Anthony Head seems to be the choice de guere these days when it comes to playing the slightly eccentric off kilter role, very much the UK Christopher Walken, he has a great new role in the comedy drama series Sold and he recently told us all about it.
Anthony admits he based his portrayal of estate agent head honcho Mr Colubrine on Alan Sugar.
“I watched a fair amount of The Apprentice. Alan Sugar doesn’t have an enormous sense of humour and doesn’t seem to show his feelings very much.
“Colubrine is a wide boy made good. He basically started off life as a bailiff then, when interest rates hit 15%, he decided to sell off. He’d got loads of repossessed houses on his books so he sold them and made a lot of money. He’s not moved by much. I modelled that intransigence on Alan Sugar.”
In Sold, Anthony’s character is the owner of successful estate agency Colubrines. Describing his character Anthony says: “Colubrine is only amused by himself and unpleasant things happening to other people. He doesn’t suffer fools. He likes things done a very particular way. In the series he says ‘I don’t want happy customers’ because he believes happy customers are not going to come back. He wants them to come back again and again.
“I don’t think it’s even cruel ambition. For him it’s just getting the job done. He believes the more fears a client has, the more levers the estate agent can pull. It’s pure economics. He doesn’t care if customers are satisfied because it’s all about getting them to buy a house.”
Mr Colubrine rarely visits his staff in person, instead he pops up on screen in the office via a web link.
Anthony laughs: “It’s all about catching people unawares. It was hard to do at first. Your instinct as an actor is to ignore the lens but I had to interact with the camera which made it interesting. Drama is all about conflict and I can imagine not knowing when your boss might pop up on screen to spy on you would be extremely unnerving.”
Anthony explains he was drawn to the role by Steve Coombes’ writing. “Steve’s scripts have got a nice movement to them. I think he has taken the essence of what makes people buy houses or sell them and distilled it into this heightened drama. At the same time, he has all these dynamics within the group of staff and a boss who likes to stir things up. I immediately wanted to be a part of it.”
Luckily, Anthony hasn’t had much experience with estate agents over the past few years.
“When we were looking for a house in Bath we were on the books of several estate agents. Because we had to drive from London with two small children we had only a limited amount of time to house hunt. We had a very specific idea of what we wanted and so were really frustrated by time wasters who tried to show us round hideous houses we wouldn’t have bought in a month of Sundays.
“Mr Colubrine wouldn’t approve, but a lot of people do want to find a house for life. Some people make a career of buying houses, doing them up and selling them on, but we will never sell our house. We were told by a medium where we would find our house and she described it to us exactly. When we finally bought it we were so happy. We’ve been there 12 years. It’s such a beautiful home - a dream home.”
Anthony has recently been filming Repo, a slash horror musical movie, in Canada alongside Sarah Brightman and Paris Hilton.
ANTHONY HEAD ON SOLD
