Actress
Linda Hayden started her career at 13 when she joined stage school and started working on various TV sitcoms and adverts. At the age of 15 she won the coveted major role in Michael Klinger’s film “Baby Love” starring Diana Dors and Keith Barron. The film was a big success and received a lot of publicity hinged mainly on the fact that Linda was old enough to make the film but not old enough to see it !
Numerous film parts followed, including Hammer’s “Taste the Blood of Dracula” with Christopher Lee, the cult horror movie “Blood of Satan’s Claw” starring Patrick Wymark, also “Vampira” the spoof Dracula film starring David Niven and “Madhouse” with Vincent Price and Peter Cushing.
Linda’s film career didn’t just revolve around the horror genre, she also starred alongside Peter Finch in the thriller “Something to Hide” and was the au pair strangled with her own tights by Gregory Peck’s henchmen in “The Boys from Brazil”. Linda was in the original “Confessions” movie playing Robin Askwith’s love interest the young police woman in “Confessions of a Window Cleaner” she also made several films in Spain. Eager to get her taste of theatre, Linda played theatres in the provinces before landing her first West End part opposite Leslie Phillips at the Criterion theatre, she acknowledges she learnt a lot from Phillips about stagecraft and certainly about comedy, he was a hard task master but he knew his stuff !
Linda went on to play many parts in London and on tour she worked for Charles Marrowitz at the famous Open Space Theatre playing in “Taming of the Shrew” which they took to Rome and she joined Ray Cooney’s cast of Run For Your Wife as Mary Smith which she continued to play on and off for 6 years with many rotating casts, she also played in several other plays for Ray over the years, which were also in London.
Perhaps the play that had the most impact on Linda though was “Underground” starring Raymond Burr which played on tour and in Toronto before coming into London, this is where she met and worked for the producer Paul Elliott, who subsequently became her husband and the father of her two children.
Misty Moon Event
- An Evening With Linda Hayden – 6th September 2014