees North?

Because my dad said that when I’m 60 I’ll want to talk about the things I’ve done rather than the ones I haven’t. It was an amazing, life-affirming experience – even when my beard froze and there were six of us huddled in a tent for warmth.

How do you relax on set?

My Doc Martin scenes [as Al Large, who owns the local restaurant with his dad] aren’t shot every day, and there’s lots of waiting around between takes. So I play my guitar and listen to my favourite Who or Oasis tracks.

What was it like adjusting to life after soap stardom?

After I left EastEnders [from 1997 to 2000 he played Matthew Rose, who was framed for murder by gangster Steve Owen], I spent six months thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ because I left a regular income without a job to go to. But I’m enjoying the variety of being a jobbing actor.

What is your USP?

I’m punctual. I’m good at getting to a job on time and also at leaving on time; it’s the middle bit I struggle with.

Plan B, career-wise?

I’d be a postman – because I’m good at getting up early.

Anything you’re not so good at?

I’m useless at laughing on camera. I end up with a rather forced har-har-har guffaw that sounds as if I’m imitating Sid James in the Carry On films – handy if I’m ever cast as a middle-aged lecher.

What did you want to be when you were ten years old?

A skateboarder. I was inspired by Tony Hawk, the American professional skateboarder who invented most of the modern tricks. I became an actor instead after my father, who’s an artist, sent photos of me and my baby sister to a children’s acting agency. I was so shy at first that I didn’t realise the catering on film sets was for everyone – I just watched other people eat the food.

Can you remember your first kiss?

Yes, it was on top of a garden shed in Brockley, South London, when I was nine. It felt momentous at the time, but the shed didn’t move.

Your partner Liz is a great cook, so who are your dream dinner party guests?

Rock and rollers such as Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Keith Moon and Noel Gallagher, and the jazzman Miles Davis. They’d bring great music and great times. And I would get Keith to bring some pretty ladies along, too.

You and Liz share childcare for Lyla, five, and Casper, one. What makes a good parent?

Listening to children – they mean what they say 100 per cent; they are not talking rubbish like adults sometimes do. And being patient, which I find difficult at times! I enjoy fatherhood a lot more the second time round; I was always petrified I was going to drop Lyla when she was a baby.

What’s the secret of a happy relationship?

Listening and patience – the same tactics as with children – and laughing a lot. Seeing Liz’s eyes light up when she laughs always makes me smile.

Your worst nightmare to be stuck in a lift with?

Smug people such as Piers Morgan or Simon Cowell. But my dream lift companion would be Cindy Crawford – I’ve always had a thing about her.

How would you like to be remembered?

I won’t care, because in the afterlife, I will be up there jamming on my guitar.

The above “MailOnline” interview can also be accessed online here.

Patti Boulaye was born in Nigeria in 1954. She achieved fame in Nigeria in the film “Bisi, Daughter of the River”. She came to Britain in the mid 1970’s and won the TV talent contest “New Faces”. She went on to star in the movie “The Music Machine” in 1979.

2007 article in “Independent”:

Laydeez an’ gen’lemen, put your hands together please for International Singing Star Miss Patti Boulaye!!! Yay! Rah! Wooh! No, actually there’s nobody whooping as she comes to the door, in a quiet cul-de-sac in Gerrards Cross. It would upset the neighbours. And she’s feeling a bit fragile anyway, having been on her hands and knees in the lounge at three o’clock in the morning trying to sort out a last-minute crisis with hospitality at the Royal Albert Hall, the grand (and, frankly, cavernous) venue that Miss Boulaye has personally hired for tonight.

“They said: ‘You have no staff, no money behind you, it’s for HIV and Africa. Are you crazy?” she says, laughing only slightly wildly. If the seats don’t sell she could lose £160,000 – which she says she can’t afford, despite the silver Jaguar in the drive with the number plate BOO. It sounds like a huge risk, but the diminutive singer loves grand gestures, and is already dressed this morning as if to receive yet another of the many big showbiz introductions she has been given over the years, in the West End and on the telly: her eye make-up, for example, is a full-on, two-tone Cleopatra sweep of powder that sharpens the cheekbones and gives her face a feline look.

There may well be another grand gesture tonight from the other star of her show: Didier Drogba, the Chelsea footballer still reeling from the departure of his coach and mentor Jose Mourinho. Drogba is a passionate, articulate man from the Ivory Coast who is loved as a singer back home as well as as a sportsman. He will appear with his own band – but with a microphone in his hand and a sympathetic audience listening, it’s easy to imagine the apparently furious striker telling the world what he really thinks of Roman Abramovich.

Boulaye, of course, would prefer him to talk about the Aids clinic he is opening in the Ivory Coast, one of four started by her charity Support For Africa.”Football is the only language that men in Africa understand,” she says, explaining why she has recruited Drogba to help get her message across to young black men here and on her home continent. A team’s worth of Premiership stars have said they will try to be at the concert. “You know what it’s like with footballers: they don’t turn up for anything. But they will this time.”

Would they dare do otherwise? Boulaye is an overwhelming personality who may smile a lot but is also ferociously determined. Sceptics beware: she believes she has God on her side. “I wake up every morning and I say, ‘Lord, send the ministering angels to help me. I can’t do it on my own.'”

She tells how the Lord (and the Professional Footballers’ Association) led her to big, intimidating Lauren the Arsenal defender who is a pussycat really and even turned up to a reception at the House of Lords on crutches and has opened another of the clinics and if all this sounds a bit breathless it is because that is how she makes you feel as she lurches quickly from one topic of conversation to the next, as if there is so much to say and so little time to say it. She did, after all, think she would be dead by now. “I survived a genocide,” she says of a childhood ravaged by the Biafra war. “I saw things that made me feel that if I live to be 35, that’s a miracle.”

It was God who gave her great success in show business, she says; then He took it away (with quite a lot of help from the Tory Party, as it turns out) so she could campaign against Aids, which she can talk about for ever. But ask about the genocide and the flow stops.

“Oh gosh. Oh. You want to open the can of worms?”

Her face becomes a mask. No smile now. I’m about to apologise in the silence and change tack when she says, “I saw something on television a while ago and suddenly I was four and a half and I was just reliving, again, a terror … seeing an explosion and seeing a body running down the road with no head, because the head has been cut off. Planes coming and bombing…”

The phone rings and the mood changes. When Boulaye returns she perches on a cushion on the edge of a vast white marble coffee table. She lives in this million-pound house with her husband, the promoter turned investor Stephen Komlosy. A devout Catholic, she’s big on blessings, lighting an altar-size candle in the hallway whenever a good thing happens. “Candles help you remember. Otherwise life is too full of bad things, dragging you down.”

The Biafra war had just ended when she came to London in 1970 as a 16-year-old. She joined what she thought was the queue for Madame Tussauds, but it was actually for an audition to take part in the musical Hair. Boulaye got a part. “My father disowned me.” Later she won New Faces and became one of the biggest black stars in Britain, starring in the definitive production of Carmen Jones and hosting her own television series for Channel 4. “Then suddenly – oof! – God cut it off. Everything just stopped. I didn’t understand it. Nobody called. No more bookings. My mother said: ‘He’s trying to tell you something.'”

There was a more earthly reason why she fell out of favour, surely? Like sharing a rally platform with Jim Davidson and Margaret Thatcher, when Thatcher was being accused of flirting with National Front policies and blamed for race riots? “I was politically unaware,” she says. “When I came here it was in the Winter of Discontent. To see the streets of the Mother Country looking like African streets, with rubbish everywhere, was frightening.”

She backed Thatcher – a steely, slightly manic go-getter like herself – to do something about it. This daughter of a prominent Nigerian politician also developed unlikely friendships in high circles, most notably Sir John Major. “I still adore him. He understands Africans.” In time William Hague asked her to help shift the image of the Tories during the race for Mayor of London. “Oh boy,” she says. “It was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

Newspapers assumed she was running for election, even though she says she wasn’t. Then a Guardian interview quoted her as saying she believed in sticking up loyally for unfashionable causes, including (quite astonishingly for a black Anglo-African) “apartheid”. The words the reporter misheard were “a party”, meaning the Tories. The Guardian apologised and paid damages. But Boulaye had acquired the image of a loose cannon with some dubious views.

“The Conservatives said I would have to look like I was running after all, otherwise it would seem as though another black person had been hounded out of the party. I said: ‘Oh, come on. This is ridiculous. I want to get my career back. You guys have destroyed it as far as the public is concerned.”

Was that true? “They did. It wasn’t their fault. Black people totally hated me for saying I was a Tory. The BBC didn’t want to touch me for many years. But I just thought: ‘Hey. God has his plans.’ When I saw those babies my life changed.”

There were 60 of them in a room in a village in Nigeria, which her brother took her to visit in 2001. “There was a tiny baby in the corner, skeletal. The woman who was there said: ‘That’s our little Victor. Pick him up, he loves to be held. He’s got two weeks to live. He’s got full-blown Aids.'” Boulaye wept as she was told where all the babies had come from. “The woman said: ‘The farmers picked them up from the forest. The villagers don’t understand what HIV is. They’e heard it is an evil spirit that kills you. To keep the spirit away from the rest of the family the witch doctor says the babies must be buried alive.'”

The mothers couldn’t bring themselves to do it, so abandoned the babies. “I just thought: ‘What can I do?'” Unimpressed by other “well-meaning but patronising” charities she chose, of course, to start one of her own. But how to fund it? Her husband’s business career was in a dip (from which she says he has recovered). She wasn’t making much money from singing (her website says she’s available for weddings). But she had a lot of nerve. So she booked the Albert Hall in 2002 and persuaded Sir Cliff Richard to sing with a choir of 3,000 children from schools, clubs and churches. The choir will be formed again tonight with each member paying £25 for a ticket, which is a masterstroke on her part.

That first event barely broke even, but in the following months £70,000 was raised. Since then four clinics have been built, for about £25,000 a time. “After that the people of the village have to start putting money into the account to pay for it. They are poor, yes, but… these are my people. I tell them: “It’s your clinic. I’ve done my bit. Don’t tell me you are helpless because there are people back in England who paint with a paintbrush in their teeth because they have no arms and legs. You can survive! If you waste this opportunity I will bring back the BBC and show them the most useless people in the world!'”

The clinics offer primary healthcare, counselling and advice about Aids. But not condoms. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “That would encourage the spread of HIV. The villager would have one condom and use it form months, time and time again. He can’t go to Boots. You’re covering up the problem, putting make-up on an ugly woman. The answer is to talk to them frankly about what Aids really is.”

Couldn’t she get those super-rich footballers to pay up, rather than just turn up? Boulaye gives me that stare again. “I could take Didier Drogba’s money and open five clinics – but if Didier himself opens just one then his whole nation will listen to the message about Aids. Many more lives will be saved. You see?” Boulaye says with a smile fierce enough to light up the stalls tonight, “You have to think big.”

The above “Independent” article can also be accessed online here.

Peggy Ashcroft. TCM Overview.

The wonderful Peggy Ashcroft, although a celebrated theatre performer, achieived international fame on film and television late in life. She was born in 1907 in Croydon,, Surrey.

Among her early film roles were as the crofter’s wife in the classic 1935 Hitchcock directed “The 39 Steps” and Dodie Smith’s “Dear Octopus”.

In her late 70’s she won superlative reviews for two roles set in India, the television series “The Jewel in the Crown” as Barbie Batchelor and David Lean’s last film “A Passage to India” as Mrs Moore. She won an Oscar for her performance. She died in 1991.

TCM overview:

Peggy Ashcroft was a leading light of London’s West End and widely considered one of the century’s greatest British stage actresses.

Her most famous early role was as Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson’s Othello in the early 1940s and her first film was the British Gaumont production “The Wandering Jew” (1933).

She was especially memorable as the quiet, emotionally suffocating village wife who briefly shelters the on-the-lam Robert Donat in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “The Thirty Nine Steps” (1935).

Along with frequent costar John Gielgud, Ashcroft’s leading men during her 65-year career included Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Ralph Richardson.

She enjoyed her greatest international acclaim and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her 1984 role in David Lean’s film adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel “A Passage to India” and subsequently won renown for the TV miniseries “The Jewel in the Crown” (1984-85).