Neil Pearson's Background
Last updated 27th March 1997...to be updated soon! Links fixed 12th May 1998
Maintained by Carole
Goble. Corrections or information to carole@cs.man.ac.uk.
Neil was born on 27th April 1959 in Battersea, South London, the eldest
of 3 children (a sister and a brother). His father left home when he was
5 years old and he didn't see him again until he was 18, so he was raised
by his Mum, Maureen, a secretary. Fired up
by Jennings books set in English public schools, he developed a determination
to attend a boarding school - he attended Woolverstone boarding school from
11 years onwards, possible because of a scholarship scheme for bright lads
from disadvantaged backgrounds run by the ILEA. He made a short piece on
this for the BBC series "One Foot In The
Past". Here he developed his love of acting (starring in A Man
for All Seasons and The Tempest) and he has never wanted to do anything
else. He went straight on to train at the Central School of Speech and Drama
in London, got his first professional engagement in Manchester in 1980 and
has hardly been out of work since. He doesn't like Manchester much :-( but
loves Liverpool. Weird. After his big break in Drop
The Dead Donkey, he really made his mark in the highly acclaimed and
award winning Between The Lines. He seems to have
cornered the market in hunky bad boys who get their kit off a lot.
Neil is single and lives alone in South London. He is cagey about his personal
life, but he had affair with co-star
Siobhan Redmond
(from BTL) and he lived for 5 years with the actress
Frances Barber,
breaking up in 1992. He recently had a relationship
with his DTDD co-star Susannah Doyle
(Joy) but that finished late 1996. Neil attended the premiere of Fever Pitch on 26th March 97 with a rather nice young dusky lady in a velvety blue
cocktail frock.
He has strong political views, is a member of the Labour Party and is as much at a loss about their
policies as the rest of us. A Spurs fan he claims that his main interest
outside acting is travelling and that acting is merely a means to finance
this. He is reported as an independent, disciplined and determined person.
He is wonderfully kind and charming to his fans anyway, (he bought me a
drink on my birthday) and is a thoroughly decent bloke, not a luvvie all!
And those blue eyes!!!!