Big Ben
(Clive Robertson, Sunset Beach)
British Export Came, Saw and Conquered -- In about Three Weeks
Just the Facts
Born On: December 17
What he does for Excersise: "Next to nothing, I'm afraid. But I don't think I'm supposed to be one of those all American hunks, anyways."
Favorite Hitchcock Film: North by Northwest
School Of Hard Knocks: "I had to stop playing rugby, because you can't go to auditions in an eyepatch."
His friends and family back in England thought it was an ordinary holiday, but Clive Robertson's trip to Los Angeles last Septemeber was really more like a reconnaissance mission.
"My girlfriend and I were both actors back in London," he recalls,"and we decided to come out here for a month, just to suss the place out, really. We didn't know if we would like it here or not, and then there were all sorts of practical questions: Where would we live? What would we do? How easy would it be to get work papers?"
As it happened, getting work papers was easier than Robertson ever dreamed, thanks to girlfriend Libby Purvis, a two year veteran of the Australian Soap THE POWER, THE PASSION. "She went to see this manager, and she mentioned my name. Then I went in, just on the off chance, and he said, 'You know, there's something you might be right for...' "
That something was the role of entrepreneur Ben Evans on SUNSET BEACH. Robertson read for Aaron Spelling just three weeks after arriving in the U.S. "That was rather daunting," he laughs. "That was rather daunging," he laughs. "His office was like something out of DYNASTY: a huge room, plush pile carpet and a bank of sofas, with what seemed like 30 people sitting there. And you have to walk to this chair in the middle, no chatting, and read. It was pretty awful."
But it could have been worse. "Obviously, I knew who Aaron Speling was, but I had no idea what he looked like," Robertson recalls. "But by a twist of fate, I had been in a book shop two days earlier. I happened to see Aaron's biography and there was a picture of him on the cover. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have known where he was on the sofas."
After the reading, Robertson was a summarily dismissed. "Aaron asked how long I had been here. I said, 'Three weeks.' He nodded and left," the actor recalls. He was hired soon afterward. With BEACH's start date looming, Robertson had only two weeks to return to London, pack, say goodbye to his mother and sister, move halfway across teh world with Libby, find a place to live in L.A. and deal with immigration.
Luckily, he'd had a nomadic upbringing that prepared him for the whirlwind relocation. "My father was a pilot in the air force," Robertson explains. Every three years, Dad's post would change, and the Robertsons would go someplace else -- like say, Singapore or Cyprus.
"But my father died when i was 15," he continues, "and things took a bit of a turn," As a result, Robertson would up at the Oxford School of Business. "There are many reasons why I went there," he explains, though clearly it had to do with living up on the high standard set by his dad. "Alot of people were expecting me to do the 'right thing,' and out of respect for them and for my father, I did."
All the while, Robertson "Kind of knew" he wanted to a more artistic career -- maybe acting, maybe singing. "Business school wasn't a cop-out, but it was an easy way to procrastinate, to put off what I really wanted to do for another three or four years. That's the truth of the matter. I mean, I went with the intention of probaly going into marketing or something like that, but honestly, I was never really into marketing," he admits.
Upon graduation, Robertson headed to East Africa, partly do some thinking -- about drama school, in which he enrolled upon returning to London -- and partly because his tropical upbringing had imbued in him a need for heat. "I spet my childhood sitting around a pool," the actor says. "and I just never got used to the cold again. Those English winters ... ugh. Once you've felt the warmth, you can't go back."
And that, the truth be told, is what Robertson likes best about Los Angeles. "My favorite things here are the sun, the sun, and the sun," he smiles, "followed by the sea, and then the sand."
From Soap Opera Digest, May 6, 1997 By Adam Kelley