MADE PIANO JEALOUS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31249, 22 December 1966, Page 2

MADE PIANO JEALOUS

N.Z. Actress In Film

(From the London correspondent of "The Press”)

LONDON, December 14.

In a few days the New Zealand actress Barbara Ewing’s first taste of film star life will come to an end. She will have finished filming at Shepperton Studios her leading role in one of the quartet of stories within “The Torture Garden.”

“It is wonderful; I am enjoying it immensely,” she said on the set. Her canvas chair with “Barbara Ewing” in black letters had been empty and the actress was found resting in her dressing room between “takes” of different scenes.

“It is quite different from the theatre and it is certainly hard work. Sometimes I have to be up at 6.15 to get to the studios and be made up ready for filming early in the morning. The picture is behind schedule so we often work overtime and don’t finish until 8.30 at night. I get back home and just flop into bed, waking up again when I hear the alarm clock.”

Miss Ewing has been “thrown in at the deep end,” to a prominent role in a film which stars the established film actors Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance and Peter Cushing. One of the other actresses is an American, Beverley Adams, who starred in several pictures earlier this year, including a role as Lovey Kravezit, Dean Martin’s secretary in the James Bond spoof “The Silencers.”

Has Miss Ewing learnt from her more experienced colleagues—“No! They keep on asking me for my opinion where they should walk, what they should do, whether to turn their head, and so on, she said with a laugh. But Miss Ewing is learning “all the time” by watching the performances of the others

and looking at the film “rushes” diligently each day. “Some actors don’t like to see them—it is too frightening at times to see yourself—but I am picking up a number of points from them. And I am glad they are filming my most important scenes last ... it gives me time to improve.” Miss Ewing has been able to share Burgess Meredith’s car for transport from London to Shepperton most mornings. Meredith, whose face and name are now quite legendary for British and American children because he appears in the “Batman” television serial as the villianous Penguin, has also brought a touch of humour (off camera) to the Amicus productions horror film by uttering his