Gossip Magazines Annoy Actress

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31028, 6 April 1966, Page 2

Gossip Magazines Annoy Actress

(N Z.P.A -Reuter) HOLLYWOOD, j Ann-Margret, one of Sweden’s most successful contributions to Hollywood, is upset at magazine reports about her private life. ‘T’ve been hurt,” she said. “Those stories in the fan magazines—not the newspapers—they are awful, just awful.” The fan magazines have described her publicised romance with the actor, Roger Smith, the former husband of an Australian actress, Victoria Shaw, in “lurid” terms, she said. “Sour Apple” Award Ann-Margret, who is greeneyed and red-haired, has had a lot of trouble with the press since her arrival in this film capital five years ago. She holds movieland’s "Sour Apple” award and the title of “most unco-operative actress of 1965” from the Hollywood Women’s Press Club. “I won’t talk about my private life,” she says. “It’s

mine. It we go somewhere together, Roger and 1, I don’t mind someone taking a picture of us, but I don’t stop and pose or talk to anyone. “After alt I’m off work and on my own. Besides, if two people are together and doing something they like, they can’t let anyone else in on it. It’s private.” She does hot want to marry at present while she is so involved in her career because she says mixing a career and marriage does not work in Hollywood. Sang As Child The public phase of AnnMargret’s life started with the Swedish songs she learned in Valsjobyn as a child. She continued singing lessons when her parents brought her to the United States at the age of five. She also started dancing lessons and she sang with a band.

She worked in night clubs until the comedian Jack Benny spotted her and gave her her national television debut. The one appearance sent the movie studios flocking to her. That was 1961 and since then she has made a full dozen feature movies—and has contracts for a dozen more.

Shrugging off her accomplishments as singer, dancer and actress, the Scandinavian beauty says: “I consider myself an entertainer, that’s all.” Ann-Margret, who doesn’t use her last name—Alson—professionally, still speaks her native Swedish fluently. Noisy Motorcyclist Perhaps her best-known sideline is motor-cycle riding. She creates quite a stir on movie locations, her flame red hair streaking behind as she speeds along noisily. “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I have to do something for release,” she says “Some of the studios barred me from riding a motorcycle. They’re afraid I’ll get hurt. But they shouldn’t be. “Besides, they should see the way I drive a car.”