Target Girl Fears Audiences More

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30453, 29 May 1964, Page 2

Target Girl Fears Audiences More

Confident and trusting, 18-year-old Elizabeth Collins faces a barrage of knives thrown at her every evening in the “Paris By Night” show. Her father, Martin Collins is a man who throws them and so sure is his aim that in 20 years he has not hit anyone. In fact the only person he had ever injured was himself, when a knife rebounded from the board and hit him on the forehead, Miss Collins said yesterday.

Mr Collins stands on a slack wire and throws knives around his daughter who is fixed to a revolving board. “My father comes from a circus family and has been in the business all his life in various acts,” said Miss Collins. “It took him six years practising every morning to perfect the act. That is probably why we don’t have people copying us. People nowadays don’t have the patience to practise six years at something.” Miss Collins started doing the act with her father two years ago. “My mother was his partner for over 20 years and then they retired and bought a shop in London,” she said. “My father was offered a television contract in Paris so he had to find a girl to do the act with. I had been watching the act ever since I was a baby so I had one week’s rehearsing and went to Paris. “I have never been afraid; it has always been just part of my parents’ job to me. The audiences terrify me

much more than the knives. It is all really a matter of confidence and trust in my father.” Miss Collins has trained in singing, dancing and acting at a stage school in London for eight years and was dancing in pantomimes until she joined her father. “I am very happy about doing the act with my father; it gives me more opportunity to travel than just being a dancer, she said. “I would like to go back to dancing eventually and maybe branch out with an act of my own, perhaps a little cowgirl act, because there aren’t many nowadays.” Miss Collins enjoys working with the “Paris By Night” show because there are people of many nationalities and she has the opportunity to learn more languages. She already speaks English, French, German, Swedish, and Hungarian. Miss Collins was born In Stockholm and went to' live in London when she was three. “I used to join my parents where ever they were working in my holidays and I just picked up the languages,” she said.

With her father Miss Collins has toured Scandinavia, appeared on television in Paris and Germany and was in the Western show held in conjunction with the world premiere of the film, “How the West was Won."

In her spare time Miss Collins likes to do oil paintings if she can find the time to unpack her paints. She also rides horses and has found time to do some riding in New Zealand.