SUSAN GEORGE and husband Simon MacCorkindale have had their baptism of fire as film producers. Under their production banner, Amy International, named after the character Susan played in Straw Dogs, they gave themselves the immensely difficult challenge of putting on screen the love story of Abelard and Heloise, those 12th century lovers doomed to tragedy, in Stealing Heaven, The mixed reviews were the sort that makes one wonder why you had put in so much time and effort. But Susan and Simon didn’t sit back and wait for the critical outcome. They have already made their second film That Summer Of White Roses into which Susan has put herself alongside Tom Conti and Rod Steiger, a less ambitious project than Stealing Heaven.
Actress Susan George has been ‘grown up’ for quite a few years now. Yet, despite the fact that she is happily married (to actor Simon MacCorkindale), and has matured into a well-known leading lady, many still associate her with her sexpot image of the late sixties.
Old images always seem to die hard, yet recently Ms. George has embarked on a new career, that of a producer with her own company, Amy International (named after the character she played in Straw Dogs).
IAIN F. McASH interviews SIMON MacCORKINDALE, a star of ‘JAWS 3-D’, who hasn’t stopped working since he went to Hollywood three years ago
Husky British actor Simon MacCorkindale denies he has any affinity for sharks, yet admits that the voracious creatures have loomed large in his flourishing career these past twelve months.
He stars in Jaws 3-D which opens in Britain in time for Christmas, and he has the name part in a new American tv series called “Manimal” as a crime-busting professor with the advantage of being able to catch the bad guys by transforming himself at will into a panther, snake, bird – or even a shark!
Says Simon MacCorkindale who believes in making things happen himself. And happening they are – in America.
Simon MacCorkindale breezed into the London hotel where we’d arranged to meet. He was dressed in a navy blazer, open-neck shirt and pale blue trousers, apparently oblivious to the cold and rain outside.
*snip* Because he had liked MacCorkindale’s work in “Death on the Nile”, wherein the actor played the killer, Chase had him flown in from England, just for the few days’ shooting.
The day we visited the set, MacCorkindale was manacled, stretched out. The shot was just an insert — a sword cutting him loose, and the camera wouldn’t even see his wrists, but the actor insisted on being locked in his chains — “for realism”, he said. Chase nodded in agreement.
WITH terrific enthusiasm, 28-year-old Simon MacCorkindale is pouring all his energy into work. I met him in London while he was having a week’s break. He’d flown in from Ireland, where he had been filming The Manions Of America.
He describes it as being, “A sweeping saga of love and romance set in the Irish famine of 1847”. It is a TV movie starring David Soul and Kate Mulgrew (alias Mrs. Columbo) to be screened in three one-hour episodes. Simon plays the part of Lieutenant David Clement. “I’m a Royal Hussar on detachment to Ireland,” he explains, “policing it like our current troops are doing in Northern Ireland at the moment. My family inherit an estate in Ireland so we are all reunited there.”
If a new vogue should develop for the kind of swashbuckling movie that brought Errol Flynn to fame, nobody would be more delighted than Simon MacCorkindale. This handsome British actor, who has made his presence felt in Death On The Nile and Riddle of The Sands, consolidates his strength in the television’s Quatermass and the adventure epic Cabo Blanco.
Simon MacCorkindale talks about filming CABO BLANCO in Mexico with Charles Bronson
Soon after Simon MacCorkindale returned home from Mexico filming Cabo Blanco with Charles Bronson, we arranged to meet in a London bar.
“How was Bronson?” I asked him.
“Not an easy man to get close to,” said Simon. “I liked him and we got along quite well but on a very superficial level. He sort of withdraws from the world. That’s his protection. He’s also very much a family man. The only time we talked was during working hours. I did play scrabble with him between scenes to pass the time.”
“Who won?”
“He won one and so did I, so we ended up all square.”
Isn’t this a movie which has comparisons to Casablanca? I’d heard Bronson plays a mysterious American who runs a nightclub in an exotic port town who becomes involved with a beautiful woman whose husband worked with the resistance movement in Europe.
plays an impoverished young man who marries a heiress (Lois Chiles) who is murdered. “What you learn from such a magnificent cast as ours,” he says, “is discipline. When, for instance, Bette Davis turns up much earlier than her call, I reckon that’s the way to behave. I’m sure I learned a lot through osmosis; perhaps in years to come I might re-create a Ustinov-ism or a Bette Davis-ism without realising it.” Death On The Nile marks Simon’s major film debut. He’s since made The Riddle Of The Sands with Michael York.
His role as Simon Doyle in the Agatha Christie’s thriller Death On The Nile has put Simon MacCorkindale on his way to international stardom. He followed this movie with another starring role, opposite Michael York an Jenny Agutter in a thriller spy film, The Riddle Of The Sands. It is set in 1901 and is about two young Englishmen on a sailing holiday off the North-West coast of Germany who discover the Germans are planning an invasion of Britain. They try to investigate and become in plots and counter-plots of German espionage.
Simon MacCorkindale, 26, provides Jenny’s romantic interest in The Riddle Of The Sands. In real-life, he is married to talented young actress Fiona Fullerton.
“It’s a super part for me,” Simon exclaimed. “I had just finished my role in Death On The Nile when this film came along. Jenny and I were sent on a crash course to Cowes to learn all we could about sailing to make us look convincing on the screen.
“I had wanted to be an actor since I was about ten or eleven years old. My family had nothing to do with acting, and I first sprang it on them when I was about sixteen. Fiona’s father is an Army Colonel, and my father is a Squadron-Leader, so we both shared a Services background. We didn’t meet through our families, but indirectly through our work. The discipline is very similar in both professions. I wouldn’t have minded a career in the Services, but acting just happened to appeal to me more.”
After his role in the star-studded Death On the Nile, Simon MacCorkindale, twenty-six, gets his biggest solo break as Arthur Davies. “He is a fascinating character to play,” he says. “He’s a meek gentleman on land, but as soon as he gets afloat he becomes strong and confident as a brilliant sailor. I enjoyed it all enormously, but felt a bit panicky at times since there was so much to be learnt about sailing in such a short time. There was no way I could learn in a week what Davies had learned over several years. I had only done a very little sailing previously, but by the end of filming aboard the ‘Dulcibella’ I was a much more experienced sailor!
Who’s this happy looking couple being overlooked by a world famous landmark? It’s Simon MacCorkindale and Lois Chiles as young marrieds in a scene from Death On The Nile. They decide to spend their honey-moon in Egypt and it proves to be some honeymoon! We can expect some superb colour photography of many exciting Egyptian settings for they were filmed by Jack Cardiff as the movie’s director of photography, and Jack’s one of the best there is. John Guillermin directed this latest film which is based on an Agatha Christie thriller which stars Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot who tops an all-star cast.
Simon MacCorkindale must be one of the few actors who have turned to Charles Bronson with the words: “Oh, you great butch creature, you!” and lived to tell the tale. As it was, Charlie, laughed and appreciated the joke from the young Englishman who was recently awarded the ‘Evening News’ most promising newcomer accolade for his work on ‘Death On The Nile’ and ‘Riddle Of The Sands’.
WHY WE BECOME PRODUCERS
