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Marc Sinden
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Marc Sinden (born 9 May 1954) is an English theatre producer, artistic director and actor, whose career has spanned stage, screen, radio and television. He is also the son of noted actor Sir Donald Sinden and is widely reported in the international press to be the boyfriend of Heather Mills.
as been referred to in the theatre-industry trade press as both 'a leading London producer' and 'the best producer to work for' and his decision to change from being an actor to a producer coincided with being offered the position in 1993 of Artistic director at Bernard Miles famous Mermaid Theatre in Blackfriars, London where he created the Bernard Miles Studio.
In 1994 he left the Mermaid shortly before it was revealed on BBC Radio 4's leading investigative programme Face The Facts that he had actually been covertly helping the City of London Police Fraud Squad and the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) secure enough hard evidence for them to commence detailed legal proceedings against the directors of Gomba Holdings, the then owners of the theatre.
He then formed his own theatrical production company, presenting in 1996 the premiere of N.J.
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Encyclopedia
Marc Sinden (born 9 May 1954) is an English theatre producer, artistic director and actor, whose career has spanned stage, screen, radio and television. He is also the son of noted actor Sir Donald Sinden and is widely reported in the international press to be the boyfriend of Heather Mills.
Theatre (as producer)
He has been referred to in the theatre-industry trade press as both 'a leading London producer' and 'the best producer to work for' and his decision to change from being an actor to a producer coincided with being offered the position in 1993 of Artistic director at Bernard Miles famous Mermaid Theatre in Blackfriars, London where he created the Bernard Miles Studio.
In 1994 he left the Mermaid shortly before it was revealed on BBC Radio 4's leading investigative programme Face The Facts that he had actually been covertly helping the City of London Police Fraud Squad and the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) secure enough hard evidence for them to commence detailed legal proceedings against the directors of Gomba Holdings, the then owners of the theatre.
He then formed his own theatrical production company, presenting in 1996 the premiere of N.J. Crisp's That Good Night on a critically acclaimed national tour starring Sir Donald Sinden, Patrick Ryecart and Nigel Davenport and directing his first commercial tour, Edward Hall. During this period he also produced a highly successful series of audio tapes including The Ballad of Reading Gaol read by Sir Donald Sinden and Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales with readings by Dame Judi Dench, Jeremy Irons, Sinead Cusack, Joanna Lumley and Elaine Stritch.
In 1997 Marc was appointed Associate Producer for Bill Kenwright Ltd. As Associate Producer his West End credits are Lady Windermere's Fan (Haymarket); An Ideal Husband (Haymarket and Gielgud) and Pygmalion (Albery), which he cast and co-directed. Marc was responsible for the output of the Theatre Royal, Windsor, casting and producing such shows and subsequent tours as Catch Me If You Can; Canaries Sometimes Sing; My Fat Friend; Dangerous To Know; Huckleberry Finn; Aladdin; Pygmalion (tour); Lady Windermere's Fan (a co-production tour with the Royal Exchange, Manchester); Noël and Gertie; Passion (in concert at the Golders Green Hippodrome for CD recording); Fallen Angels; The Woman in Black; Move Over Mrs Markham and Time's Up.
As Associate Producer Marc liaised between Bill Kenwright Ltd. and the Peter Hall Company for which he cast and was Associate Producer on the tour of Just The Three Of Us by Simon Gray and helped organise the Australian co-production tour of An Ideal Husband.
In 1998, having left Bill Kenwright Ltd. to pursue his independent career as Marc Sinden Productions, he produced and co-directed Shakespeare's Villains with Steven Berkoff (Haymarket) which was nominated for a Society Of London Theatre Olivier Award as Best Entertainment.
He also produced the 25th anniversary revival of East, directed by the plays author Steven Berkoff (winning the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Stage Award for Best Ensemble work at the Edinburgh Festival, Theatre de Silvia Monfort, Paris and Vaudeville) and produced the best-selling video of the production. Other productions include The Glee Club (Duchess) following its transfer from the Bush Theatre; Seven Deadly Sins Four Deadly Sinners, which he directed and also co-wrote with Carry On... writer Norman Hudis which is still touring; Asking For Trouble; Sex Wars with Louise Jameson and Straker Sings Brel directed by Mel Smith.
In 2003 he established The One Night Booking Company, which presents celebrity-led anthologies and recitals nationally and internationally on 'One Night Stands' and includes the enormously successful An Evening with... series, showcasing acting legends and world-famous comedians, such as Terence Stamp, Julian Clary etc..
In 2005 he created UKTheatreAvailability.co.uk a website dedicated to Theatre Managers and Theatre Producers.
In 2007 he created the British Theatre Season, Monaco bringing star-led theatrical shows to the Théâtre Princesse Grace in Monte Carlo. On 17 October 2007, HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco awarded the British Theatre Season his High Patronage.
His latest production is to be Jeffrey Archer's Prison Diaries, the theatrical adaptation of all three of the best-selling diaries.
Television (as producer)
During the summer of 1998, Sinden had been teamed by the Ministry of Defence with Lt Col Mike Watkins MBE, head of Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) at the Directorate of Land Service Ammunition, Royal Logistics Corps and the British Army’s leading Ammunition Technical Officer (commonly referred to by non-military personnel as Bomb Disposal expert). Sinden was producing a documentary for LWT about the operation to clear unexploded mines and other volatile ordnance from First World War tunnels deep underground in Vimy Ridge, near Arras, northern France. The tunnels, as described in Sebastian Faulks' novel Birdsong, are on the site of a battlefield where 60,000 troops died and are known to still contain a very large number of unexploded devices. This highly dangerous mission was being led by Lt Col Watkins. In early August, he had successfully defused a single mine of over three tons of deteriorated ammonal explosive in one of the tunnels which threatened the Canadian National Vimy Memorial on the surface above. He had uncovered a 20-mile network of tunnels and had personally trained the small, crack team surveying the area and filming the assignment, which included Sinden. On 11 August Lt Col Watkins was killed when earth fell on top of him as he worked in the entrance to a new tunnel. He and a junior officer colleague were six feet underground when it collapsed. The junior officer managed to scramble out unhurt. Following the death of Lt Col Watkins the full extent of his covert EOD work could be made public. Sinden was quoted in various national daily newspapers: "His work was often secretive and undercover and it would have put him in great danger to publicise his actions while he was alive. Now he is dead it doesn't matter. I admired him more than anyone I have ever known. This man was the one true hero I have ever met. He single-handedly saved more lives than you can possibly imagine." The ensuing Army Board of Inquiry found no one to blame, but made some recommendations concerning future safety on the site.
In 1999 he was appointed Executive Producer on the TV series Business Profiles for the satellite channel EuroNews.
Film / DVD (as producer)
Two film projects, currently in development, are to be shot in Provence in the South of France and at Belfast's Titanic Studios in 2009 and also a major DVD documentary, which is currently in pre-production in London.
Theatre (as actor)
Sinden's acting work in the Theatre is extensive with over 40 tours or West End productions to his credit, including 'Charles Surface' in The School for Scandal (Duke of York's) with his father Sir Donald Sinden. This was chosen as the British Council's 50th anniversary tour, playing in 21 cities in 10 countries.
He also starred in Two Into One (Shaftesbury) and Her Royal Highness (Palace), both written and directed by Ray Cooney; ‘Squire Sullen’ in The Beaux' Stratagem (Lyttelton, Royal National Theatre) opposite Brenda Blethyn; Over My Dead Body (Savoy) with June Whitfield; Underground with Raymond Burr (Prince of Wales and Royal Alexandra, Toronto); Ross with Simon Ward (Old Vic and Royal Alexandra, Toronto); Ray Davies' first musical Chorus Girls (Stratford East) and Alan Bennett's Enjoy at the Vaudeville with Joan Plowright.
A season at the Chichester Festival Theatre included ‘Stephen Undershaft’ in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara with Sir Donald Sinden, directed by Christopher Morahan. At the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, ‘Broadbent’ in Shaw's rarely seen John Bull's Other Island with Cyril Cusack, directed by Joe Dowling and a very long national tour of Noël Coward's Private Lives with Gemma Craven.
Television (as actor)
He recently filmed Judge John Deed; the series Island set on Jersey and prior to that was ‘Martin Pryce’ in the multi award winning The Politician's Wife with Trevor Eve and Juliet Stevenson. He has also played leading roles in the BBC drama series Century Falls and Country Boy; Against All Odds filmed in Lipik, Croatia during the height of the Bosnian War, with Roy Marsden; a 2-hour feature length special of Magnum PI with Tom Selleck; Never the Twain; Bergerac; Home Front; Rumpole of the Bailey with Leo McKern; Emmerdale; If You Go Down in the Woods Today written, directed by and with Eric Sykes; a regular character in the original series of Crossroads; Dick Turpin with Richard O'Sullivan; All at No 20 with Maureen Lipman and Wolf To The Slaughter, the first of the Ruth Rendell adaptations.
Film / DVD (as actor)
He made a guest appearance as 'Surveyor White' in the film version of Spike Milligan's novel Puckoon with Richard Attenborough, Elliott Gould, and Sean Hughes along with most of the rest of the cast from his previous feature film, the comedy The Brylcreem Boys (the first movie to be shot on the Isle of Man since the 1930s) in which he played 'Group Captain White' opposite Gabriel Byrne, Billy Campbell and Jean Butler, which won the London International Film Festival and he is slated to star as the Devil in the British indie movie Dealing for the Devil, filming in 2009.
His other film work has taken him around the world and to a number of war zones. He was in Baghdad at the height of the Iran–Iraq War in al-Mas' Ala Al-Kubra with Oliver Reed, which was nominated for the Golden Prize at the 1983 Moscow International Film Festival. During one cavalry charge sequence, Sinden and British stuntman Ken Buckle took part in probably the last ever filming of the highly dangerous (and now banned) 'Running W' stunt, invented by the legendary Yakima Canutt. While on location in the desert near Kut Sinden and Reed were introduced to the founder and Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the PFLP), George Habash and the sister of the Dawsons Field hijacker Leila Khaled, who were staying nearby on business. Two weeks later, during a break in the filming schedule in Baghdad, Sinden was arrested by the Jihaz al-Mukhabarat al-Amma (Iraqi Intelligence Service) and accused of taking photographs of proscribed areas and buildings and spying for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He spent 36 hours at the IIS interrogation centre, Al Haakimiya, on Baghdad's 52nd Street and he was allegedly only released on the direct instruction of the President, Saddam Hussein, who had funded the movie and with whom he had had supper only two nights before. In 1990 the BBC and ITN bought some of the covert photographs that Sinden actually had taken in Baghdad and used them frequently in broadcasts during the early stages of the first Gulf War.
Sinden was in Sierra Leone during the coup d’état in a French film Mangeuses d'Hommes; Luxembourg in Decadence with Steven Berkoff and Joan Collins; Vienna for an Italian movie Piccolo Grande Amore with Susannah York and David Warner; Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady with Faye Dunaway, Alan Bates and Sir John Gielgud; Taylor Hackford's White Nights with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Helen Mirren and Isabella Rossellini (which was the Royal Film Performance of 1986); 'Captain Perez' in Peter Rogers' Carry On Columbus directed by Gerald Thomas and was 'Mr. Honeythunder' in Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood with Robert Powell.
Personal life
Marc Sinden is divorced from his film producer wife Jo and has two children from that marriage: Henry Sinden (born February 6 1980) who sings as Hal Sinden with his band Interlock and Bridie Sinden (born September 1 1990).
He consistently refuses to divulge in press interviews who he is 'dating', or even reveal who he has 'dated' and will "neither confirm nor deny" any stories, saying "I don't discuss it". But in spite of this, the UK and international press have still linked him romantically with several high-profile women, including Sir Mick Jagger's ex-wife and model Jerry Hall, when it was inferred in Nigel Dempsters' Daily Mail column that they were conducting an affair in Stockholm, Sweden where they were both working at the time and according to several press reports in November 2008, Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife, campaigner and model Heather Mills. They have been seen together in Monaco and photographed together for the first time at a private event at London's Tate Modern.
He is an atheist and secularist, a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association and National Secular Society, a Fellow of the Zoological Society, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Innholders, is believed to be a Freemason, has been awarded the Freedom of the City of London by the Lord Mayor Sir Kenneth Cork and was made an Honorary Member of Stunts Incorporated. He represents the UK on the Artistic Advisory Board of the Colorado Festival of World Theatre, is a Founder Member of The Piccadilly Dance Orchestra's Honorary Advisory Development Board and broadcasts a regular live monthly slot ‘UK Theatre News’ on ‘The Magazine’ for BBC Radio Guernsey.
In Debrett's he lists his recreations as "exploring Provence, clay pigeon shooting and polo" and is an expert on the history of film stunt-work. He is also a landscape photographer, selling many of his prints.
He "acknowledges that his politics are liberal, with a large and small L, is a strong supporter of the idea of a united, federal Europe and admits to being a total Francophile, but buys his clothes at the quintessentially English Hackett in Jermyn Street, shows a marked preference for brunette Sloane Ranger's and says his hobby is 'all things Noël Coward' ".
He is a member of the Noël Coward Society, London Rowing Club and Guards Polo Club. He is also a member of the Clay Pigeon Shooting Association and is regarded as a fine shot.
Trivia
Marc Sinden was part of the "La-La" chorus on Hey Jude, recording and filming the song with The Beatles at Twickenham Film Studios on September 4 1968. (view it on YouTube) Ironically, exactly 40 years later, Sinden was to be named as the boyfriend of Paul McCartneys ex-wife Heather Mills.
In 1973 he was expelled from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, two years into a three year acting course.
From 1973-77 he was an active member of the Hunt Saboteurs Association and created their London branch.
He worked as a jeweller at the famous Hampstead shop of H. Knowles Brown Ltd. from 1973 until his return to acting in 1978.
In 1981 Ray Davies (of The Kinks) wrote the song Everybody's Slagging Off England specifically for Sinden to perform in his musical Chorus Girls.
Marc had a brother, the actor Jeremy Sinden, who died in 1996.
Their parents moved into a house in Hampstead Garden Suburb in April 1954, one month before Marc was born.
It is reported that he still lives in Hampstead Garden Suburb.
External links
- homepage for Sinden Productions
- Marc Sinden (wearing grey jacket & tie and horn-rim spectacles) identified as standing next to Ringo Starr, during recording of Hey Jude
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