Going the extra miles

Published on Saturday 29 November 2003 00:00

When Maxwell Caulfield bumped into his former Colby co-star Joan Collins outside a New York boutique recently, he found she hadn’t changed much over the years.

Barking into her mobile phone at a man from a car company complaining that her car hadn’t turned up, she paused from her unforgiving barrage of words to say a sweet hello to Caulfield and his wife, the actress Juliet Mills.

"There she was in her big Jackie O sunglasses screaming into her cellphone," recalls Caulfield with a fond smile. "In between chewing this guy out she would stop to have a chat with us. We were exchanging pleasantries when I asked her what kind of car she was looking for. She asked the guy on the phone and he said it was a town car. I said ‘A blue Lincoln town car?’ and Joan repeated this into the phone. ‘Yes, a blue one,’ she said to me.

"I pointed to a blue car parked by the side of the road with its engine running and said ‘What, this one?’

"She slammed the phone shut and without so much as a goodbye she got in and shut the door. But she did wind the window down and wave as she drove off," he adds with a laugh.

Caulfield, 44, has been haunted by his role in the glossy American soap The Colbys for the past 15 years. Up until recently when he landed the part of Casualty’s newest handsome doctor, taxi drivers would still call him by the name of his most famous character Miles Colby.

"I suppose I did join Casualty because I wanted to be known for something more than a show I did so long ago," he admits. "As nice as it is to have cab drivers go ‘Oi, Miles!’ all the time I did want to be recognised for something else.

"It’s weird, the show only ran for two years but I guess it’s partly because I didn’t follow it up with anything of a similar scale. It’s all about timing and a lot of the good things I’ve done haven’t surfaced."

And so when the 17th series of Casualty crashed into action back in September with a double train smash, Caulfield’s familiar face joined the A&E ward’s ranks as consultant paediatrician Jim Brodie. Like his character Caulfield was immediately thrown in at the deep end.

"Frankly I’m not sure that my character was fully conceived when I started," he says. "What I did in the first few episodes was help them decide what to do with Jim. I had to flesh him out and it was up to me to do some thinking about him."

To take on the role, Caulfield had to up sticks from his home in Los Angeles with Mills and return to his roots in Britain. Born in Glasgow, he spent his early infancy in Derbyshire before settling in London with his mother after his parents divorced. As such he still has plenty of relatives in the UK.

"The big benefit of being back is being able to interface with my family who, to some degree, I turned my back on when I left for America.

"At the end of the day your blood is the most important thing but at that time I just wanted to strike out and become my own man."

After taking the shortcut to getting his Equity card when he was 18 by performing as a go-go dancer in a Soho bar, Caulfield soon got enough cash to move to New York. Three years later at the age of 21 he met Mills when they appeared together in a stage version of The Elephant Man.

Mills, the daughter of acting legend Sir John Mills, was 39 at the time but the age difference didn’t prevent them from getting together and Caulfield says it hasn’t caused any problems in the 23 years since.

"We’re very, very committed to each other," he explains. "We were instantly drawn to each other on many levels. In many ways we’re opposites but sim-ultaneously we feel we’re cut from the same cloth.

"There’s a dynamic in the relationship that’s always worked.

"She’s also very giving, old-fashioned and very romantic, and I recognised early on that I was unlikely to meet somebody of her calibre again, or it would be many years before I did, so I found myself proposing to her almost immediately. It was strange but she went for it."

When it comes to his career, things should have been very different for Caulfield but the fates conspired to set his career back a notch or two. At the age of 23 he was plucked from thousands of hopeful applicants to star in the highly anticipated sequel to Grease. The film was supposed to propel him and his co-star Michelle Pfeiffer to A-list status.

But the film bombed - badly. Dire reviews and competition from ET meant it never even came close to the success of its predecessor and Caulfield’s career was left in tatters.

While Pfeiffer recovered, he says it took him ten years to get over the failure of Grease 2. Now, however, he looks back on the film with some pride. "I’m very happy to have been a part of it," he says. "It was a successful film in the long term and I get parents coming up to me and asking me to tell their kids to stop watching it. There’s a certain loyalty to that film and I’m very proud of that."

Since then he’s had a steady career in both television and movies, The Colbys being his best known success. He says he’s proud of his roles in recent films Empire Records and The Real Blonde but he was drawn to working in the UK because he’d become tired of what was on offer in Los Angeles.

"I did hesitate a little bit coming over here but I was finding that so much of the work that actors go for in Hollywood these days is such drek," he frowns. "It’s nice to be able to, hopefully, make a mark with a highly established and highly successful show."

His wife, and his precious Jaguar, remain back in Los Angeles as Mills is at present committed to a daytime drama called Passions. He obviously misses her but he says they are both being philosophical about the separation.

"My wife encouraged me to take this opportunity knowing that it represented a chance to come here back to Britain and foster a new audience," he says.

"We never relish being separated but we recognise it’s part and parcel of the business. There’s always a price to pay and in this case it’s the distance."

• Maxwell Caulfield’s character Jim celebrates his 40th birthday in Casualty on BBC1, tonight, 8.20pm