David McCallum

FORMER Man From Uncle star David McCallum returns for a new run of NCIS on Channel 5 tonight.

The hit US drama about Naval investigators begins with the opener of season seven and Tony (Michael Weatherly) travelling to North Africa on the trail of missing agent Ziva.

Aside from boosting the career of veteran thesp Mark Harmon as boss Gibbs, NCIS has also been a nice little earner for Blighty’s David McCallum, aka Dr Donald “Ducky” Mallard.

“I joined Equity in 1946,” he says. “I’ve been a professional actor for quite a long time.”

One of Glasgow’s finest exports made his big-screen debut in Dirk Bogarde’s 1957 movie Ill Met by Moonlight. By 1963 he was snapped up for now-classic war film The Great Escape, a Bank Holiday TV staple that had a lasting effect on many actors he subsequently worked with.

“’I’m working with a legend’, one actor once said to me. I said: ‘Don’t I have to be dead to be that?’” laughs David.

“During The Great Escape I got an agent in Hollywood. He asked me to come over and play Judas Iscariot in The Greatest Story Ever Told. I came over and did that and it segued into The Sixth Finger [an Outer Limits episode] and various other shows which obviously became The Man From Uncle, and therein lies a tale.”

David McCallum

Many actors would happily retire in their 60s, but David McCallum isn’t one of them. He does think it’s surreal to be 78 and still in demand in Hollywood.

“Two-and-a-half years from now I’ll be 80 years old,” he explains. “The numbers don’t make sense any more,” he smiles. “Apart from feeling a little stiffer than you used to be you don’t feel any different.”

Read More http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/whats-on-coventry-warwickshire/cinema-film/2011/01/04/david-mccallum-s-still-in-demand-at-nearly-80-92746-27932355/#ixzz1BSRcOJck

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