Michael Billington as Colonel Paul Foster in U.F.O. Photo copyright of ITC.
A severely edited version of this interview I conducted with the late actor Michael Billington appeared in print several years ago. I spent a number of months corresponding with Michael and he in turn spent a great deal of time on this interview. I thought his fans would enjoy reading the piece in its entirety. Enjoy!
With the dawning of the Age of Aquarius producers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson found themselves at a crossroads in their careers. After almost ten years of successfully entertaining television audiences with such creative puppet series as Fireball XL5, Joe 90, Stingray and Thunderbirds, they longed to use their abilities on a live-action project. It was Sir Lew Grade, then the head of Britain's ATV network, who gave the Andersons the go-ahead and, thus, the science fiction adventure U.F.O. was born.
Set in the year 1980 the series pits humankind against a race of highly advanced aliens. Hidden behind the facade of a film studio, Straker Studios, a defense organization called S.H.A.D.O. (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organisation) is established and put under the command of Ed Straker. With bases on land, sea and the moon, Straker combats this threat against humanity with the help of a highly trained and dedicated staff.
Last minute cast changes required the addition of another male lead, a handsome young hero who could handle the physical demands of an action series such as U.F.O. Enter the character of Paul Foster and a twenty-nine-year-old actor named Michael Billington. The rugged, good-looking and slightly impetuous Foster was an immediate success, particularly with the female viewers, and Billington found himself in his first regular television role.
Sportsman, lawyer, journalist, schoolbus driver and actor were just some of the careers Billington thought about as a young child growing up in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. "I didn't make toy theatres when I was a child, but I was fascinated by the cinema," recalls the actor. "I had serious doubts that I could make a career as an actor. We were just an everyday suburban family with no history of the arts. Who's going to pay you for what seemed like having a good time, unless, of course, you can swing a tennis racket."
While at school, Billington studied engineering and took up amateur dramatics. He also made a point of seeing everything at the local cinema, especially musicals, and imagined himself as Gene Kelly. "One day I saw Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and James Booth in Jazz Boat and thought, 'Hey, that's me.'
While at a tap-dancing class, which I attended to improve my skills as an actor, I met an actress called Jane Asher. She introduced me to her agent who was also an acting coach. He worked with me on speeches and set me up for various auditions. I recall having a long, searching interview with John Slazenger who was looking for an 'unknown,' as everyone was in sixties London, to cast in the role Alan Bates ultimately got in A Kind of Loving."
The actor did one-and-two day roles in film and television productions including a short underground film which still circulates at European Art Festivals and an early BBC soap opera about a soccer team. It was during work on a one-day assignment that Billington was cast in asmall role for the cult classic television series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan.
"When I walked onto the set of The Prisoner as a novice actor I knew nothing about him [McGoohan] except that he had starred in Danger Man, a sort of tame but compelling television series. I watched the way he directed the scene and then stepped in to replace his stand-in and shoot it.
"We never quite understood what was going on in The Prisoner and so, not knowing who he was or what we were involved in, I chose to ignore the only piece of direction he gave me, which was to slow it all down. I had been told by every other director to speed things up and this is what I did. How right he was. I was far too fast and ineffectual in my final line, which I had to deliver at the end of a fight we had. I cannot watch it now without the sickening feeling that I would crave to do it again.
"I can relate to Pat McGoohan in a way as someone who did not make enough of his talent. He is probably one of the best talents to come out of England in his decade - the perfect mix of intellect and physicality. What a great James Bond he would have been.
"After the filming I hung around the production office hoping he would cast me in a further episode; he never did. I next found myself in the Royal Shakespeare Company and I dropped him a note telling him how much I enjoyed working with him. I don't know if he ever got it."
Billington spent a year with the RSC studying fencing, verse, speaking, voice and movement. He also tried his hand at improvisation in workshops run by a little known but hopeful director called Mike Leigh. The actor worked alongside such up-and-coming talents as Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley and Patrick Stewart who, as he recalls, were all waiting around Stratford-upon-Avon's greenroom for their shot at stardom.
In the summer of 1968, Billington travelled to Ireland for a role in the historical epic Alfred the Great, a performance he feels is best forgotten. "I had been there a total of about four months and ended up in one shot. They cut this epic film down from being a very long boring movie to a very short boring movie. I thought it was going to be screened the following year at the Cannes Film Festival but MGM. had more sense and just promoted it at a booth."
Although Alfred the Great remained in the background at Cannes, Billington was very much at the forefront. He and his friends met up with actors Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson and were among the first people to see Easy Rider at an early morning screening. "It blew our youn minds," he says smiling. "It was the first film that spoke to us."
While at Cannes the actor phoned his flat in London to discover that Sylvia Anderson had personally called looking for him. She wanted to see Billington about a regular role in a new series called U.F.O. which she and her husband Gerry were producing. Looking tanned and relaxed, Billington returned to England to meet with the Andersons. "After the meeting a test was arranged for a running role in the series," he says. "I was flabbergasted but tried to hide it."
It was not long before Billington filmed his audition piece with American actor Ed Bishop who had already been cast as Commander Ed Straker. "The test went OK but, like all tests, it was a bit fraught with mishaps. I remember the director Dave Kane suggested that I should take a brief pause when I entered Straker's office through the automatic doors. I did this, but before I had a chance to enter the office the stagehand operating the doors, who could not see me, promptly closed them again thinking I was inside, which, of course, I wasn't.
"Everyone collapsed into fits of hysteria. This relaxed us all a bit and the scene went as well as could be expected. I can't remember much about the dialogue except that it was about my knowing exactly who Ed Straker was, something similar to the 'confrontation' scene in Exposed."
With the majority of filming already completed on three episodes of U.F.O., including the opening episode Identified, scenes had to be inserted into each explaining the absence of Billington's character who was introduced in Exposed, the fifth episode filmed and the second broadcast. When a plane piloted by civilian test pilot Colonel Paul Foster is destroyed by an exploding UFO, it sets off a chain of events which leads Foster not only to S.H.A.D.O., but also to a new career.
"The rest is, as they say, history. I was in front of the cameras very quickly filming the first scene in Survival. I was holding a drink tumbler in Ed Straker's office and feeling deep remorse and guilt at the passing of my buddy whom I could not save. Although I did the best I could with the scene I remember the director Alan Perry telling me the next day how disappointed he was with the rushes and my performance in particular. I thought, 'Well, I can only improve.'
"This was my first big acting role and in the beginning I had a struggle with the set and costumes," recalls Billington, "especially when we filmed scenes on the Moonbase set. It was just so hot and the suits we had to wear were rubberized, this being before the invention of lightweight PVC [polyvinyl chloride] The dialogue was very technical and not like anything I had ever had to handle before. As I was a replacement for another actor I did not have much time to prepare, and, as a result, spent much of that first episode expecting to be fired for being inadequate.
"The next episode, Conflict, was not quite so demanding as I had less to do. I think the longer I went on the more my confidence grew and I began to feel pretty good about the role.
"I know Gerry [Anderson] wanted me to express anger without shouting. One night after filming he invited me up to his office. He put a glass of whiskey in my hand, and, with his back to me, growled the words, 'I hate you.' It was very effective. He was right, of course. Thank you, Gerry.I never did shout again and I always try to avoid shouting when I act now. This is probably when Paul Foster's 'quiet simmer' was born. I think I adopted it as a person, too, although I wish I could lose it sometimes as it makes comedy very difficult, as you can imagine.
"My character of Foster was probably everything Straker couldn't be. Initially, he was the product of several scripts written for other characters. I made him a contrast to Straker: instinctive, irresponsible but committed. He was a man of few words and lots of action."
Billington and his fellow castmembers spent the next few months at MGM.'s British studios at Boreham Wood filming the first nineteen episodes of U.F.O. A particular favourite of the actor was Ordeal in which Foster is abducted by two aliens and transformed into one of them. It is an episode he feels seems to work on a level much different to many others of this first group.
"People often mention the scene where green liquid is pumped into Foster's helmet," he says smiling. "They still ask how it was done as if I should be congratulated as an actor for surviving the ordeal. It was really simple. The face visor was double thickness and was just filled with coloured water. I remained perfectly dry. The rest was 'acting' - not King Lear, as we would say.
"In this episode I also got to show off my body, which, at that time, I was very proud of. I was a very early student of the 'pumping iron' school of acting. Sean Connery was the first.
"I quite liked Kill Straker for quite different reasons. It is full of double entendres and worked beautifully as a self-mockery of a latent homosexual attraction between Foster and Straker - if I can't have you then nobody will.
"Ed Bishop and I met up in Los Angeles in 1994 at a science fiction convention for films and television. The organizers of the event screened this episode for us, and, in a jovial moment, Ed and I improvised some additional dialogue along with the soundtrack. It was quite amusing and I wish we had recorded it. Some of those present commented how 'eerie' it was to have the original voices parodying their original roles.
"This was the first time we had seen each other since the last day of filming on U.F.O. almost twenty-five years before. That convention gave us the opportunity to relate to each other without the baggage of the series. It was quite refreshing and I know we laughed a lot."
The actor recalls the lighting technique used in Subsmash as extremely effective since it set a certain type of mood and assisted the actors with their performances. He also liked working on The Cat with Nine Lives, with the exception of one scene. "When I fight with the character played by Alexis Kanner and he throws me down a pit, it is not me who tries to clamber out but a double. I just would not have done it that way as Foster."
With MGM studios closing down the Andersons had to film the remaining seven episodes of U.F.O.'s first series at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. Billington chuckles when asked about his final days working at the MGM studios. "I had a visit from the security guard to tell me that I should not have posters pinned to my dressing room wall. They had fears that when I removed the Scotch tape it would take off some of the paint. They hadn't figured out that I would have to remove it anyway at sometime so, in the end, it would make no difference. I just laughed and carefully unpeeled the tape in order not to remove any paint. The funny thing was that it was only a matter of weeks before the whole studio was torn down and turned into a giant refrigeration plant.
"Ours was the last production in the studio," he continues. "There is a scene in The Dalotek Affair where I am spinning around surrounded by coloured lights and dreaming of kissing a character played by Tracy Reed. That scene was filmed at the end of the shoot and was added because the episode was under time after editing. I think part of the reason that it was so short was that the director made me speed up so much of the dialogue during the Moonbase scenes.
"This was, as far as I know, the final footage ever to be shot at the studio. Another film company was using the outside lot for A Blade of Grass directed by Cornel Wilde, but I don't think they used the sound stage. I remember thinking that Spencer Tracy had opened the studio with Edward My Son and I closed it spinning around under coloured lights looking starry eyed," laughs Billington.
By the time he had finished filming the first set of nineteen episodes, Billington felt he had marginally improved as an actor, but, "my sense of humor had developed beyond expectations," he says. Production began on the next group of stories with Destruction, in which the Earth's population is threatened by a deadly nerve gas. "I liked this episode," says the actor, "although there was some tension while we were filming it.
"Gerry and I fell out over something quite trivial. We were not allocated stand-ins on that shoot and I brought in my own, which Gerry felt was outside my authority. I would not apologize, and, as a result of this, was told on good authority that I was going to be phased out of the series. I believe The Long Sleep,our last episode, was rewritten to feature Straker instead of Foster. C'est la vie. I don't think I was mature enough to apologize to Gerry and he wore it badly. Nevertheless, Destruction had many of the necessary ingredients for a good adventure.
"I also enjoyed Reflections in The Water which kept a suspenseful storyline bobbling along. 'Mindbender' was on target but Timelapse and The Long Sleep went a bit off the mark. I think Sir Lew [Grade] wanted more of the little green spacemen running around with laser guns. We all thought he was wrong, but, on reflection, he wasn't. I think the psychological stories got a bit repetitive. Someone always seemed to be taken over by an alien force accompanied by strange and eerie music. I think we needed to see someone behaving badly so we could be reminded just how evil the power was that we were fighting."
In The Psychobombs three ordinary humans are given superhuman powers by the invading aliens and used as their instruments of destruction. Colonel Foster tracks down the last surviving member of the trio, the lovely Linda Simmonds (played by Deborah Grant), and brings her back to S.H.A.D.O. headquarters. "I remember an intimate scene with Deborah Grant," says Billington fondly. "It was meant to be a quiet, relaxed, sensual scene on a river bank but it turned into something else.
"After weeks of being asked by the soundman to speak up I finally blew my top and yelled my lines directly into the microphone. It must have made his ears ring for days. The whole thing was totally irresponsible on my part, but that was the way I was. I can still see the fury in my eyes which, of course, ruined my own work."
While working on U.F.O. Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were contacted by Harry Saltzman, then coproducer of the James Bond films, who was planning the Bond adventure Moonraker. "They took some footage from U.F.O. along to a screening with him and suggested that I might be suitable to take over from George Lazenby as there was a rumour that he would finish after On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
"Before this I had been approached by a man called Bud Ornstein who was the head of production for United Artists Europe," continues the actor. "He had seen me in cabaret doing what would now be called stand-up and thought I might be right to take over from Sean Connery if he ever flew the coop.
"He arranged for me to do a photo session in a Bond-like setting. I don't know if the photos ever got anywhere, but I was eventually called in to meet with Peter Hunt for On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I think they had George firmly in mind at that point and believed that Sean would give in so it never went any further. It wasn't until Live and Let Die that I was finally given the first of many subsequent tests that I did for Bond."
When asked about his fellow U.F.O. actors Billington answers with nothing but praise. "All the actors seemed to get on fine. There really wasn't much time for temperament on what was for its time a quick shoot considering the amount of special effects involved, none of which we ever saw until the episode was completed several weeks later. We worked very much in the dark, so to speak.
"Although I was relatively friendly with Gabrielle Drake [Lieutenant Gay Ellis], we all kept pretty much to ourselves. Ed [Bishop] was, I felt, much like his character in the series. We all seemed to fall into our on-screen roles in our offscreen daily existence. I don't know if this was intended or whether we realized it at the time, but, on reflection, it seemed to be that way.
"It was my opinion that most of the U.F.O. stories were written around whatever Gerry was going through at the time. Grant Taylor [General Henderson] was Sir Lew Grade, Ed Straker was Gerry, George Sewell [Colonel Alec Freeman] was Reg Hill the associate producer, and I, as Foster, represented all the difficult actors who came onto the Straker Studio set. I could never quite figure out where Sylvia [Anderson] fit into my theory; probably the character that Wanda Ventham played [Colonel Virginia Lake]."
One particular U.F.O. costar who the actor has fond memories of working with is the late Vladek Sheybal who played the enigmatic Doctor Doug Jackson. While the somewhat sinister and formidable physician was disliked by many of his fellow S.H.A.D.O. operatives, Billington expresses nothing but admiration and respect for the actor who played him. "He was unique, a one-off. With a very strong background in films and theatre in Poland he established himself in that wonderful world of British character actors. He was the perennial 'mad poet' and in the series he went from eccentric investigator to powerful prosecutor to 'mad scientist,' at the same time encompassing all with the looks and presence of a character from Jacobean times.
"He carried it off with weird vocal inflections which used to defy the obvious meaning of the line, but which, in the end, did not alter the meaning of the scene. He was always charming, gave thought to whatever he was doing, and, was for me at that point in my career an inspiration. He helped me to start acting in 'Exposed' and again later, in the episode Court Martial."
In The Long Sleep, the last U.F.O. episode filmed, Ed Straker confronts a woman who has regained consciousness after being in a coma for ten years. She recalls seeing two spacemen burying something in a deserted farmhouse but cannot recall exact details. Certain that the object buried is some kind of explosive device Straker urges her to remember all that she can in order for him to locate the bomb and save the Earth.
"I think my feeling at the end of the U.F.O. shoot was relief that we had finally got through it," says Billington. "At that point I was craving greener pastures.
"The last shot, I recall, was one where a bomb disposal expert is defusing a device which was the main object of The Long Sleep. I said the last line to the bomb disposal expert which was, 'Good luck.' As I said it there was a change in my voice. I must have projected a new sort of energy which Ed responded to. I sensed the hint of a smile break into his voice. It seemed refreshing as the character of Ed Straker rarely smiled. I don't know what actually happened but I felt in some way, 'Why couldn't it always be that simple?' "
When U.F.O. made it to British television screens it suffered the fate of being televised to the nation at off-peak and random times. In the United States it fared somewhat better and was a proven winner on several PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) channels across the country. Its American success did not go unnoticed and CBS Television contacted ITC offices in New York and expressed a desire to purchase a further series of episodes.
"I know at the time that Gerry and Sylvia wanted to break their image and do a very human story," recalls the actor. "An actor friend of mine, John Fraser, had written a novel about a thalidomide baby and its baby-sitter entitled Clap Hands If You Believe in Fairies. It was a warm, tender and funny tale, very odd but in no way saccharine-coated. Sadly, the project came to nothing. If it had, it might have steered Sylvia and Gerry into quite a different direction, and, maybe, kept the team together a little longer. I know Sylvia yearned to do a human interest story.
"When the series was coming to an end I presented Sylvia with a short story idea that would have made a good science fiction movie. It was based on tests that Russia was carrying out on the effects of astronauts in close confinement for long periods of time. They concluded that games of a competitive nature should never be played. The story was called Red Planet and Gerry very cleverly retitled it Three into One Won't Go.
"Gerry took it to Sir Lew whose comment was, 'Science fiction is dead,' and presented Gerry with the prospects of doing a low-budget spy series called The Protectors. Of course, U.F.O. did relatively well in the States so Lew had a rethink. A short while later he produced Capricorn One, which in essence was the same story. It just goes to show that even he could not anticipate the future greatness of Gerry's work. I think Gerry Anderson is a genius, someone far ahead of his time."
Although a second series of the program provisionally titled U.F.O. 2 and then U.F.O. :1999 was talked about it was never to be. The entire concept was revamped, the result of which was a new science fiction vehicle entitled Space:1999. In the early planning stages, when CBS still had interest in such a series, they wanted the original cast to remain with the project. When it turned out that Space:1999 would air in syndication instead of on one of the three major American networks, Straker, Foster, Freeman and S.H.A.D.O. were replaced by Commander John Koenig, Doctor Helena Russell, Professor Victor Bergman and Moonbase Alpha.
"On reflection, I would liked to have continued with the character of Paul Foster," muses Billington. "When you have children, as I do, these are the shows that matter. They really aren't interested in watching a two-hour restoration theatrical television production you might be particularly happy with."
From spaceship to sailing ship, the actor found his next major role more down-to-earth. He appeared as Daniel Fogarty in the BBC's long-running nautical drama The Onedin Line. The series follows the life of James Onedin who at age twenty-eight is struggling to succeed as the owner of a shipping line, all the time overcoming obstacles set in his path by his former employer. The program, which ran for eight years, kept up to twelve million people glued to their television sets every Sunday evening and gave Billington another substantial role in which to sink his teeth.
"This series is what the BBC of those days did well. It was not so well promoted in the press as Upstairs, Downstairs simply because the BBC didn't believe in that [promotion] in those days, but it was better.
"I liked the passion of the character I played and today it still remains one of my favourite roles," he continues. "Fogarty was very much what I was at the time: someone from humble beginnings, ambitious, proud, principled, passionate and a loner - someone who was strong yet sensitive. Although he was bent on revenge we, the audience, knew why, and the main character, James Onedin, was not 'whiter than white,' so, it redressed the balance of conflict between the main antagonists."
Throughout the seventies and eighties the actor kept busy on both sides of the Atlantic appearing in numerous television programs such as War & Peace, Edward the Vll, The Professionals, Magnum P.I., Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island and The Quest as well as the feature films The Spy Who Loved Me and KGB - The Secret War. "The role of Peter Hubbard I did in KGB - The Secret War is also one of my favorites. The character is like a James Bond without the humour or the cut-glass British accent since I played it as an American.
"The film worked quite well, cost nothing, and often gets a fair-to-good rating when broadcast on its frequent late-night network reruns. I quite liked what I did except for one emotional scene which I don't think I handled very well and which seems a little out of place.
"I would also have to list a couple of other roles I played in the theatre among my favourites including Biff in Death of a Salesman and Milo Tindle in Sleuth. The great thing about Biff is that Death of a Salesman is so well-structured as a play that this odd, confused character plays itself. Milo, of course, is a different matter. You have to act that one. It's a play about playacting, so, you have to be pretty good at it or the play doesn't work so well. It's not a character that is 'actor-proof,' whereas Biff is."
Nowadays Billington divides his time between Britain and the United States, not only acting but teaching others how to act. A student of the late Lee Strasberg, he was invited to teach similar workshops by Strasberg's widow Anna. It is a responsibility he is passionate about and one he takes very seriously. "The key to good acting, and this may seem obvious, is the eradication of tension," explains Billington. "This will unlock the path to simple, clear, emotional expression. The other factors that must be exercised other than relaxation are concentration, imagination and interpretation.
"The only obstacle in teaching actors is their insecurity. Often they wish only to exercise their strengths and not their weaknesses. This is what makes champions - the willingness to exercise your weaknesses.
"I don't find any difficulty with going from actor to teacher. I never envy the youth and expectations of my students. I feel their successes are my successes. I do not teach from a point of view of examining my contribution to the stage. I hate anecdotal teaching. Teaching succeeds from the doing, not the talking. If an actor manages to break a pattern of habitual expression, that is a success for both of us. When he or she does it, it is often with the help of my will and Lee Strasberg's observations and profound knowledge."
Looking back at his career, is there a certain character or one plum role the actor still hopes to have the chance to play? "I am personally at a point in my career where I have achieved, to a larger or lesser extent, most of the things I set out to do," he answers, "but do not for a moment consider myself a 'star.' I would have to reinvent myself to do that.
"Perhaps I will put to work the wit that has kept me sane over the years and try my hand at stand-up comedy. Many successful actors have emerged from that direction and made a damned lot of money in the process, so why not?"
Steve Eramo
As noted above, photo copyright of ITC, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
A great article!
For want of any other means of contact, this here to ask you to send me an email.
Posted by: An Delen Dir | 05/27/2011 at 07:49 AM