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place. Compared with the, let’s say, benevolent autocracy he wields at Angels, BAFTA has been positively byzantine by comparison.
“The best business decisions I’ve ever made have been from the gut. At BAFTA one always had to consult, go through hoops if necessary, to get everyone on your side.
“On the Council, you have 20 peo- ple who are at the top of their profes- sion and each has an opinion which is equal to mine. And, believe me, they would often all have an individual view, ” he smiles, just a bit thinly. ■
PAUL TELFORD
In the glitzy world of the ‘A’ list, agents are often almost as famous as their highly-paid, high-profile clients. But below that particular stratosphere, quite often way below, there is a myri- ad of strictly down-to-earth agents sim- ply trying to carve out just a small cor- ner in an already cut-throat market.
Lore has it that most agents’ careers begin in the mailroom of a big agency. Not so for Paul Telford. The 38 year-old - who now runs his own London-based agency - originally intended to be a performer himself. Having studied at the Royal Ballet School and worked with people like Lenny Henry and Marti Caine, his desire for “the good things in life and security” saw him turn instead to prop- erty during the booming Eighties.
He was a successful estate agent for a number of years before a sudden visit from a celebrity client caused him to re-evaluate. “One day,
Uma Thurman walked into the Blackheath office where I was
working to register with me,”
Telford remembers. “She was
married to Gary Oldman at the
time. Meeting them, I began to
realise that this was where my
heart truly lay.”
So he swapped property for theatrical management, setting
up an office in the heart of Soho with his wife Kathryn, who still looks after the accounting side of the business. The change was something of a shock. He laughs: “Having been in a flagship property office with seven staff beneath me and the phones buzzing all the time, we walked into this room and there was nothing.”
“I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning. In fact, one casting agent said to me, ‘You know what, Paul, I feel like I’m dealing with an estate agent!’ Little did she know.”
The company has now been run- ning for six years and Telford is still feeling the strain of being a small fish in a big pond. “I’m a realist, so I want to become an agent with clout sooner rather than later,” he admits. “But I have to realise where I’m at. I
can’t open doors.” He sighs: “Our time will come. Quite when, is down to the right people out there giving us the opportunity we believe we deserve.”
And despite his continued proximi- ty to actors and actresses, one thing Telford doesn’t miss is the performing. Any leftover desire for the spotlight faded after a visit with one of his clients to a theatre audition. “I felt my heart going and my adrenaline pump- ing and I thought, ‘Thank God I’m out of that.’ I’d rather be on this side of the fence any day.”
With the performing bug out of his system, he can concentrate on giving the larger companies a run for their money and that means attracting the big name clientele. “We have made great strides with our artistes employ- ment within film, television and theatre, but it’s a slow process,” he says. “I still want to find that young person who can really break through in a big way.”
For this he must bank on new blood. “We’ve signed a couple of extremely talented young actors this year, secur- ing them over our larger rivals and we are feeling very posi- tive with the immediate response these clients are get- ting and believe it’s only a question of time before our ambitions are achieved”. ■
RICHARD NORTHCROFT
For Richard Northcroft, it wasn’t the lure of the computer screen that drew him to the special effects field of filmmaking. Instead, the 23-year-old aims to follow in the foot- steps of his heroes Rick Baker and Stan Winston as a “sculptor, model maker and sfx technician.”
In other words, while you marvel at the CGI, Northcroft is busy in the back- room doing it the old-fashioned way, like creating dead bodies for Steven Spielberg’s WWII TV miniseries Band Of Brothers and model-making on the English-language remake of that Gallic smash, The Visitors.
Trained at the Wimbledon School Of Art, a year on, Northcroft is trying to force his way into a close-knit indus- try. “It’s hard to break into it,” he con- fesses. “You have to show the ability to adapt and have a broad range of skills.”
The spectre of computers also looms large. “It’s definitely on your mind,” he admits. “Recently, I was going to be on the crew for The Mummy 2, but they had to reduce the number of people on it due to budget constraints.”
But that doesn’t deter a man who grew up with Star Wars and Jim Henson movies. “Of course it’s changed now. But I was inspired by a lot of fantasy stuff like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Now, I’m more inter- ested in traditional artistic sculpture.”
So if George Lucas rang and asked him to join the team for the prequels, he’d turn him down? Northcroft laughs: “No, of course not. I’m not that stupid.” ■
COMPILED BY BEN IRVING
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New Talent, New Media
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