Post by llyan on Jul 19, 2018 14:31:30 GMT
Scots NCIS actor David McCallum goes to great lengths to understand how bodies are dissected
McCallum, who starred in the Great Escape and is now in hit TV series NCIS is obsessive about researching his roles.
ByJohn Dingwall
04:30, 19 JUL 2018
Scots actor David McCallum has starred on TV for over six decades (Image: Daily Record)
Actor David McCallum is obsessive about researching his roles, so chopping up bodies held no fears.
The 84-year-old plays Donald “Ducky” Mallard, the official medical examiner in hit US series NCIS.
But it’s his unusual hobby regarding dead bodies that might surprise fans of the man who recently celebrates 55 years since he appeared as Ashley-Pitt “Dispersal” in classic war movie The Great Escape.
Glasgow-born McCallum said: “It’s an interest I developed in order to bring authenticity to Ducky’s character on screen.
“I’m obsessive about that kind of thing. I like to get it right, so I know a great deal, shall we say, about carrying out an autopsy.
“But it’s up to the point they call ‘cutting and dicing’. Once everything is over, everything you’ve found usually has to go to a lab, so you’re then dealing with microscopic samples of many diseases.
“Though I’ve studied that and looked at pictures of slides of the different diseases just out of curiosity, I have no expertise in taking a blood sample or a sample of tissue and telling you what is wrong with it.”
David McCallum's character is very popular in hit US series NCIS (Image: Daily Record)
Though he’s finding a new audience thanks to NCIS, which has run for 15 series to date, McCallum has rarely been off our screens since his theatre and TV career began in the 50s.
After National Service in the Army, during which he was promoted to lieutenant, he joined repertory theatre companies in England.
Early film roles saw him starring alongside Sean Connery in the 1957 film Hell Drivers.
It wasn’t until July 4, 1963, when The Great Escape first appeared on cinema screens in the US, that he got his first movie break. But he had no idea people would still be enjoying the prisoner of war film decades later.
Acting alongside James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, and Donald Pleasance made David a household name.
McCallum starring in The Great Escape (Image: Daily Record)
Fellow Scots in the film included Gordon Jackson as MacDonald , James Donald as Ramsay and Angus Lennie as Ives.
“You just never know if a film is going to work,” David said. “There were so many great actors from Scotland and lots of well known American actors.
“When you go and do your first big American film and it’s The Great Escape surrounded by an American crew and all these brilliant German, French, American and British actors, it is a wonderful feeling of being in a movie, but you get on with the job.
“During the making of The Great Escape, Donald Pleasance, who was also a very good friend, and Jim Garner and I would go down to the beautiful lake and enjoy these wonderful German feasts with wine or beer. You just did your job and enjoyed the beautiful German scenery.
“It was beautiful weather and was in Berchtesgaden, near where Hitler’s Berghof headquarters had been.
“It’s only afterwards, once all the years have passed, that you realise just how loved the movie is.”
McCallum later starred as Russian spy Illya Kuryakin in the TV series Man From U.N.C.L.E. The spoof secret agent show ran from 1964 to 1968, lasting 105 episodes and had eight spin-off movies.
David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin in the TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E with Robert Vaughn (Image: Daily Record)
He also enjoyed other long running TV series including Kidnapped, The Invisible Man, Colditz and Sapphire & Steel – opposite Joanna Lumley.
At the height of his fame, the actor, whose parents were musicians, even came to enjoy a unlikely career as a pop star – picking up more fan mail than Elvis at Capitol Records from fans who were in awe of the Man From U.N.C.L.E heart-throb with the blond Beatles-style moptop, in sharp relief to his co-star Robert Vaughn’s clean cut conservative image.
His father had moved the family to post-war England, as the lead with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, while his mother was a cellist.
But his own music career didn’t turn out quite as he had hoped, despite chart success.
“I did four or five albums for Capitol in Los Angeles,” David said. “It was entirely money making on behalf of the studio. Man From U.N.C.L.E was a hit. I was popular so they said, ‘You have to sing on an album because it will sell lots of records and we’ll make money’.
“I said, ‘I don’t really sing’. I was a musician.”
Despite his modesty, he agreed to sit down with Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra’s producers HP Barnum and David Axelrod.
McCallum said: “I sold many, many records but at the same time, it wasn’t exactly what I meant to do but HP and David Axelrod and these people were working with The Supremes, Lou Rawls, Cannonball Adderly and Peggy Lee.
“I just did what they wanted. I wrote the orchestrations, conducted the band, made the recordings and had a wonderful time.”
David pictured with first wife Jill Ireland in 1957 (Image: Daily Record)
By then he had met his second wife, Katherine Carpenter, in 1967. His first, Jill Ireland had been having an affair with his co-star Charles Bronson during the making of The Great Escape.
He and Katherine have been married 51 years. They live in New York and it’s from there, he commutes to Los Angeles to film four episodes of NCIS back-to-back to enable him to enjoy time with his children and grandchildren.
And David insists he held no grudges towards his first wife and Bronson.
“It was their secret,” he said. “But things worked out well. I met Katherine and we’ve been together ever since.”
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/tv-radio/veteran-scots-actor-david-mccallum-12943654
McCallum, who starred in the Great Escape and is now in hit TV series NCIS is obsessive about researching his roles.
ByJohn Dingwall
04:30, 19 JUL 2018
Scots actor David McCallum has starred on TV for over six decades (Image: Daily Record)
Actor David McCallum is obsessive about researching his roles, so chopping up bodies held no fears.
The 84-year-old plays Donald “Ducky” Mallard, the official medical examiner in hit US series NCIS.
But it’s his unusual hobby regarding dead bodies that might surprise fans of the man who recently celebrates 55 years since he appeared as Ashley-Pitt “Dispersal” in classic war movie The Great Escape.
Glasgow-born McCallum said: “It’s an interest I developed in order to bring authenticity to Ducky’s character on screen.
“I’m obsessive about that kind of thing. I like to get it right, so I know a great deal, shall we say, about carrying out an autopsy.
“But it’s up to the point they call ‘cutting and dicing’. Once everything is over, everything you’ve found usually has to go to a lab, so you’re then dealing with microscopic samples of many diseases.
“Though I’ve studied that and looked at pictures of slides of the different diseases just out of curiosity, I have no expertise in taking a blood sample or a sample of tissue and telling you what is wrong with it.”
David McCallum's character is very popular in hit US series NCIS (Image: Daily Record)
Though he’s finding a new audience thanks to NCIS, which has run for 15 series to date, McCallum has rarely been off our screens since his theatre and TV career began in the 50s.
After National Service in the Army, during which he was promoted to lieutenant, he joined repertory theatre companies in England.
Early film roles saw him starring alongside Sean Connery in the 1957 film Hell Drivers.
It wasn’t until July 4, 1963, when The Great Escape first appeared on cinema screens in the US, that he got his first movie break. But he had no idea people would still be enjoying the prisoner of war film decades later.
Acting alongside James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, and Donald Pleasance made David a household name.
McCallum starring in The Great Escape (Image: Daily Record)
Fellow Scots in the film included Gordon Jackson as MacDonald , James Donald as Ramsay and Angus Lennie as Ives.
“You just never know if a film is going to work,” David said. “There were so many great actors from Scotland and lots of well known American actors.
“When you go and do your first big American film and it’s The Great Escape surrounded by an American crew and all these brilliant German, French, American and British actors, it is a wonderful feeling of being in a movie, but you get on with the job.
“During the making of The Great Escape, Donald Pleasance, who was also a very good friend, and Jim Garner and I would go down to the beautiful lake and enjoy these wonderful German feasts with wine or beer. You just did your job and enjoyed the beautiful German scenery.
“It was beautiful weather and was in Berchtesgaden, near where Hitler’s Berghof headquarters had been.
“It’s only afterwards, once all the years have passed, that you realise just how loved the movie is.”
McCallum later starred as Russian spy Illya Kuryakin in the TV series Man From U.N.C.L.E. The spoof secret agent show ran from 1964 to 1968, lasting 105 episodes and had eight spin-off movies.
David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin in the TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E with Robert Vaughn (Image: Daily Record)
He also enjoyed other long running TV series including Kidnapped, The Invisible Man, Colditz and Sapphire & Steel – opposite Joanna Lumley.
At the height of his fame, the actor, whose parents were musicians, even came to enjoy a unlikely career as a pop star – picking up more fan mail than Elvis at Capitol Records from fans who were in awe of the Man From U.N.C.L.E heart-throb with the blond Beatles-style moptop, in sharp relief to his co-star Robert Vaughn’s clean cut conservative image.
His father had moved the family to post-war England, as the lead with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, while his mother was a cellist.
But his own music career didn’t turn out quite as he had hoped, despite chart success.
“I did four or five albums for Capitol in Los Angeles,” David said. “It was entirely money making on behalf of the studio. Man From U.N.C.L.E was a hit. I was popular so they said, ‘You have to sing on an album because it will sell lots of records and we’ll make money’.
“I said, ‘I don’t really sing’. I was a musician.”
Despite his modesty, he agreed to sit down with Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra’s producers HP Barnum and David Axelrod.
McCallum said: “I sold many, many records but at the same time, it wasn’t exactly what I meant to do but HP and David Axelrod and these people were working with The Supremes, Lou Rawls, Cannonball Adderly and Peggy Lee.
“I just did what they wanted. I wrote the orchestrations, conducted the band, made the recordings and had a wonderful time.”
David pictured with first wife Jill Ireland in 1957 (Image: Daily Record)
By then he had met his second wife, Katherine Carpenter, in 1967. His first, Jill Ireland had been having an affair with his co-star Charles Bronson during the making of The Great Escape.
He and Katherine have been married 51 years. They live in New York and it’s from there, he commutes to Los Angeles to film four episodes of NCIS back-to-back to enable him to enjoy time with his children and grandchildren.
And David insists he held no grudges towards his first wife and Bronson.
“It was their secret,” he said. “But things worked out well. I met Katherine and we’ve been together ever since.”
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/tv-radio/veteran-scots-actor-david-mccallum-12943654