A Taste Of Money For Miss Tushingham

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 5

A Taste Of Money For Miss Tushingham

IBy

SIMON KAVANAUGH]

J7OUR years ago she was an ugly duckling of a girl from Liverpool whose acting talent had been confined to playing the hind legs of a pantomime horse.

But almost overnight a fortune-teller’s prophecy came true, and Rita Tushingham, at 19, became Britain’s most promising young film star.

As the unlovely, unloved, pregnant teenager in the awardwinning film. “A Taste Of Honey,” she had the critics vying for superlatives.

Now 23. with a husband and a baby and with four more films behind her, she has proved beyond doubt that beauty is not the sole key to success —that is, if you have Tushingham talent. But while audiences applaud, and producers and directors go out of their way I to trek to her cottage door hoping she will work for them. Miss Tushingham remains her down-to-earth self. She steers clear of show-! business tactics which rule the lives of lesser stars, does not care a fig about what people may think of her hilarious humour or homely way of life, and even has trouble! being recognised on the few, occasions she does make public appearances. Take the recent Cannes film festival w'hen she was guest of honour at a sneak preview of her latest film. "The Knack.” Wearing a short dress, though she had been asked to wear a long formal one. she arrived late because she had lost her entry ticket The commissionaire refused to believe she was a film star. Fortunately, she found someone to persuade him that she was telling the truth. Just how did this girl, who in her own words, has a chest like an ironing board, a figure like a giraffe, hair like a mop and a face that a plastic surgeon could spend his whole life trying to improve, reach the top? First Job Convent-educated, Rita is the daughter of a Liverpool grocer. When she left school she took a job with the local repertory company at fl a week. She was the general dogsbody, making endless cups of tea and calling “time" for the other actresses to go on stage. She got the odd walk-on and walk-straight-off parts but generally her work was behind the scenes. “I'd almost given up hope of being any more than a threatrical errand girl.” she says. Then one day she read in the newspapers that a film company was looking for an ugly girl, and like 200 others, wrote for an audition. She certainly did not Impress anyone to begin with, but there was a haunting quality about her the director. Tony Richardson, could not forget. To Rita’s amazement she was asked to do a screen test.

“She just explodes on the screen.” said Richardson. “She has that quality that all the great ones possess.” He was certain he had found a star. She could hardly believe her Cinderella success. No longer did her father have to subsidise her meager repertory pav packet. She was getting £7OO a week.

“My parents are pleased I'm earning a bit of my own.” she said characteristically at the time. “But- it doesn’t matter much what it is, does it?” Her next films were “The Leather Boys.” A Place to Go” and “The Girl With The Green Eyes.” Although there is little resemblance, Rita was becoming known as the girl who looked like Princess Margaret. One evening the Princess and her husband arrived unannounced at the Royal Court Theatre to see the resemblance for themselves. “Lord Snowdon asked me

to stand side by side with Princess Margaret while he checked similarities. We just stood there grinning but he said our mouths and eyes were very alike," said Miss Tushingham.

Rita married a television cameraman. Terry Bicknell, at a registry office a year after she left Liverpool. To begin with they lived in her modest London flat, but now their home is a 16th century country cottage in Hertfordshire.

"I don't like London as a place to live," she says. “Who I wants the bogus sort of | glamour of nightclubs? And lj I could never return to Liver-1 pool. 1 couldn't communicate with the people now. My I outlook is entirely different. Does that make me a snob?” Snob she is not. When she and Terry moved into the! cottage the neighbours gave a! cocktail party in their honour. Everyone was dressed in their best, but I Rita arrived in jeans and al sweater and Terry in his’ comfortable corduroys.

"We don’t have glamorous clothes," Rita explains. "1 don't like make-up or dressing-up so why pretend that we are different? Anyway 1 think that we have been forgiven—everyone is very sweet."

Then there was the case of the fete Rita was asked to open. Terry was working so Rita took along a coloured hoy who is their daughter Dodonna's godfather. Again she wasn't recognised and had to pay to get in. Her husband, her daughter and her home mean everything to Miss Tushingham She much prefers being called Mrs Bicknell, and does not care about wooing people who might give her a job. “If they want you, they’ll come to you, wherever you decide to live” is her philosophy. “1 don’t lose any sleep over whether they call me or not. I've years ahead of me—it makes me laugh when other actresses keej taking years off their ag< Soon 1 will be older tha they pretend to be."