Friday, July 23, 2021

Earl Cameron interviewed at the BFI

The long career of the actor Earl Cameron, who has died aged 102, mirrored changes in both British cinema and society. His debut, playing a West Indian merchant seaman, was in the ostensibly modest film noir Pool of London (1951). 

In retrospect it can be seen as a milestone in its depiction of a relationship between a black worker and a young white woman – the first time the subject had been sensitively handled in a British film.

The opening of Earl Cameron's Guardian obituary (he died last year) tells us of his social importance, but it's worth emphasising that he was a very fine actor too,

Cameron was interviewed by Dylan Cave at the British Film Institute in 2015 for this video, when he was a stripling of 97.

As well as Pool of London, Cameron talks about making The Heart Within (one of my key children-and-bombsite films) with James Hayter and a young David Hemmings.

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