And then, from nowhere, I suddenly fell into dire financial straits. Actors have very different accounts from normal self-employed people and I wasn’t at all up on what I should have known about tax. I had thought that my accountant had taken care of everything but he had somehow failed to notice that I should have registered for VAT (value added tax) almost ten years earlier. It was only when I moved to a new accountant that they noticed this – along with about ten years’ worth of other anomalies.
Suddenly, almost overnight, I was horrendously in debt.
At one point the bailiffs turned up at my parents’ house just as I’d packed all of my stuff into a van, ready to move to Peterborough. They must have thought that very convenient and they spent a lot of time eyeing up my precious Mini. Luckily, my new accountant managed to call them off.
Every penny I earned had to go toward paying back the tax. Luckily for me, Lucasfilm and the Jim Henson Organization accepted that I should have been paid VAT on my earnings and so they paid that part off for me.
It was awful; I really hadn’t done anything wrong, yet the taxman was breathing down my neck treating me like a criminal. I once answered the phone and a voice said, with no introduction: “We’ve been watching you, we know you’ve got a car and we will have that.”
“Fine,” I replied, “take it, it’s been bought on credit, so I don’t own it anyway.”
During all this, and while we were rapidly approaching the wedding, a tax inspector turned up at my door. His mouth dropped open when he saw me. He looked like a college professor. I noticed he still had his bicycle clips around his trousers.
“Oh dear,” he said in the tone of a natural, born bureaucrat, “they didn’t warn me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The office is supposed to tell me if people I’m going to visit are ‘different.’”
I didn’t much care for the tone in which he said “different,” almost with a sneer.
“Different? What do you mean, different?” I asked testily.
“Well, “black,” for example.”
“Black?”
“I didn’t know you were going to be short.”
“Why does it matter?”
He couldn’t give me an answer and mumbled incoherently. Even though I decided that he was a very unpleasant man, I felt obliged to let him in and he got to work in my office – a.k.a. the spare room with a desk and a chair. Whenever he saw Sam or me he shook his head worriedly.
On the third day he asked: “What are you?”
“Right! That’s it!”
I wrote to Customs and Excise and complained in no uncertain terms about this man and, more important, about this bigoted behavior. I received an official apology and, in what turned out to be a major victory, Customs and Excise changed their policy so that no personal information about color, size, or any other “difference” about any person would be kept on their files.
They didn’t let me off a penny of the tax I owed, though.
The one thing this horrible experience taught me was that I should always be proactive in my career. When you’ve got work, it’s very easy to sit back and forget to hunt out new jobs until the present one dries up. Ever since then I’m always thinking of the future, what I’m going to do next, and how to go about it and make it happen. No actor can afford to just sit back and wait for the phone to ring. Even major stars, particularly British ones, are not as wealthy as most people think. You have to knock on a lot of doors and keep on at people.a It also made me appreciate what we have now, as back then we had to watch absolutely every penny.
I was desperately penniless. I had paid for the wedding and honeymoon before the tax debacle had begun and couldn’t get the money back. We sat in our newly bought house (which I was fighting to keep hold of) and watched a tiny portable black-and-white telly, which we had perched on top of a cardboard box while sitting on an old hand-me-down sofa, surviving off beans on toast.
It was odd being in such a desperate financial position at the same time as having such an extravagant celebration to prepare for. And to make things worse, I had significant worries about Daniel’s Best Man capabilities. Although he was my best friend, he was also an idiot. Daniel still didn’t have any idea what he wanted to do in life. I worried he might end up working at McDonald’s – I don’t mean to put McDonald’s down – and I’m still surprised Daniel passed his driving test.
He also still looked completely mental, like an anorexic member of Metallica. He was unkempt, skeletal, had long strawberry-blond hair, and was still totally obsessed with heavy metal, movies, and women. His parents were lovely, so I had no idea where it all came from. But I’ll say one thing for him; he showed me how to make the most of being the center of attention. By making people laugh, Daniel was able to get on the right side of both pupils and teachers and I was quick to pick up on this. Although looking different attracts attention, it’s your personality that really counts in the long run.
Incidentally, Daniel wasn’t the only one with long hair. I had also grown a fashionably long mullet of which I was extremely proud. In fact, it grew to be as long as Willow’s (that was a wig in the film). Then, just before the tax disaster, I had a curious urge, which gradually grew into an all-consuming desire, to have a wave put in. But for some reason, the local hairdresser interpreted the word “wave” as “tight perm” – perhaps because they seemed to be all the rage at this time. So I emerged from the hairdresser with a head full of ringlets and went straight to Debenhams where I bought a flat cap to cover them up. I spent a couple of days looking like a very short footballer before I found another hairdresser to iron the perm out.
Anyway, I digress. Daniel came over to our house the night before the wedding. Our house then was tiny – not me-tiny, just smaller than average – and Daniel came bounding in through the back door, full of excitement ahead of the big day. It had started to rain and Sam said we needed to get the washing in. Daniel, wanting to be helpful, yelled, “I’ll do it!”
He zipped around the garden, plucking the washing off the line before giving it to Sam in the kitchen. He then zipped around the dining room, kitchen, and lounge like Tigger the Tiger before pawing his way up the stairs looking for me, babbling on like a fool the whole time.
It was then that Sam noticed a peculiar aroma. During his little run round our back garden, Daniel had managed to tread in a dog poo the size of a cow pat. This mess was now spread throughout our entire house – on our brown carpet, which disguised the poo very effectively. This meant we couldn’t see where the poo was but, boy, could we smell it. So Sam and I spent the night before our wedding carpet cleaning. Our two dogs, Pepi and Wicket, watched from a distance, both of them looking as guilty as hell.
Yes, I was quite worried about Daniel’s Best Man capabilities.
The big day, June 29, dawned fine and dry. As was the tradition, I’d spent the night before the wedding – after cleaning up all the dog poo, of course – in a fancy hotel. I went for a swim in the hotel pool in the morning. Sam had a much more stressful start to the day – hairdo, makeup, bridesmaid dressing. I was ready in five minutes, just popped on my morning suit and voila.
As a treat to herself, Sam’s Nan had stayed at the hotel, too. As I made my way to breakfast, she emerged from her room ahead of me. She looked quite frazzled.
“Everything all right, Nan?”
“Oh no,” she said with a croak, “I’ve been up all night sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend.”
I had a friend video the entire wedding and, although he was involved in TV, I belatedly realized that he had nothing to do with actual camerawork. When we played it back I thought we’d mistakenly just got the cuts from the edit. All he did was point it in our general direction while he nattered away to somebody else. I tried to edit it but it was impossible; the best bits were when he filmed the table decorations during the speeches, and an extended shot of a polished hubcap (while we were getting out of the car outside the church). You c
ould just see me in the reflection.
Daniel was grinning like a Cheshire cat when I joined him at the front of the church. “You should have seen the choir’s faces when I arrived,” he said. He did look quite extraordinary in his morning suit; with the top hat he was about seven feet tall. “But that was nothing compared to when they saw you.”
It was true, the poor things were all over the shop; I could tell Sam was on her way down the aisle from all the notes they were missing, even the organist was playing about as well as a blind monkey.
I turned to see my fiancée coming toward me. She looked absolutely stunning. It was quite something. I take most things in my stride but getting married was about as emotional as it gets. I’m sure other grooms will know what I’m talking about when I say there’s nothing quite like the moment when you hear the triumphant opening bars of the Wedding March and your bride enters the church. As I stood there and watched Sam walk down the aisle in front of our closest friends and family, I understood why marriage is the ultimate declaration of love.
The ceremony, I’m relieved to say, ran very smoothly – Daniel hadn’t lost the rings and nobody fluffed their lines.
However, things got a lot more “interesting” after the ceremony. As we left the church someone with a gravelly voice yelled, “Over ’ere, Mr. and Mrs. Davis!” We turned and were caught in the gaze of one lone paparazzo who’d gate-crashed the wedding. No celebs were invited but this guy still thought it would be worth it – he spotted that Sam was five months pregnant and in the next day’s News of the World we saw ourselves pictured under the headline: “Willow’s Shotgun Wedding.”
We made it to the reception and, after we’d eaten a magnificent meal, Daniel tapped his glass. Everybody turned to listen. I was more than a little nervous as to what he was about to say.
“I’ve known Warwick for just about my whole life,” Daniel began, “and I can safely say we’ve been through a great deal together and nothing ever caused our friendship to founder . . . Although there was one occasion when we nearly lost it and it was over a woman.” He grinned.
I looked at Sam and smiled nervously. What the hell was he talking about?
Daniel pulled out a very old, very crumpled bit of paper. I could see it had been ripped into dozens of tiny pieces but someone had stuck all the little bits back together with sticky tape.
Oh dear.
The penny had dropped. It was the letter I had written all those years ago detailing why Daniel didn’t like a girl that I was interested in. “Goodness, is it me or is it hot in here?” I said, reaching for a glass of champagne and trying not to turn bright red as Daniel started to read the letter in the voice of a teenager.
“Hello, mon cheri, that’s French for ‘my dear.’ I’m sitting bored in my French lesson thinking of you . . .”
My toes curled until I looked like I was wearing a pair of Persian slippers.
“How about Le Kiss?”
It was so, so painful to hear but I knew that worse was yet to come.
“P.S. You know Daniel said he couldn’t go to the party with you, well that’s because he doesn’t want to go with you. But I’ll go with you. How about it?”
Daniel had read it brilliantly, in a mock lovestruck style, and the entire room erupted into laughter.
I had to admit it was a brilliant speech.
“I’ve been waiting to do that for ten years,” Daniel said, “and it was even better than I imagined.”
“You just wait until your wedding,” I joked, “you’ll be lucky if your bride, if you ever find one, stays with you long enough to go on the honeymoon.”b
We honeymooned in San Francisco. George had invited us to his annual Lucasfilm family picnic at the Skywalker Ranch on July 4. The ranch is on Lucas Valley Road and this, so I’m led to believe, is a coincidence; it was already called that before George moved in. The invite said: “Bring a dish for pot luck.” Guests all bring a dish that goes on a huge table and everyone just digs in. It was a really incredibly idyllic family event; you could swim the beautiful man-made Lake Ewok or visit the on-site fire station for a ride in a fire truck. Then there was the animal barn, the fruit gardens, and the vineyards – and if none of the food on display took your fancy, you could visit the on-site restaurant for a fresh steak before taking in a movie in “The Stag” – the 300-seater Art Deco–style cinema.
So when George said, “Warwick, why don’t you and Sam stay on the ranch for a few days?” I only had to think it over for a nanosecond. “I’ll cancel our hotel reservations,” I replied.
The house we stayed in was amazing; every single room had a TV and video player. The windows were made from specially commissioned stained-glass designs. There was a huge station clock in the hallway, the biggest I’d ever seen. The main bedroom was so spectacular that we decided we wouldn’t spoil its perfection and slept in the children’s room.
We didn’t want to outstay our welcome, so after a couple of days we continued our honeymoon as planned. After having lunch with George we bade him farewell and headed to San Francisco to get some wheels.
We rented a red Ford Thunderbird. It came with a basic set of hand controls. You simply pulled back a lever on the steering wheel with your right hand and the car accelerated; and to brake, you just pushed back down. After a short practice run around the parking lot, I felt able to take on the streets of San Francisco.
We drove up Lombard Street, home to James Stewart’s character in Vertigo. It was indeed a street designed to cause light-headedness. It was on a thirty-degree hill and snaked its way up in a series of hairpin bends. It’s understandably known as the “crookedest street in the world.”
“Bring it on,” I thought. I was keen to get to the top and have a look at San Francisco from the surrounding hills. Almost as soon as we started to climb we were caught in a traffic jam. As we slowed to a halt, I looked for the handbrake.
“Where’s the handbrake?” I asked Sam, trying to balance the car, frantically pushing and pulling the lever back and forth.
We couldn’t see it anywhere. Eventually, Sam looked on the floor. “It’s down here!”
“Why, in a car adapted for disabled people, would they put the handbrake near their feet?” I wondered.
We were trapped. The street was one-way, there were no U-turns and no parking, so there was no choice. The only way was up. We were now stuck in this traffic jam, unable to reach the handbrake, so I sat there yanking at the “stop” and “go” control, alternately trying to stop us crashing into the cars in front and behind. They must have thought I was insane. I could see the driver in front nervously checking his rearview mirror, looking at two petrified little people sweating profusely and growing larger as we rocketed toward him before skidding to an abrupt halt, in a car doing a pretty good impression of a pimpmobile with a hydraulic suspension. I’d then release the brake and we’d roll back down toward the driver behind us with looks of dread on our faces before I thrust the lever back to compensate for the incline, spun the wheels, and shot forward again.
Finally, seventeen hair-raising hairpin turns later, we made it to the top. I was exhausted.
“Right,” I said, turning to Sam, dripping with sweat. “Seen enough of San Francisco?”
Sam nodded. We hit the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the world’s greatest drives, and cruised south, past picturesque Half Moon Bay and Big Sur with the Santa Lucia Mountains poking above the distant haze. We didn’t have a particular plan, we’d just stop once it got dark and stay in the first motel we could find – nearly all of them reminded me of the Bates Motel from Psycho.
It was incredible but all too soon we were on our way back to the much humbler-sounding Peterborough – just in time for the Stilton Cheese Rolling Championships.
When we returned from our honeymoon, everything was great – except for one thing.
We were flat broke.
Everything we owned was secondhand or had been donated to us by friends and family. The only new things
we had were presents for our unborn baby (we’d opted to wait and see whether Sam was carrying a boy or a girl), who was now due in a few weeks. A brand-new crib was loaded with toys, clothes, and other baby essentials.
Although Sam’s pregnancy had been incredibly smooth, the doctors told us that the baby’s potentially large size meant she would need a Caesarean – so we already knew the birthday.
However, just as I’d finally decided to become an actor, the work had suddenly dried up. I had found an excellent agent, Paul Lyon-Maris, and constantly pestered him but at the time there was nothing for a short actor. Had this been a wise decision? Was I going to have to get a job selling insurance?
On the day we were due to go to the hospital for the birth, I heard something very heavy thud through the letterbox.
Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis Page 13