Independence Day and Open Top Sports Cars

Crew and me at Amosting It

Happy 4th folks…from a blazing Boise (hot that is).   I understand it’s the same in the UK.   It’s too hot to do much, 105 degrees Farenheit, I feel like I’m in a Tennesse Williams play, sex, heat and mint juleps, nothing to do but lie around and lose one’s temper a bit more easily.   At least I do…. friends will tell you that I am not always the most patient person.  So have been watching a few movies and stuff on TV and generally lazing about.   Saw A LITTLE CHAOS again for the second time, a moving, original and delicate movie.

Last week was the premiere of a film I was in here in Boise, last year…ALMOSTING IT.  I have already written about it, so wont go on anymore, but our young entrepreneur Will Von Tagen did well with an opening worthy of Hollywood, red carpet, Q&A, party…the lot.   I also got a ride out to a funny old drive in, for another showing of the film in the 1965 Mustang that appears in the film.  I am a sucker for open top sports cars and have had them on and off most of my life.  So an hours drive in this Classic car, roof down, even in the heat, was no chore.   I remember my little white Austin Healey Sprite, which appeared with me in THE NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT.   Lots of fun was had in that with trips up and down from London to Brighton.   I also remember the beautiful open top Rolls Royce Corniche, which my then fiance David Hemmings was driving in BLOWUP.   We were living in an apartment in the suburbs at the time and he would regularly drive it home and park it outside one of our neighbour’s windows, she didn’t know whether to be mad or impressed.  Certainly gave her something to gossip about.  The car had originally been a present from Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor and Director Michaelangelo Antonioni got his hands on it for BLOWUP.  DH (affectionate name for him) could hardly bear to get out of it.  It certainly worked for David’s character as a cynical, world weary photographer, based on those 60’s guys: David Bailey, Duffy, Swannell, Litchfield  etc, that we actresses of the day, feared and yet longed for (to have our photographs taken by them).   It was a real love/hate relationship, at least it was on my part.  I was flattered when asked, but found their controlling, casual treatment of us, terrifying, intimidating and enraging.

I had a good few opportunities to drive nice cars in films..particularly sports cars, my favourites.   Also remember racing around the Crystal Palace race track for a car chase with Ed Bishop in UFO (he was chasing me)…cant remember the car..a Jaguar springs to mind.   Of course on shows like THE SAINT, we were on stage with a sort of revolving drum behind us, with passing scenery and we sort of looked as though we were driving around on various roads.  Sort of!  And when some serious driving had to be done, we had the stunt men, those wonderful, fear nothing people who make us ordinary people (actors) look so dazzingly brave and brilliant on screen.