Lewis Collins

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Lewis Collins (born May 27, 1946 in Bidston , Birkenhead , England , † November 27, 2013 in Los Angeles ) was a British actor . It was popularized by the television series The Professionals in the late 1970s.

Life

youth

In his youth, Collins took an interest in sports in general , especially shooting . In this discipline he won several competitions in his age group at that time .

Musician

His father, Bill Collins, was well known to the Paul McCartney family and was at times the technical tour manager for the Beatles . It was during this time that Collins first encountered rock music, whereupon he decided to become a musician . Even at an early age, his father had shown ambitions to enable young Lewis to pursue a music career.

He then became a member of the Mersey beat band The Mojos and the pop group Eyes of Klaus Voormann where he spent four years playing the bass guitar. During this time he also performed with these groups in other countries, including in Hamburg in the Star Club , where the Beatles were discovered and their international breakthrough began. After this short musical career and activities as a record seller, roadie , encyclopedia, potato chips and soft drink seller, Collins began his training at the London Music and Drama Academy LAMDA in 1968 , which he successfully completed after three years.

He also worked as a singer and released a single in 1982. The single was called Take it out on Time and was produced by the Ultra Phone record company.

actor

In front of the professionals

He began acting in the 1970s and had minor supporting roles in a number of British television series, including a guest appearance in With Umbrella, Charm and Melon . Here he met his future series partner Martin Shaw . In this episode, Lewis Collins, curiously enough, says goodbye to his counterpart in his role with the words: "We should work together again - good team". The casting for Die Profis was not yet over at this point. Most of his roles at that time were still in the comedy genre.

The professionals

Collins was best known for the 1977 to 1981 produced British crime television series The Professionals , in which he was the agent William Andrew Philip Bodie at the side of Gordon Jackson ( Major George Cowley ) and Martin Shaw (Agent Ray Doyle , code name 45 ) , Code name 37 embodied.

The producers actually hired Anthony Andrews for the role, but he didn't get along with Martin Shaw and was fired after three days of shooting. For this reason, Collins was chosen because he got along very well with Shaw, but at the same time was a completely different character compared to Shaw. The different character traits of the two were accordingly expressed in the series in the dialogues. Each episode contains dialogues that Collins and Shaw have with each other, mostly in the car while driving. Contrary to the script, Shaw let his hair grow longer and appeared in casual clothes, while Collins had shorter hair and often in bespoke suits or a designer wardrobe. This should also visually emphasize the essential differences between the two.

The stunts in the series were almost entirely performed by Collins personally. He and Shaw were trained for stunts in a two-week intensive training course from a sergeant major from the SAS. During the filming of the second season in 1978, however, the film crew had to take a break because Collins broke an ankle while skydiving .

Shaw never really wanted to take on the role of Doyle and withdrew from the series after the end of the fourth season, much to the chagrin of Jackson and Collins, who would have liked to continue shooting the series as it was successfully marketed worldwide at that time.

In 1996 the car company Nissan spoofed Bodie and Doyle in a commercial for their Nissan Almera . Collins then tried with the former producers of the series to produce a new series with him, in which he wanted to take on the role of Cowley. The plans were put into effect, but without Collins. The sequel CI5: The New Professionals , however, was not a commercial success.

According to the professionals

Four seasons of this successful series were produced and thus set Collins on the rough macho type of the good side, which he then often played in less successful action films . Here was Manfred Lehmann three times his colleague on the set and Lee Van Cleef , Hans Leutenegger and Klaus Kinski twice each. But he also played with various other well-known actors, such as Ernest Borgnine , Richard Widmark or Michael Caine . Personally, he didn't get along very well with his colleague Kinski, so that in their second film, Kommando Leopard , they didn't shoot a scene together. Because of his work in the action film genre, he had considerable problems getting roles that opposed this genre. The successful BBC production Jack the Ripper - The Monster of London , in which he played the second leading role alongside Michael Caine, deserves special mention .

Apart from acting, Collins was briefly active as a singer. In 1982 he released the single Take it out on time . Smaller roles and cameo appearances in US and British television series and in some theater productions in the 1990s followed. Collins was next to Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton , who eventually got the role, as a candidate to succeed Roger Moore as James Bond . Collins himself did not consider himself a good cast as he did not have the required height and did not correspond to the type of the original coined by Sean Connery .

For the film 1066 , Collins was scheduled for the role of Godwin of Wessex . Because of his death, he could no longer play the role.

Private

Collins had been married to Michelle Larrett, a schoolteacher, since 1992 and had three sons. He lived in Los Angeles and had a second home in England.

He had a black belt in Ju-Jitsu and a pilot's license and had been interested in handguns of all kinds since his youth. He tried to get into the service of the Special Air Service , but was only turned down because his status was too famous for it Time, but the SAS attaches great importance to the anonymity of its members; however, he passed the recruitment tests.

In 2002 the police found various automatic firearms, pistols, rifles and ammunition in his British second home. She got the tip to search his property from Collins father Bill.

Collins died in November 2013 at the age of 67 of cancer from which he had suffered for five years.

Filmography (selection)

TV Shows

  • 1975–1977: The Cuckoo Waltz (sitcom)
  • 1977-1981: The Professionals (The Professionals)
  • 1977: With umbrella, charm and bowler hat ( The New Avengers , episode Obsession (The Vengeance Campaign))
  • 1985: Alfred Hitchcock presents (guest appearance)
  • 1986: Robin Hood - The Sheriff Of Nottingham (guest appearance)
  • 1991: Tarzan (guest appearance)
  • 1992: Cluedo (guest appearance)
  • 2002: The Bill (guest appearance)

Movies

German dubbing voices

For the German versions of his films, Collins has been dubbed by several speakers over the years . Most often Ivar Combrinck (in Die Profis und Blaues Blut ) and Thomas Danneberg (in Das Kommando ) gave Collins their votes.

literature

  • Werner Schmitz: The professionals. On the trail of the CI5 - the big book for the series . Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89602-704-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://news.sky.com/story/1174898/professionals-star-lewis-collins-dies-in-la
  2. ↑ http://theavengers.tv/forever/newave-18.htm
  3. ^ Obituary to Collins in the Telegraph, November 28, 2013
  4. ↑ Lewis Collins, Bodie from The Professionals, Has Died. In: The Daily Telegraph, November 28, 2013 (accessed November 28, 2013).
  5. ↑ http://www.synchronkartei.de/index.php?action=show&type=actor&id=961 (last accessed: October 3, 2010)
personal data
SURNAME Collins, Lewis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Bidston , Birkenhead , England
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 2013
Place of death Los Angeles , California, USA