IT has more twists than a 1960s dance festival and – if done properly – a jaw-dropping surprise. Sleuth, which opens at Theatre Royal in Newcastle tonight, is a cat and mouse thriller which continually wrong-foots audiences – if they haven’t seen it before, of course.
Simon MacCorkindale, who stars in Anthony Schaffer’s award-winning play alongside former Dynasty actor Michael Praed, reckons there are still plenty of Sleuth novices around.
The big interview Simon MacCorkindale has rubbed shoulders with tinseltown’s elite but is just as happy on stage in Glasgow
WHEN Simon MacCorkindale watches hit US shows like Lost, Ugly Betty or Pushing Daisies he can say: “Been there, done that.”
The veteran actor might be best known as Casualty heart-throb Harry Harper but his long and successful career saw him cross the Atlantic and crack America 30 years ago.
This is an ever growing list of everything Simon MacCorkindale has appeared, produced, directed or provided voiceover for. This is the most extensive filmography of Simon online.
Casualty star Simon MacCorkindale tells Alison Jones why he has packed away his stethoscope and returned to the stage.
It is always a challenge following in the footsteps of an actor who has become irrevocably associated with a part.
Particularly if that actor casts as long a shadow as the late Sir Laurence Olivier.
In the recent film remake of the thriller Sleuth, director Kenneth Branagh rather cleverly got round the problem by having Michael Caine swop roles.
In the 1972 Joseph L Mankiewicz version, Caine played Milo Tindle, the upstart young lover of Olivier’s wife who is unwillingly drawn into an elaborate battle of wits.
In 2007 it was Caine’s turn to play the vengeful, cuckolded husband (Andrew Wyke), with Jude Law repeating another Caine role after already starring in Alfie.
For the stage production currently doing the regional rounds, comparisons to Larry are avoided by the fact that Andrew, played by Simon MacCorkindale, has effectively been aged down and Milo, played by Michael Praed, aged up.
STAGE CLASSIC IS BRINGING OUT THE MANIMAL IN SIMON
He was the English aristocrat of choice a decade before Colin Firth emerged from a lake to become a housewife heartthrob and Hollywood star.
Simon MacCorkindale played the upper-crust cad in some of the most popular American television series of the 1980s – from The Dukes of Hazzard and Hart To Hart to Dynasty and Falcon Crest.
Now he’s taking to the Nottingham stage as a devious author in the revival of psychological thriller Sleuth, alongside his Dynasty co-star and former TV Robin Hood Michael Praed.
The doctor is given his marching orders by hospital bosses…
There are tears all round this week when A&E stalwart Harry Harper bids farewell to his colleagues. After deciding to leak Ruth’s diary to the press, the senior consultant is forced to leave the ward.
‘Harry believes that Ruth’s diary highlights the pressure doctors are under,’ says Simon MacCorkindale, who’s played the doc for six years. ‘But he put his career on the line and he knows he has to go.’ After an emotional goodbye, he visits his old pal Charlie at a private clinic and asks him to return to Holby.
001 – From Clare: How have you family (Susan included) influenced your career? Well I think mostly through their absolute continued unquestioning support for whatever I embark upon. Susan particularly is a very good springboard for various choices that I have made so I do share all the choices that I make. I think that my mum and dad particularly, it was about the honesty of what one was trying to do, and the respect for the audience. Very early on my father taught me about respect for the audience. I’m not sure I was ever really gonna go down in a daft way with it but certainly that I think has been a very important part in how I deal with the public. I’m always giving the time for other people even within a busy schedule.
MacCorkindale (known for his recent role in Casualty and former star of Manimal) delivers a commanding performance as Andrew Wyke who is complex and teasing.
ACTOR Simon MacCorkindale loves nothing more than a nail-bitingly good, edge-of-the-seat thriller, so he’s absolutely buzzing with enthusiasm ahead of his latest play, Sleuth, which opens in Windsor later this month.
First written by Anthony Shaffer, the Tony Award-winning play revolves around Simon’s character, Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer, who is fascinated by psychological games and game-playing.
He lures his wife’s lover, Milo Tindle (played by Michael Praed), to his countryside manor house, where he subjects him to a tangled web of intrigue and manipulation. But ultimately nothing turns out quite as it seems.
Simon MacCorkindale is perhaps best recognized over the last few years as Harry Harper, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, in the BBC’s most popular and enduring drama series Casualty. Following his starring role in the successful 2007 tour of Agatha Christie’s Unexpected Guest, he now returns to the stage in Sleuth.
1977 – Simon in his ITV drama Romance. ‘In a way it was my breakthrough performance,’he recalls. ‘lt was shown to the director of Death on the Nile [1978] and I got the role of Simon Doyle in it.’
1984 – With the late, Oscar-winning actress JayneWyman in hit US soap opera Falcon Crest. ‘She was a fantastic woman. We stayed in touch for many years.’
The years I ran Simon’s international club were 1982 – 1995. In the summer of 1982 my friend Violet and I had just seen “The Sword and the Sorcerer”. We noticed the young actor who played Micah and decided he deserved to have a fan club. I contacted his manager and presented our plan for a quality fan club for Simon. We outlined the club format using the accepted format by the National Association of Fan Clubs (NAFC). It was a nice coincidence that Simon was going to direct a play in Dallas at a dinner theater that Sept. I received a letter from his manager with official permission to begin the club, and soon after that received my first letter from Simon personally.
This is the interview we managed to arrange for the site’s first birthday in April 2007 , though the interview was recorded late February. All answers are pretty much word for word what he replied. The interview was carried out at the Grand Theater in Wolverhampton. This is quite a long interview and the questions are out of order from when they were originally asked to make more sense.
Question 000 – From shelliwood: How did you get the scar under your right eye?
How did I get the scar under my right eye? That happened when I was about 13 and I was playing cricket and I got hit by a cricket ball.
I hit a ball and it caught the edge of the bat and flew back up into my face, and hit me right under the eye, split it wide open. But it’s been there and I’ve used it, on a couple of jobs I did I actually highlighted it slightly and made it a feature of the character.
Did I use it in Manimal? Did I or not, do you know I can’t remember. I mean it was more noticeable, it become progressively less noticeable, I don’t even notice it anymore actually. I haven’t ever had anything done about it but as one’s face changes so does it. It also stated a little higher it was nearer my eye so it gets a bit lower, force of gravity (chuckle) or something like that.
Question 003 – From Kerri: Do you find it weird that there are fan sites about you?
I suppose I don’t find it weird because I did when it first happened and therefore having accepted it, I know it’s there.
When Lonna Poland approached my manager in California, which was probably 1982, she would know better than I, but I’m sure it was 1982, it seem to me to a very strange thing, seemed to be rather an American thing because I hadn’t really experienced it much in the UK. We discussed it, my manger said, ‘No this is really fairly normal and it’s not a bad things at all it’s good for PR, it a good way of communicating with fans and we can control a lot of thing so forth to a degree.’ So anyway I said to Lonna that we’d do it and we did. So having made that judgment, from then on I knew about fan sites and therefore I knew what it could be like and Lonna was exceptionally good at running it.
I joke around saying my Simon MacCorkindale obsession started with that scar, which is partly true. I think the place to start would be when/how I first discovered Simon.
I first watched Simon in Casually episode Deja Vu on UKTV Gold in 2005, I can still remember the exact scene (This one). Then a few days later I saw part of the first Manimal episode, again I still remember the scene clearly (This one), how could I forget a good looking, blond haired, blue eyed guy turning into a panther! It took me a few minutes to figure out it was the same guy from Casualty, pleasantly surprised, but was interested in finding out more, not only about Manimal but the actor.
IT was typical of a doctor to keep you waiting. When have they ever kept their appointment times?
But as my consultation was with one of Holby City’s finest medics, the stoical Harry Harper, I was prepared to wait.
In the four years that actor Simon MacCorkindale has worn the lead stethoscope and a furrowed brow in the BBC’s flagship Saturday night soap he has set more than a few hearts fluttering on and off set.
But can the 54-year-old actor cut the mustard while temporarily back in civvie street on stage at Milton Keynes Theatre this week in Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest?
Simon MacCorkindale is perhaps best recognised as Harry Harper, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, in the BBC’s most popular and enduring drama series Casualty.
A childhood love for drama led to a place at Studio ’68 of Theatre Arts in London aged 19. On completing the course, he toured in regional rep before his West End debut in the highly acclaimed Pygmalion. He worked extensively on British TV, and in 1976 appeared in the renowned I, Claudius and in Zeffirelli’s opulent Jesus of Nazareth.
This site is dedicated to actor, director and producer Simon MacCorkindale
Simon MacCorkindale is well known for his roles as Jonathan Chase in Manimal, Greg Reardon in Falcon Crest, Peter Sinclair in Counterstrike and Harry Harper from BBC’s BAFTA Award winning Casualty.
His work in film includes Simon Doyle in Death On The Nile, Arthur Davies in The Riddle Of The Sands, Philip FitzRoyce in Jaws 3D
Simon was seen on stage as Michael Starkwedder in The Unexpected Guest, Andrew Wyke in Sleuth and Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music in his musical debut
The aim of this site has always been to build a large and extensive online resource of Simon MacCorkindale’s work for his fans
Some of the things this site has:
Media Gallery: Thousands of screen caps covering Simon’s career early days in the 70’s until his last performance, hundreds of video clips covering most of Simon’s career and hundreds of scans from various sources e.g. magazines, photo’s, cast cards, newspapers, theater programes.
Articles: Interviews about or with Simon spanning over 40 years
Forum/Community: Which brings together Simon fans from across the globe and spanning a huge age range, some members were part of Simon’s fan club in the 1980′s. Members of the forum have access to a few more images and audio files than non members
Shop: A list of available DVD’s, videos and more to buy from various sources.
If you still cannot find what you are looking for, drop us a message and we will try to help
The Simon MacCorkindale Fan Page and Community* was started April 17th 2006 and became Semi-Official in September 2008
This site is updated as time allows, I have a lot more still to add so keep checking back
* Simon and Susan keeps calling this site his ‘Fan Club’ though I prefer the term ‘Fan Site’ to differentiate from the original Fan Club.
Want to know a little bit more about how the site started and what sources we use? See our site history, bibliography and thanks
For an actor who’s survived more deaths than most, the original Mr Manimal remains optimistic
There’s a Casualty/Holby City special this Saturday. What is it?
It’s an organ donation episode. It’s the end of the BBC’s organ donor week, and we’ve combined with Holby to do a story that is organ-donor driven but has some reality TV elements to it.
What, as in people will vote out the organ they don’t like?
No. We’ve already created the drama part but the programme’s going to be bookended by Professor Robert Winston who makes an appeal in order to promote the notion of donation, which is also being pronounced as Do-Nation – as in the nation should respond by getting on to the organ donation register.
As part of the BBC’s DoNation season, Holby City and Casualty join forces for a special interactive episode in which viewers can vote to determine the outcome of an organ donation storyline.
Central to the process will be Casualty’s director of emergency medicine Harry Harper, who’ll reveal the decision at the end of the show.
During the Seventies, actor Simon MacCorkindale was one of our biggest heartthrobs. These days, he runs his own film company and has returned to the small screen in Casualty. But it could all have turned out differently…
My father was a pilot in the Royal Air Force and in the first 17 years of my parents’ marriage — I was born in the second year — they moved house 21 times. So it was a very nomadic upbringing. There was a bit of rogues and vagabonds about it, which is what actors used to be.
I always invented games, which I think came out of being a child in the air force and never having the same group of friends for very long, so, in the end you have the potential to become quite insular. My brother, who is a couple of years younger, and I used to invent things together.
Simon MacCorkindale might now be more familiar for his role on Casualty, But we decide to remind him of his time when he could turn into any animal he wanted, in his superhero guise of … Manimal!
Possibly the most bizarre of a plethora of superhero action series that Glen Larson launched upon an unsuspecting television audience in the Eighties, Manimal starred Simon MacCorkindale as Dr Jonathan Chase, a tuxedo-clad university professor who helped the police using his unique special power. At the merest hint of trouble, he could turn into any animal he desired. Whether panther, elephant or mouse, a barrage of plastic special effects, throbbing foreheads and elongating fingers signaled his transformation as he stomped or scurried to thwart a dastardly crime. MacCorkindale took to the role with aplomb, a dashing hero with charisma and charm, but alas the combination of his debonair good looks and demented special effects were not enough and the show only lased for eight episodes after its star-studded pilot first aired.
Translated from the original French, so readability is a little strange. Translated by SMCFP Member Nadeia
The man-animal, is one of the most popular myth: Minotaur, Sphinx, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Island of Dr Moreau, Tarzan, The Fly, Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, Werewolf, the Beast of Gévaudan, Cat people, The Creature from the black Lagoon, and The Man from Atlantis, to list only the most famous which inspired widely legends, literature, movies, comics and television.
After the bionical man (the six million dollars man), knight rider (K2000), cybernetic man (Automan), the writer-producer-director Glen A. Larson and Donald Boyle, decided to adapt the myth of the man-animal.
Casualty Saturdays BBC1 Name Simon MacCorkindale Age 50 Education Haileybury College, Hertfordshire, Studio 68 of Theatre Arts, London Role Call Could easily have been typecast as an urbane hunk, but has achieved a diverse gallery of roles – from classics to soaps – in TV, film and theatre. Also a writer, director and producer who runs his own production company, Amy International, with his actress wife, Susan George
