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hit (those long hours getting the lip-synching right had obviously paid off) that it went on general release, which was a rare event for a British-made picture. So the plan was that I too would go on general release along with it and do my first ever American publicity tour from New York. When I got there, I discovered that The Ipcress File had been bought by Universal and was also on general release, and I was overwhelmed by the response I got. A year ago I had been a complete unknown, here I was with two hit movies playing to packed houses across the States and I was hailed everywhere as a star. In fact I was the one who was starstruck – at parties given for me and in restaurants, night after night, I found myself next to one movie legend after another. At the 21 Club I sat next to Kirk Douglas and Maureen O’Hara; at Elaine’s (soon to become a fixture of my New York life) I knocked over Woody Allen’s wine glass and trod on Ursula Andress’s foot; and at the Russian Tea Room I sat in between Helen Hayes and Walter Matthau. If anyone had told that little boy sitting in that dark, smoky cinema in the Elephant all those years ago that this was where he’d end up, he’d have thought they were mad.

But perhaps the most memorable encounter of all during that whirlwind tour was with the legendary Bette Davis. People had been so generous to me during my trip that I asked Paramount if they would let me host a cocktail party the night before I left to say thank you. My new friends, the wonderful theatrical couple Jessica Tandy (who went on to win an Oscar at the age of eighty-two for Driving Miss Daisy) and Hume Cronyn, asked if they could bring Bette Davis along. I could hardly believe what I was hearing and when the evening came, I couldn’t wait to introduce myself to her. ‘You know,’ she said, in that unmistakeable drawl, ‘you remind me of the young Leslie Howard.’ I’d heard this before but this was from Bette Davis! She went on, ‘Did you know that Leslie screwed every single woman in every movie he made – except me?’ I had heard this, I said. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I was not going to be just one on a list of conquests – but when I look at you I was just wondering what difference it would have ever made if I had.’ She sounded almost wistful. I blurted out, ‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’ She looked at me for a minute. ‘I was not making a pass at you,’ she said, rather severely. ‘No, no,’ I said hastily. And I didn’t think she was. But she was trying to tell me that she had been there and that sometimes you can have regrets. ‘We could have dinner together with Jessica and Hume,’ I went on, ‘just the four of us.’ She smiled and relaxed. ‘That would be nice,’ she said, ‘as long as I can go home in a taxi on my own.’

I wasn’t back in England long before I got the call from my agent that would truly change my life. Shirley Maclaine had seen me in The Ipcress File, Dennis said, and as her contract stipulated that she could choose her own leading man, she had chosen me for her next film, Gambit. She was the star and she had chosen me. Of course the fact that I was a relative unknown and therefore cheap was a bonus for the production, but nonetheless she had picked me out and wanted to take the chance. They sent the script and I thought it was great, but that was completely beside the point. This was Hollywood – and I would have done anything to make a movie there. I had made it at last.

So off I went to the land of my youthful dreams. My expectations were so high I thought the reality would be a disappointment. I was wrong – it was better than the wildest of those dreams. I arrived at LA airport and was whisked off in a Rolls Royce to a luxury suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Then there was a bit of a hiatus, a glamour blip for a few days as Shirley was delayed and so I sat there in the hotel in splendid isolation awaiting her stamp of approval and the welcome party she had planned for me. To pass the time, I took to star-spotting in the hotel lobby. I didn’t know it, but both Alfie and The Ipcress File were doing the rounds of