David Hemmings - Name-Dropper Extraordinaire
The Sixties icon on befriending Oliver Reed, swingin' with Frank Sinatra and teaching Jane Fonda to speak Welsh.
A version of this article appeared in Jack.
Oliver Reed
Oh, Oliver - so many stories. We made three films together and each was a wonderful adventure. One day on The Prince And The Pauper, we were having a bit of a scuffle and he ended up ripping the front of my shirt off. He looked down at the torn material, smiled and roared, "Excellent!!" And the day he died... well, it still upsets me today. I'd just returned to the hotel in Gozo where we were both staying and the producers took me to one side. It was terrible, terrible. I do miss Oliver. You don't meet too many like him in a life. It was a privilege to call him a good friend.
Michael Caine
It's odd that Michael and I didn't make a film together until 2001. Most people would assume we crossed swords in the Sixties. The film that brought us together, Last Orders, was a belter, mind - a heartbreaking story about a group of friends carrying out their old mate's last wish, to scatter his ashes at Margate. What a joy of a film it was to make, what with so much of it being set in pubs. You were never short of a good chat either, with Michael, Bob Hoskins, Tom Courtenay and Ray Winstone around. A lot of the film takes place in a car and when you have a bunch of actors together like that, each trying to top the others' anecdotes, you've an entertaining day on your hands. It was good to be on location, too. You'd be surprised how many pubs there are between London and Margate!
Donald Pleasence
I made a couple of films with Donald, neither of which was memorable except for the good times we had away from filming. One time, we were filming in Surrey and we noticed this lovely pub across the way from the location. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of a small river. To get there, you had to walk half a mile up river to a bridge. I wasn't having that so I went and had a quiet chat with the grips. Within 20 minutes, they'd constructed a makeshift bridge which meant that Dennis and me could walk straight over to the pub, have a skin-full and then stagger back to the set on time for afternoon filming. When people say British technicians are the best in the world, it's because of that sort of ingenuity.
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