Giant stunt double means fight trouble for Hoskins
Bob Hoskins had to do his own fight scenes for a TV drama after programme-makers sent a giant stunt double. The Hollywood star is 5ft 6in, but production staff on BBC One show The Street inadvertently arranged for a stand-in who towered a foot taller than him. Hoskins, whose Hollywood roles have included Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, said: "You could say I've done a few fight scenes in my time, but this one was quite tough. I wound up doing my own stunts because, when the stunt man turned up, he was six foot six. "Then the director said he wanted it really violent. I know how to act - it's getting bashed up that's not such fun." In the programme - to be screened on Monday, July 13 - he stars as a pub landlord who gets involved in a brawl with a local gangster. He stars alongside old friend Frances Barber, who plays his wife, Lizzie: "We've known each other for ages through a mutual friend, Derek Jacobi, who used to be my next-door neighbour. Frances and I have wanted to work together for years, and now we finally have the opportunity."
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.