Hollywood or bust??

Driving the Nova in the Mojave Desert

Close resemblance of the exterior

When I was four years old - and nine months, I started school. It seemed incredible to me that I would have to go somewhere every day for the rest of my life – infants school, junior school, senior school and then work.

On that day, or days not long afterwards, I found something very important to me, that I was Irish. All the other kids spoke with English dialects and I had a Dublin brogue - if it is a brogue at that time of life.

I didn't want to go to school at all, never did for the rest of my time there, and when I was dropped off at Clifton Road Junior and Infants School, I wouldn't go in; as soon as the mammy dropped me off I followed her back home; eventually a teacher – Miss Jones – picked me up and carried me in – me kicking and screaming - and this would happen for a few days. 

Eventually someone else would take me to school. As I intimated, I never did like school, even though I got on very well with the other kids, the class clowns, which I eventually became, making the other children laugh at my strange accent – but not as strange as theirs.

One of the days, somewhere along the line, my accent changed but I would revert to it in the evenings when I got home and, it wasn't for a very long time that I gave in to the English all together.

The pronunciation of the word 'walk' and 'work' would stay with me till I purposely changed it to the English way.

Three times a year we would go back to Dublin and I would speak with a Dublin accent almost as soon as we arrived but back to the English as soon as I got back to school.

I remember one day I was talking to a pal and I didn't realise I was using a Dublin accent when he ran away and shouted 'he's talking Irish' and I got back to the local way of talking.

There was another little complication, as my other granny and grandad moved across to Manchester, together with seven of their children; my mother was the eldest and the eighth who stayed in Dublin. So we would visit Manchester quite often, and when my brother was born (in Manchester) I stayed for a while up there with my granny and that accent had an influence on me too.

We lived in an inner city neighbourhood called Balsall Heath; it was bordered by Moseley and Sparkbrook, an immigrant part of Birmingham; Irish immigrants and West Indians. 

I loved the way the Jamaican men walked about in their powder blue double breasted suits with a kind of balloon at the knee down to about fourteen inches around the ankle – so easy, so relaxed as they glided along.

They would wear those suits on Sundays. All the rest of the people, that I knew, were Irish as they were friends of my folks and we had an Irish doctor.

The suits the West Indians wore were also worn by Clark Kent and would have the same top button missing on the double breasted jacket and that, even these days, is what I draw when I doodle. The square shoulders, the shape of the lapels and the missing button. Then I would add a head and the legs would disappear to a point.

I told my brothers that I was Superman and hid my cloak under the bed. I'm not sure of this is true, but I can't deny running up the garden trying to fly – or it may be a dream.

We lived in a house – no bigger than a cottage – which had a bay window and I would climb on to the top of the window, with my cloak, or some other disguise, and scare my brother who would be in bed.

One of the characters was a Mister Cruikshank and for this I would wear a top hat and a beard.

I was obsessed with America and when I left school at the age of fifteen I told my mother that would be going to America at the age of 24. I would save £1 a week for nine years and go.

My dad was a barber in Dublin, and so was his brother, but when he came to England he didn't do it any more. He said he didn't like it, he didn't like breathing the smell of hair and whiskers so he got a job on the railway – that's why we went to Dublin three times a year on our free passes.

Of course he would cut our hair up to the age of fifteen but when I wanted it longer – he would always give short back and sides – I went to another barber and that barber was an Irishman, of course, and he told me that being a barber in America was a well paid job, so as soon as I left school, I went to every barbers in the area to see if I could get a job as an apprentice;

Not to be.

My dad did well at the railway and by the time I was fifteen he was a boss at Lawley Street Goods Depot. My mother worked for a manufacturing company in the city centre and ended up as a company director there.

But I didn't put that pound a week away for my trip to America (I hate people calling it The States by the way) and a new way if life.

I learned funny things when I actually did go to America, I went there, ostensibly, to act as I was an actor in the UK.

I liked the American Style of acting and their commitment and I learned that all actors are encouraged to carry on studying and this I did.

I played roles that I never would be considered for in London – one day someone said he would like me to play in The Dresser which is a famous play about an old actor and his dresser - very good, very funny, but he didn't want me to play the dresser, he wanted me to play SIR. Not a chance in a million years in London and I also played a work shop production of Richard III playing him - limp and all.

One of the first TV roles I went for was to play Isaac Newton in an episode of one of the Star Treks – again I would probably play the cleaner in his lab in London; it was refreshing!

But the big thing hit me, the realization I mentioned earlier – I did a few films, won an award in the theatre, did voice overs and I realised that I had reached my goal. 

Other 'British/Irish actors were reaching for the prize, networking every time they had an opportunity and giving themselves five years or even two and then they were heading back. I didn't really want that – I realised it was America that I was after. 

I loved living there with the tales, the myths of the place, how parochial Los Angels was – the hamburger joints, the hot dog stands, the place itself with its art deco and fifties style architecture, the pictures of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe all over the place, Chili Jons in The Valley the company town -  the company being the movie business.

When I drove around in my old battered green 1973 Chevey Nova, I would head for Hollywood and Vine, instead of the fastest way home and drive along Fairfax to Fountain just to take in the buildings.

I had made it.