Post by RitaLittlewood on Jun 15, 2005 11:40:55 GMT
From the Mirror:
15 June 2005
HARD TIMES OF THE FIRST SEXY DR WHO GIRL
I AM A HAPPY HERMIT BUT BILLIE NEEDS TO BE CAREFUL
By Gill Swain
WHEN Anneke Wills first saw Billie Piper in Doctor Who, it was like seeing her younger self through a time warp.
And when she heard that the young actress planned to quit her role as Rose halfway through the next series of the BBC1 show, her own past came tumbling into the present.
It is nearly four decades since Anneke herself closed the Tardis door for the last time and, afraid of being typecast, ended her career as the Time Lord's assistant.
But what happened to her afterwards was more remarkable than any of her on-screen adventures as William Hartnell's and then Patrick Troughton's pretty blonde sidekick.
Advertisement
Today, aged 64 and still beguilingly attractive, Anneke lives like a hermit on the edge of Dartmoor. She survives on a meagre pension in a tiny rented cottage.
In the garden she has hacked out of the undergrowth she has set up a bath tub fed by a hose from the kitchen. On summer evenings she lies soaking, looking at the fabulous view and contemplating her incredible life.
If young Billie could hear her tell her story, she might think carefully about the path she chooses when she hangs up her own Tardis key.
"I would say to Billie: 'Life is never as straightforward as you think it's going to be'," says Anneke.
When she landed the part of Polly in the early 60s she was, like Billie today, absolutely right for her era.
"I was the first sexy assistant," she says, smiling at the memory. "I was a classic dolly bird with eyelashes longer than my skirts."
The daughter of an aristocratic artist who walked out when she was three leaving a ten shilling note on her pillow, she was raised by her Dutch mother, a beautiful former model.
At RADA she became friends with future stars Tom Courtenay and Sarah Miles - and established a reputation as a wildchild. By her own admission, she was thrown out of the prestigious drama school for "behaving badly with Edward Fox."
"I completely loved him, but he married someone else," she says. She lived with musical star Anthony Newley before falling for distinguished actor Michael Gough on a film set when she was 21.
GOUGH - later to play Batman's butler Albert - was twice her age and had been married twice before.
"He got off a train at Euston station, went down on his knees and proposed," she recalls. "He was gorgeous and brilliant and I was bowled over."
By the time she landed her £60-a-week Doctor Who role, life seemed perfect. The couple had two children, Polly in 1963 and Jasper in 1965. Their friends included comedian Peter Cook, film giant Kenneth More and fashion gurus Mary Quant and Ossie Clark.
"It was really nerve-wracking at first," she says. "My first Doctor Who was William Hartnell who was fussy and bad-tempered, ready to blow at any moment.
"Then Patrick Troughton took over. He was heavenly and it became great fun. We used to laugh so much.
"Of course, there was also an awful lot of running around and screaming. I took lessons in screaming so as not to damage my throat."
She turned down a second series for fear of being typecast and went on to play the assistant to Anthony Quayle's criminologist in the hit series, Strange Report.
But when she was asked to go to Hollywood to film another series, she was afraid it would destroy her marriage. Instead she gave up acting altogether.
"Mick (Gough) was incredibly jealous and possessive," she says. "I'd also done the whole drugs and rock-and-roll scene. So I thought I'd go to the countryside, grow the children, plant peas - and save my marriage."
While Gough was filming The Go-Between with Julie Christie, and Alan Bates in Norfolk, the couple found a sprawling 300-year-old Georgian farmhouse.
Their first years were idyllic. Anneke plunged herself into the hippie lifestyle, worked hard in her garden and raised her children. But when Gough began working at the National Theatre in London, the conflict between their two lifestyles began to show.
"He came home at weekends hopelessly theatrical, trilling 'Oh, daahling', while I was into meditation. Plus I couldn't stand his possessiveness while he seemed to have an eye for every young actress around.
"He came home less and less and when he did we had terrible rows. I knew something had to happen."
Having met a devotee of The Beatles' guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, she fled to India, donned the orange robes worn by his followers and joined his ashram.
She left behind 14-year-old Polly but took 12-year-old Jasper, who is now a photographer for Sotheby's.
"The future was very lonely and frightening," she says. "I had to swap my lovely home for a mattress in a communal room. I hugged a pillow for three days solidly and sobbed but I had to let go. And I was with wonderful people like Terence Stamp."
As the 80s dawned the Orange People moved to the US where Anneke scraped a living cleaning houses in California. Then, just before Christmas 1982, came the devastating news that Polly had died in a car crash.
"She was about to get married to a lovely boy," says Anneke. "She was driving home from a pub with a friend when she hit ice, the car tipped into a ditch and they both drowned. It felt like my guts had been ripped out and hung up to dry."
At the graveside, her ex-husband Gough, who had by then remarried, would not meet Anneke's eye or touch her, an act of coldness it took her decades to forgive.
"She was our child," she says. "I was the mother standing alone and wretched and unhugged. It was inhuman. But I've come to understand it would have hurt him too much to look at me and I have let it go."
IN her grief, Anneke fled back to America. She paid a man $1,000 to marry her so she could get a Green Card and threw herself into a new career as an interior designer.
She moved into a community of artists on Hornby Island, off Vancouver in Canada where she directed plays and fell in love with a marine biologist 15 years her junior.
They married in 1993 and, when he said he wanted to train as an actor, she sold her house to pay for his drama school fees. But while there, he fell for a fellow student.
"She was 23 and gorgeous. I was 54 and menopausal and had invested everything in him. It completely broke my heart," she says.
"I now understand that the men I've loved were all like my father - utterly beautiful, total geniuses ... and complete bastards." Around that time she accepted her first invitation to appear at a Doctor Who convention - and rediscovered the beauty of the English countryside. She moved to Devon three years ago.
With Jasper in London, no grandchildren, no friends nearby and little cash it was a bleak existence at first. Even now she sometimes goes two weeks without seeing a soul.
"I've been through tough times but the loneliness of that first winter was really tough. But I've come out the other side and I've never been happier. I've become a philosophical hermit, growing old and invisible - and loving it."
Nowadays, Anneke only steps into the spotlight for the wildly popular Doctor Who conventions.
"At the 30th anniversary, I walked down the aisle between 500 fans and everyone was cheering, sending me their love. It was incredible.
"I had no idea when I played Polly that it would go on like this and become so much part of my life. But I am still getting wonderful fan letters after 40 years and I'm sure it will be the same for Billie Piper.
"That's the magic of Doctor Who."
--------------------------------------------
Anneke's nice. Can't believe she's 64! I've met her twice I think and she was prepared last time to have words with Frazer when I told her he touched my bum. "Did you enjoy it?" she asked. I said I did. "That's all right then," she replied. LOL!
Patsy
15 June 2005
HARD TIMES OF THE FIRST SEXY DR WHO GIRL
I AM A HAPPY HERMIT BUT BILLIE NEEDS TO BE CAREFUL
By Gill Swain
WHEN Anneke Wills first saw Billie Piper in Doctor Who, it was like seeing her younger self through a time warp.
And when she heard that the young actress planned to quit her role as Rose halfway through the next series of the BBC1 show, her own past came tumbling into the present.
It is nearly four decades since Anneke herself closed the Tardis door for the last time and, afraid of being typecast, ended her career as the Time Lord's assistant.
But what happened to her afterwards was more remarkable than any of her on-screen adventures as William Hartnell's and then Patrick Troughton's pretty blonde sidekick.
Advertisement
Today, aged 64 and still beguilingly attractive, Anneke lives like a hermit on the edge of Dartmoor. She survives on a meagre pension in a tiny rented cottage.
In the garden she has hacked out of the undergrowth she has set up a bath tub fed by a hose from the kitchen. On summer evenings she lies soaking, looking at the fabulous view and contemplating her incredible life.
If young Billie could hear her tell her story, she might think carefully about the path she chooses when she hangs up her own Tardis key.
"I would say to Billie: 'Life is never as straightforward as you think it's going to be'," says Anneke.
When she landed the part of Polly in the early 60s she was, like Billie today, absolutely right for her era.
"I was the first sexy assistant," she says, smiling at the memory. "I was a classic dolly bird with eyelashes longer than my skirts."
The daughter of an aristocratic artist who walked out when she was three leaving a ten shilling note on her pillow, she was raised by her Dutch mother, a beautiful former model.
At RADA she became friends with future stars Tom Courtenay and Sarah Miles - and established a reputation as a wildchild. By her own admission, she was thrown out of the prestigious drama school for "behaving badly with Edward Fox."
"I completely loved him, but he married someone else," she says. She lived with musical star Anthony Newley before falling for distinguished actor Michael Gough on a film set when she was 21.
GOUGH - later to play Batman's butler Albert - was twice her age and had been married twice before.
"He got off a train at Euston station, went down on his knees and proposed," she recalls. "He was gorgeous and brilliant and I was bowled over."
By the time she landed her £60-a-week Doctor Who role, life seemed perfect. The couple had two children, Polly in 1963 and Jasper in 1965. Their friends included comedian Peter Cook, film giant Kenneth More and fashion gurus Mary Quant and Ossie Clark.
"It was really nerve-wracking at first," she says. "My first Doctor Who was William Hartnell who was fussy and bad-tempered, ready to blow at any moment.
"Then Patrick Troughton took over. He was heavenly and it became great fun. We used to laugh so much.
"Of course, there was also an awful lot of running around and screaming. I took lessons in screaming so as not to damage my throat."
She turned down a second series for fear of being typecast and went on to play the assistant to Anthony Quayle's criminologist in the hit series, Strange Report.
But when she was asked to go to Hollywood to film another series, she was afraid it would destroy her marriage. Instead she gave up acting altogether.
"Mick (Gough) was incredibly jealous and possessive," she says. "I'd also done the whole drugs and rock-and-roll scene. So I thought I'd go to the countryside, grow the children, plant peas - and save my marriage."
While Gough was filming The Go-Between with Julie Christie, and Alan Bates in Norfolk, the couple found a sprawling 300-year-old Georgian farmhouse.
Their first years were idyllic. Anneke plunged herself into the hippie lifestyle, worked hard in her garden and raised her children. But when Gough began working at the National Theatre in London, the conflict between their two lifestyles began to show.
"He came home at weekends hopelessly theatrical, trilling 'Oh, daahling', while I was into meditation. Plus I couldn't stand his possessiveness while he seemed to have an eye for every young actress around.
"He came home less and less and when he did we had terrible rows. I knew something had to happen."
Having met a devotee of The Beatles' guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, she fled to India, donned the orange robes worn by his followers and joined his ashram.
She left behind 14-year-old Polly but took 12-year-old Jasper, who is now a photographer for Sotheby's.
"The future was very lonely and frightening," she says. "I had to swap my lovely home for a mattress in a communal room. I hugged a pillow for three days solidly and sobbed but I had to let go. And I was with wonderful people like Terence Stamp."
As the 80s dawned the Orange People moved to the US where Anneke scraped a living cleaning houses in California. Then, just before Christmas 1982, came the devastating news that Polly had died in a car crash.
"She was about to get married to a lovely boy," says Anneke. "She was driving home from a pub with a friend when she hit ice, the car tipped into a ditch and they both drowned. It felt like my guts had been ripped out and hung up to dry."
At the graveside, her ex-husband Gough, who had by then remarried, would not meet Anneke's eye or touch her, an act of coldness it took her decades to forgive.
"She was our child," she says. "I was the mother standing alone and wretched and unhugged. It was inhuman. But I've come to understand it would have hurt him too much to look at me and I have let it go."
IN her grief, Anneke fled back to America. She paid a man $1,000 to marry her so she could get a Green Card and threw herself into a new career as an interior designer.
She moved into a community of artists on Hornby Island, off Vancouver in Canada where she directed plays and fell in love with a marine biologist 15 years her junior.
They married in 1993 and, when he said he wanted to train as an actor, she sold her house to pay for his drama school fees. But while there, he fell for a fellow student.
"She was 23 and gorgeous. I was 54 and menopausal and had invested everything in him. It completely broke my heart," she says.
"I now understand that the men I've loved were all like my father - utterly beautiful, total geniuses ... and complete bastards." Around that time she accepted her first invitation to appear at a Doctor Who convention - and rediscovered the beauty of the English countryside. She moved to Devon three years ago.
With Jasper in London, no grandchildren, no friends nearby and little cash it was a bleak existence at first. Even now she sometimes goes two weeks without seeing a soul.
"I've been through tough times but the loneliness of that first winter was really tough. But I've come out the other side and I've never been happier. I've become a philosophical hermit, growing old and invisible - and loving it."
Nowadays, Anneke only steps into the spotlight for the wildly popular Doctor Who conventions.
"At the 30th anniversary, I walked down the aisle between 500 fans and everyone was cheering, sending me their love. It was incredible.
"I had no idea when I played Polly that it would go on like this and become so much part of my life. But I am still getting wonderful fan letters after 40 years and I'm sure it will be the same for Billie Piper.
"That's the magic of Doctor Who."
--------------------------------------------
Anneke's nice. Can't believe she's 64! I've met her twice I think and she was prepared last time to have words with Frazer when I told her he touched my bum. "Did you enjoy it?" she asked. I said I did. "That's all right then," she replied. LOL!
Patsy
