Acting is a migratory profession and it has taken me far afield, but there are two places to which I always return: London and Los Angeles. London is a comfortable, familiar place; its people, pace, habits of speech and thought are reassuring to me. I am English, and London will always feel like home.
I remember visits to London as a child. I was taken to museums, the zoo and to the theatre where I saw Peter Pan. I instantly recognized my future profession – flying. I have had to settle for acting.
I attended a ballet school in Camberley, Surrey, and we made frequent outings to London, to the National Gallery, and once to a ballet at Covent Garden. Later I went to a drama school in London at the end of Piccadilly, overlooking Hyde Park Corner.
By this time I had made several films and my first year at the drama school was somewhat interrupted by two prolonged working trips: to the Australian desert and to the Yorkshire moors. The school was pulled down upon my return to make room for yet another hotel. Naturally my education suffered; to this day my mathematics is atrocious, and I am cruelly reminded of this deficiency each year at tax-time.
I lived with my family in London until I bought my own flat. I stayed there for a full eighteen months before taking off for Los Angeles. Perhaps I needed to travel because of habits formed in early years. I had been working in the theatre for some time and wanted to return to films.
I went to LA as a visitor, found work and remained there. In a land where the earth itself is never completely at rest, it is difficult to feel settled. But the shock of change gave way to compensations of novelty and excitement; the sun, the mountains, and the sea are the background against which buildings, billboards, and passing fancies rise and fall. I found a house in the hills which became my home.