{"id":11188,"date":"2024-03-17T20:30:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-17T20:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11188"},"modified":"2024-04-03T16:26:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T16:26:04","slug":"lesley-anne-down-on-filming-with-patrick-swayze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11188","title":{"rendered":"Lesley-Anne Down on filming with Patrick Swayze"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Lesley-Anne Down, who turns 70 today, was a stark contrast to Patrick Swayze, her co-star in the hit 1985 U.S. Civil War miniseries \u2018North and South\u2019. In interviews for Canadian TV Guide, the enormously likeable but very intense young American actor told me back then, \u2018The only thing that will make my career last is if I always deliver one hundred percent.\u2019 The English actress, famous for the 1970s British series\u00a0 <\/span>\u2018Upstairs, Downstairs\u2019, confirmed the actor\u2019s high energy and drive drily: \u2018Oh, very, yes.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Equally charming and personable, she said, \u2018I don\u2019t know how long he\u2019s been in this industry but I\u2019ve been in it for 21 years. Mine\u2019s faded, or rather, not faded, I just want to use a lot of energy on other things now.\u2019 Did that mean she had no driving need to be a huge star? \u2018I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve lost that need, she said, \u2018but I think it has its proper place.\u2019<\/p>\n

Swayze spent more than six months filming on location in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and South Carolina, often in sweltering conditions. Down was back and forth from January to June. Still, it was a lot different from \u2018Upstairs, Downstairs\u2019 not least because the British show used video and the American series was on film. \u2018The hours also are very different,\u2019 she said. \u2018On \u201cUpstairs, Downstairs\u201d, we used to stroll into work at one o\u2019clock, have tea, eat buns, play cricket, do about an hour\u2019s worth of work and all pootle off at five o\u2019clock. Then we had two days in the studio every two weeks to record it. This is totally different. Totally.\u2019<\/p>\n

Down confessed that she knew nothing about the Civil War or American history in general. \u2018You know what we learned about in English schools,\u2019 she said. \u2018Ancient Greece, a lot of Roman history going up to medieval times. You don\u2019t even get on to the first or second world wars. We tend to concentrate on our end of the world so I had absulutely no idea and I still haven\u2019t. I\u2019ve no idea who was fighting whom. I\u2019d come on the set and say, now, who are the good guys and who are the baddies?\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Most of her scenes were with Swayze and David Carradine, who played her abusive husband, and she said she got along with both of them very well. She took the part, she said, because \u2018I read the scripts and enjoyed them. \u2018I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ve chosen things in my life that have turned out to be total rubbish,\u2019 she said. \u2018I\u2019ve chosen other things that have turned out to be rather good and I\u2019ve done them all for very different reasons but basically the only reason I choose to do something is because I think I might enjoy to watch it when it finally comes on the telly. I can\u2019t judge art, I\u2019m afraid. All I can do is say, will people watch it or won\u2019t they? Am I entertaining someone? I have no idea about this one because I have not seen it yet. I\u2019ve seen bits and pieces when I\u2019ve been looping. I think it holds up remarkably. I think people will enjoy it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Down went on to make many more film and TV appearances. Of her movies up to the time we spoke, she said \u2018The Sphinx\u2019 was \u2018rubbish\u2019 and the only thing she recalled distinctly about \u2018The Betsy\u2019 was that \u2018I was doing another day\u2019s filming with Tommy Lee Jones in a New York hotel room and he was already doing \u201cThe Eyes of Laura Mars\u201d. We all took an hour\u2019s break because it came over the radio that Elvis Presley had died.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>She said she liked what she had done for British television: \u2018I did a thing called \u201cThe One and Only Phyllis Dixey\u201d\u00a0 (left) <\/span>about a stripper set during World War Two. I thought it was an interesting piece and said something that was sort of different to most television. I did another TV thing called \u201cUnity\u201d about one of the Mitford girls. \u2018The Great Train Robbery\u2019 (with Sean Connery) I thought was quite a nice film.\u2019<\/p>\n

Like most beautiful actresses, she had encountered the casting couch early in her career and, as she had appeared recently on the David Letterman show, I asked if she thought he really was a chauvinist: \u2018I will not speak about him personally,\u2019 she said, \u2018but I do have to say that it doesn\u2019t actually matter what country you\u2019re talking about. I find the majority of those so-called chat-show hosts to be male chauvinists. They get anybody on their show who does not look like the back of a bus and is reasonably successuful and there is always the odd comment trying to put them down. Don\u2019t put it like it happens only to me \u2013 it\u2019s happened to a lot actresses that I\u2019ve seen. They do not allow you, the press even, to be pretty, talented and successful and intelligent. Or even half-way intelligent. You\u2019ve got to have one of those things missing for them to be nice to you.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Lesley-Anne Down, who turns 70 today, was a stark contrast to Patrick Swayze, her co-star in the hit 1985 U.S. Civil War miniseries \u2018North and South\u2019. In interviews for Canadian TV Guide, the enormously likeable … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,2257,15],"tags":[4691,5450,4688,4687,5449],"class_list":["post-11188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","category-television","tag-north-and-south","tag-downstairs","tag-lesley-anne-down","tag-patrick-swayze","tag-upstairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11188"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11220,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions\/11220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}