Nick Berry was born in 1963 in Woodford. He first came to fame for his performance as ‘Wicksey’ in “Eastenders” from 1985 until 1990. In 1992 he began a six year run in the very popular ITV series “Heartbeat”. His most recent series was “In Deep” which ran from 2001 until 2003. His films include “Forever Young” in 1983 and “Paparazzo” in 1995.
“MailOnline” article:
When Nick Berry gets stopped in the street, the questions are usually the same. ‘It’s, “Didn’t you used to be on EastEnders?”, or, “Are you that bloke from Heartbeat?”‘ he smiles. ‘People aren’t always sure.’
The answer, in both cases, is yes, and although it may seem a long time ago now, between the mid-Eighties and late Nineties Berry was barely off our screens.
After springing to fame as Simon Wicks in EastEnders in 1985, Berry left in 1990 and decamped to the Yorkshire Dales for a six year stint as Heartbeat’s Sergeant Nick Rowan, before taking on the role of harbour master Mike Nicholls in Harbour Light.
Stay-at-home dad: Nick Berry left acting to focus on his family
There was even a brief pop career too: in 1986 Berry released a single, Every Loser Wins, which became the second biggest-selling record in the UK that year.
And then – nothing. Save for a stint in the early Noughties filming police drama In Deep alongside Stephen Tompkinson, Berry disappeared from view, turning his back on acting aged 39 to become a stay-at-home father to his two sons Louis, now 16, and 13-year-old Finley.
Today, nearly ten years on, not only are there no regrets, but Berry insists he has no desire to throw his hat back in the ring. ‘I chose to be a stay-at-home dad and have loved it. I always said that when the boys were teenagers I could go back, but the longer you don’t do something the harder it is to do it, and I haven’t really missed it. While I’d never say never, I’m genuinely happy as I am.’
We’re only meeting today because In Deep has been released on DVD.
Filmed in 2002, the series was effectively Berry’s swan song, and he admits to being taken aback by its resurfacing now.
‘I was in my garden tending my peas when I got a call saying, “We’re going to bring it out again” and I thought, “That seems an awfully long time ago.”‘
Those with long memories will recall that Berry was a genuine screen heart-throb in his time, besieged at the BBC studios where EastEnders was filmed by hoards of screaming women.
It was fun for a time, he admits, but marriage in 1994 to former Levi jeans model Rachel Robertson, now 39, and fatherhood changed his perspective.
‘The job was great,’ he says. ‘You’re driven everywhere, fed every five minutes and told what to do and where to go. What I struggled with was that the boys were very young and I felt like I was away filming all the time. I’d been blessed with these little people and yet I wasn’t really there. I realised I wanted to be at home.’
Of course, cynics may point out that Berry didn’t exactly bow out at the top of his game – Harbour Lights struggled to attract viewers – but by then he had the money to do so.
‘I was rewarded amazingly well for what I did,’ he admits. ‘It was that Eighties/Nineties thing when no one thought it was going to end and people were throwing money around. I was very lucky.’
At one point, he was rumoured to have been offered a £2 million golden-handcuffs deal by EastEnders executives when he resigned in the late Eighties, and he’s amassed an estimated £5 million from his time in the spotlight – certainly enough to fund a rambling house in Epping, Essex, and a beach house in Hove where he boasts Norman Cook and Zoe Ball as neighbours.
‘We all say hello, it’s pretty friendly,’ he says. ‘In the summer, we’re all out playing with our kids on the beach. It’s very chilled-out.’
Despite his spectacular screen success, east London-born Berry says he wasn’t a natural actor. ‘I was never that comfortable in the spotlight. Some of the egos you can do without. A lot of actors take themselves so seriously but, by and large, you’re getting paid to show off.’
Berry is too discreet to identify any culprits, although one must assume that, given his formative years in the soap, he must count some of his former EastEnders castmates among their number.
Although he has a drink from time to time with former cast mates Sid Owen, who played Ricky, and Todd Carty, who played Mark Fowler, he admits that ‘You can’t keep up with everyone.’
Shunning the spotlight certainly seems to suit him: at 48, he is trim and tanned – a product, he says, of long hours in the garden.
‘I’ve basically turned into my dad. I’ve got a shed and a vegetable patch, and I’m pleased to report my peas are doing very well. I’m at my happiest there.’
He and Rachel celebrate their 17th wedding anniversary this year and have been together for nearly two decades. Berry clearly adores his wife, to whom he refers as his ‘soul mate’.
The two of them are business partners too, having set up a production company several years ago, though Berry jokes that it’s ‘not terribly productive’ at the moment. I
n time, however, he says he might be persuaded to work behind the camera, if he finds a project that suits them both. ‘To be honest, I was luckier than I ever thought I would be,’ he says. ‘So, while everything in the garden’s rosy, I’ll carry on growing my peas.’
In Deep is out now on DVD
The above “MailOnline” article can also be accessed online here.
Bradley Walsh was born in 1960 in Watford. He began his working life as a professional footballer with Brentford Football Club in the early 1980’s. In 1994 he was a television presenter on “The National Lottery”. In 1994 he was cast was Danny Baldwin in “Coronation Street”. He remained with the popular show until 2006. He is currently one of the stars of the hughly successful “Law & Order U.K.”.
Diana Quick was born in 1946 in London. Came to international prominence in her role as ‘Julia’ in “Brideshead Revisited” in 1982 with Jeremy Irons. Her movies include Ridley Scott’s “The Duelists” in 1977 and “The Big Sleep” in 1978.
Interesting article on Diana Quick in the Guardian newspaperwhcich can be accessed here.
Diana Quick
Diana Quick was born in 1946 in London. Her best known role is as Julia Flyte in the television classic “Brideshead Revisited” in 1981. Her film debut was in 1971 in “Nicholas and Alexandra”. Other films include “The Duellists”, “The Big Sleep” and “Saving Grace”.
IMDB entry:
Eclectic British stage actress Diana Quick was trained at Oxford University and has included both the classics and musical theatre in her repertoire over the years, ranging from “Troilus and Cressida” to “The Threepenny Opera”. Though not a potent name in America, she has occasionally graced films and TV. Specializing in aristocratic roles, she stood out among a highly formidable cast in the classic epic mini-series Brideshead Revisited (1981) and received both Emmy and BAFTA nominations for her efforts. She had a long-standing relationship with actor Bill Nighy, and they have one daughter.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Anna Neagle proved to be a box-office sensation in British films for over 25 years. She was noted for providing glamour and sophistication to war-torn London audiences with her lightweight musicals, comedies and historical dramas. She won several awards as Britain’s favourite actress and biggest female box-office draw. Almost all of her films were produced and directed by Herbert Wilcox, whom she married in 1943.
In her historical dramas, Anna Neagle was renowned for her portrayals of real-life British heroines, including Nell Gwynn (Nell Gwynn, 1934), Queen Victoria (Victoria the Great, 1937, and Sixty Glorious Years, 1938) and Edith Cavell (Nurse Edith Cavell, 1939)
Her IMDB entry:
Dame Anna Neagle, the endearingly popular British star during WWII, was born Florence Marjorie Robertson and began dancing as a professional in chorus lines at age 14. She starred with actor Jack Buchanan in the musical “Stand Up and Sing” in the West End and earned her big break when producer/director Herbert Wilcox, who had caught the show purposely to consider Buchanan for an upcoming film, was also taken (and smitten) by Anna, casting her as well in the process.
THEY MET AT MIDNIGHT, from top: Michael Wilding, Anna Neagle on poster art, 1948.Wings And The Woman, poster, top left: Anna Neagle on window card, 1942. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Thus began one of the most exclusive and successful partnerships in the British cinema.
Under Wilcox’s guidance (they married in 1943), Anna became one of the biggest and brightest celebrities of her time. Always considered an actress of limited abilities, the lovely Anna nevertheless would prove to be a sensational box-office commodity for nearly two decades.
She added glamour and sophistication for war-torn London audiences and her lightweight musicals, comedies and even costumed historical dramas provided a nicely balanced escape route.
The tasteful, ladylike heroines she portrayed included nurses Edith Cavell and Florence Nightingale, flyer Amy Johnson and undercover spy Odette; Nell Gwyn and Queen Victoria also fell within her grasp. She appeared in a number of frothy post-war retreads co-starring Michael Wilding that the critics turned their noses on but the audiences ate up – including Piccadilly Incident (1946), Kathy’s Love Affair (1947), Spring in Park Lane (1948) and The Lady with a Lamp (1951).
She tried to extend her fame to Hollywood and briefly appeared there in three musicals in the early 40s, but failed to make a dent. Anna’s appeal faded somewhat in the late 50s and, after producing a few film efforts, retired altogether from the screen.
She returned to her theatre roots, which culminated in the long-running “Charlie Girl”, a 1965 production that ran with Anna for nearly six years. She was bestowed with the honor of Dame of the British Empire in 1969 for her contributions to the theatre. Anna continued to perform after her husband’s death in 1977, later developing Parkinson’s disease in her final years. She died in 1986 of complications.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Dame Anna Neagle, a British stage and screen actress whose career spanned more than half a century, died in a nursing home near London yesterday. She was 81 years old.
Miss Neagle was one of Britain’s leading film stars in the late 1930’s and 40’s, specializing in romantic comedies and costume biographies. She played Queen Victoria twice – in ”Victoria the Great” and ”Sixty Glorious Years” – and also portrayed the World War I nurse Edith Cavell.
Other of Miss Neagle’s films include ”Goodnight Vienna,” ”Nell Gwynn,” ”Piccadilly Incident,” ”Girl in the Street,” ”A Yank in London,” ”Spring in Park Lane,” ”Irene” and a film version of the musical ”No No Nanette.” She had a close working relationship with the director and producer Herbert Wilcox, whom she met in the early 1930’s and to whom she was married for 34 years until his death in 1977. She worked for only two other directors during her long career.
She was not a particular critical favorite: Some found her acting wooden, her voice reedy, and her dancing only adequate. But she was enormously popular with British audiences and was voted most popular actress for seven straight years after World War II. For her part, Miss Neagle said she never read her notices.
In the 1960’s Miss Neagle returned to the stage and appeared in 2,062 performances of ”Charlie Girl” in the West End between 1965 and 1971. Began in Chorus Line
Miss Neagle, whose given name was Marjorie Robertson, was born in London on Oct. 20, 1904, and began her career as part of a dance troupe called ”The Young Ladies.” In a scene that could have come from a Hollywood musical, Miss Neagle was picked from a chorus line in 1931 to appear opposite Jack Buchanan in a West End show, ”Stand Up and Sing.” Other stage appearances included ”Magic Night” and ”The Little Damozel.”
Mr. Wilcox saw her in the latter play and chose her to appear in ”Goodnight Vienna.” Her portrayal of a British Secret Service agent in ”Odette” was considered by many to be her finest performance, although ”Piccadilly Incident,” with Michael Wilding, a melodramatic tale of love and war, may have been her biggest success.
In recent years, Miss Neagle’s film work had undergone a revival, and she came to New York last year for a retrospective of her films presented by the Museum of Modern Art. She was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth in 1979.
Miss Neagle last appeared on stage earlier this year in a variety show that ran three months at the Palladium in London. She entered a nursing home 10 days ago, suffering from exhaustion
Charles Lawson plays the part of Jim McDonald in “Coronation Street” so he does. He has been playing the role since 1989. He was born in Belfast in 1959. In 1982 he had a featured role in the terrific series “Harry’s Game”. His first film role was in “Ascendancy” in 1983. Other films include “Four Days in July”, “Up Line” and TV series like “Boon”, “Dalziel & Pascoe”, “Holby City” and “Casualty”.
Aoife Mulholland was born in 1978 in Galway. On the London stage she starred as Roxie Hart in the muscial “Chicago” and as Maria Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music”. She was featured in the film “Malicious Intent”. Her “Wikipedia” entry can be accessed here.
Fionnuala Elwood was born in 1964 in Dublin. One of her first major acting roles was in “Prime Suspect” in 1991 on television. Other roles include nine years in “Emmerdale Farm” and roles in such shows as “Coronation Street” and “Casualty”.
Shane Richie was born in 1964 in London to Irish parents. He began his career in comedy but then also began to do straight acting. He has played Alfie Moon in “Eastenders”. He has also starred in insuch TV series as “Skins”, “The Good Samaratian” and “Father Frank”.
Suzanna Leigh obituary in “The Independent” in 2017.
If there was ever proof of the value of knocking on doors, it’s the life story of actress Suzanna Leigh.
Born plain Sandra Smith in Berkshire, to a property developer mother and professional gambler dad, the convent-educated schoolgirl was aged just 11 when she acted on a family legend that her godmother was Vivien Leigh. When she turned up on the actress’s doorstep in London’s Eaton Place, the original Ms Leigh said she had attended so many christenings that she had no idea if Sandra was her goddaughter or not, but she encouraged the aspiring actress to use her name.
Suzanna Leigh
“It was really exciting,” the actress, who has died aged 72, told The Independent in 1999, which noted a black-and-white photo of Vivien Leigh in her kitchen. “She was so fantastic to me. She said that so many of my dreams seemed like hers.”
Suzanna Leigh
With her glamorous new pseudonym, Suzanna Leigh was 13 when she made her film debut in the 1958 George Pal film Tom Thumb.
It’s said that Leigh was following Vivien’s example when she later knocked on the door of Hollywood producer Hal Wallis. Captivated by her beauty, he cast her opposite Tony Curtis in Boeing Boeing and sent her to Hawaii to play Elvis Presley’s love interest in 1966’s Paradise, Hawaii Style. The rock’n’roll star, whom Leigh once called a “fabulous actor”, became a firm friend.
After playing opposite Elvis, Leigh’s ascent to mega-stardom seemed assured, but while she went on to play the lead in several horror films, including The Deadly Bees (1967), and had her own series in France, Trois étoiles en touraine (1966),politics were to bring her Hollywood acting career to a halt. A dispute between the American Screen Actors Guild and its UK equivalent Equity saw Leigh lose a number of possibly pivotal roles. And while she continued to act in films in the UK, including Son of Dracula (1974), in which she played opposite Ringo Starr, she never recovered the stellar trajectory of her early career.
Bad luck also played its part. In 1972, she became involved with Tim Hue Williams, father of her only child, Natalia. Hue Williams abandoned Leigh during her pregnancy and refused to pay child support. Natalia became Leigh’s sole focus. She sold all her assets to pay for treatment of Natalia’s childhood illness, saying, “It’s only money and I have my daughter.”
Leigh’s early resourcefulness came to the fore again as she fought to ensure her daughter’s health and happiness. She gave classes in diction and etiquette and even sold encyclopaedias – knocking on those doors again – before falling back on her friendship with Elvis to become a celebrity guide at Graceland.
In 2000 Leigh published her biography, Paradise, Suzanna Style. Her friendship with Elvis had continued to define her career. Later she became “plagued with doubts” about the manner of his death. In 2011 Leigh suggested Elvis had been murdered by the mob. As she uncovered evidence, Leigh claims she herself became a target. The wheel nuts on her truck were loosened.
Throughout her life, Leigh was sustained by notions of spirituality. In 2014 compilation book Chicken Soup For The Soul: Touched by an Angel, she recounted several instances in which divine guidance had supposed saved her life.
Nearly 50 years earlier she had refused to board a doomed flight from London to Rome. A year later, she claimed to have heard a voice saying “slow down” just before all four tyres on her car burst. Recalling her friendship with Sharon Tate, she said, “If I’d stayed in Hollywood I might have died! …I’d have been at that lunch where the guests were murdered by Charles Manson… My god, aren’t I lucky!”
Leigh’s career was just beginning to warm up again when she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in 2016. She had recently published two more books, and had appeared in 2015’s Grace of the Father.
The Telegraph obituary in 2017:
Suzanna Leigh in 1965 CREDIT: Pierluigi Praturlon/REX/Shutterstock
Suzanna Leigh, who has died aged 72, was a British- born Sixties starlet who dated, among others, Richard Harris, Steve McQueen and Michael Caine; but it was her friendship with Elvis Presley, for whom she supplied the love interest in the 1966 film Paradise, Hawaiian Style, that dominated her life.
In her late teens, she was signed by the Hollywood producer Hal Wallis, who cast her as a beautiful air stewardess in Boeing Boeing (1965) opposite Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis (an “unpleasant snob”, she recalled in her 2000 autobiography Paradise, Suzanna Style), before teaming her with Elvis.
She had been in love with the King since the age of 11, but during the making of the film, in which she played an aviatrix and love interest to Elvis’s helicopter pilot hero, she and Presley were allowed to meet only on the set to avoid any hint of scandal. Except, that is, for an occasion when, in front of photographers, he swept her up and kissed her. “That won’t do your career any harm, baby,” drawled the star.
Suzanna Leigh embraces Elvis Presley in a publicity photo from the 1966 film Paradise, Hawaiian Style CREDIT: AP Photo/courtesy Suzanna Leigh
Although their kisses were otherwise confined to the set, Suzanna Leigh claimed in her autobiography that they “held an intensity that melted my very being. I slipped my arms around his neck and our bodies entwined. This was all madness, but we didn’t stop. A person could go to the gallows with such a kiss lingering on their lips, knowing life had been good.”
Screen kisses aside (she admitted later that her publishers had asked her to spice them up), she claimed that they had a brother-and-sister relationship, bonding over their shared belief in guardian angels. It had been Elvis who advised her to break off her affair with the “Long John Silverish” Richard Harris (of whom she wrote: “Everything about him was larger than life”), because Harris was a married man.
Elvis Presley with Suzanna Leigh in Paradise, Hawaiian Style CREDIT: Keystone-France
“I was supposed to be a huge, huge star,” she said. But the dream did not last. She had been scheduled to make another film with Presley and had hopes of being cast in Barefoot in the Park (1967, the role eventually went to Jane Fonda) when “out of the blue came an edict from the Screen Actors’ Guild saying that I couldn’t take the part. British Equity had refused to allow Charlton Heston to film his scenes as Gordon of Khartoum in Britain, so the Guild had retaliated by making it very difficult for British actors to get parts in Hollywood.” Nor did it help that Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager, never liked her.
Assuming it would take a while to sort out the problem, she flew back to England, effectively ending her Hollywood career.
Suzanna Leigh in 1963 CREDIT: ITV/REX/Shutterstock
She was born Sandra Eileen Anne Smith to well-to do parents in Berkshire on July 26 1945 and educated in convent schools. At the age of five she decided she wanted to be a film star, an ambition encouraged by her father, a professional gambler. He died when she was six, but not before telling her that she was the god-daughter of Vivien Leigh. At the age of 11 she trotted round from her mother’s house in Cadogan Square to the actress’s house in Eaton Place and introduced herself. “She said … she had been to hundreds of christenings and didn’t remember mine [but] didn’t mind a bit if I used her name.”
Suzanna Leigh spent only two terms at drama school, recalling that “there was no chance in Hollywood to turn up at 22. You had to hit it quick when you were very young.” She began with bit parts in The Saint and was given her own television series in France. But when her agent rang her to tell her that Hal Wallis was in London looking for the new Shirley MacLaine, she jumped on a plane, rushed to the Dorchester where Wallis was staying, and burst into his room, exclaiming: “I’m the one you’re looking for”.
PARSIPPANY, NJ – OCTOBER 28: Suzanna Leigh attends 2016 Chiller Theatre Expo Day 1 at Parsippany Hilton on October 28, 2016 in Parsippany, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage)
During her brief Hollywood career, Suzanna Leigh lived the high life, mixing with beautiful people and driving a Rolls-Royce. She visited a clairvoyant with Natalie Wood, hobnobbed with Sharon Tate, had a one-night stand with Michael Caine, dated Steve McQueen and Patrick Lichfield, was the recipient of the unwanted attentions of Harry Cohn, Roman Polanski (who told her he could only direct women with whom he had slept) and Peter Finch (“I kneed him in the groin and whacked him on the jaw and he passed out on the floor.”), and was presented to the Queen at a Royal Command Performance, though the Queen apparently only wanted to talk about Elvis. “It happened exactly the way it did in Sunset Boulevard,” she said. “I thought ‘That’s it, I need no more’. It’s the most amazing feeling when all your dreams come true.”
Suzanna Leigh with her poodle Kimshum in 1966 CREDIT: Aubrey Hart/ANL/REX/Shutterstock
Back in London after the Screen Actors Guild debacle, she won a cult following as a “Hammer Glamour” girl. In The Deadly Bees (1966) she was a resting pop star doing entomological battle on an island infested with the eponymous insects. She acquired a gay following for her performance in The Lost Continent (1968), a high camp horror in which she was seen being squeezed by sausage-like sea monster tentacles in a series of frocks which she designed herself. In Lust for a Vampire (1971) she played a gym mistress puzzled as to why her students keep disappearing, and in the dire musical comedy Son of Dracula (1974), she appeared opposite the singer Harry Nilsson as Count Downe and Ringo Starr as Merlin the Magician. Her television credits at this time included The Persuaders.
“And that,” she recalled, “was it really.”
Her daughter Natalia Leigh Denny, who also became an actress, wrote of her mother’s death: “The world will forever be a little less light and magical.”
Suzanna Leigh in 1969 CREDIT: Ling/ANL/REX/Shutterstock
In the early 1980s she had a daughter by a man with whom she subsequently became involved in a protracted legal battle over his failure to pay maintenance. Her daughter, Natalia, suffered from health problems as a child, and, struggling to make ends meet, Suzanna Leigh started an interior design firm which failed; gave lessons in etiquette; ran elocution classes; sold the Encyclopaedia Britannica at Heathrow Airport and flogged many of her possessions.
By 1997 she was reported by be “struggling to keep Natalia on £72 a week income support” and two years later, according to the Independent, was living in a small rented flat in “an unlovely London suburb, just across from the grey concrete bulk of the Northolt Swimarama leisure centre, with her daughter and her sheltie dog Sukie.”
After publishing her memoir, however, she returned to the United States, moving to Memphis for several years in hopes of capitalising on her Elvis Presley connection. In 2011 she was reported to be intending to publish a book claiming that Elvis had been killed by the Mafia to prevent him from testifying in a big Mob trial.
For all the problems she encountered, Suzanna Leigh remained irrepressibly upbeat: “Who knows, if I’d stayed in Hollywood I might have died! Sharon Tate was my best friend; perhaps I’d have been at that lunch where the guests were murdered by Charles Manson … My god, aren’t I lucky! I made it this far!”
Her daughter survives her.
Suzanna Leigh, born July 26 1945, died December 11 2017
Suzanna Leigh, actress, born 26 July 1945, died 11 December 2017
