Anthony Newley

From the East End of London, Anthony Newley started his career as a child actor, who transformed himself into a matinee idol, pop star and song and dance man. He left school at 14 to be an office boy at an insurance company before talking his way into a job at the Italia Conti Stage School in London, earning £1.50 a week. His interest in the theatre grew, along with the idea of being a performer, landing his first proper film role in Peter Ustinov's Vice Versa in 1948 and followed it the same year by playing the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, directed by David Lean. Newley's mainstream breakthrough, however, came playing a rock singer called up for national service in the Army in the 1959 movie Idles On Parade, which launched him as a real life pop star, getting a UK smash with the film's hit song, I've Waited So Long. Other hits swiftly followed, notably the chart-toppers Why and Do You Mind, written by Lionel Bart. He subsequently reinvented himself again as a theatrical star and songwriter and, in collaboration with Leslie Bricusse, created Stop The World I Want To Get Off and came up with a string of other hit songs like What Kind Of Fool Am I, On A Wonderful Day Like Today and Gonna Build A Mountain, as well as comic songs Strawberry Fair and Pop Goes The Weasel. Newley also wrote Goldfinger, a hit for Shirley Bassey from the James Bond movie of the same name, while other film roles included Dr Dolittle and Sweet November. Married four times, most prominently to Joan Collins between 1963 and 1970, Anthony Newley died of renal cancer in 1999 at the age of 67.

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