Michael Crawford - Career

Career

He made his first stage appearance in the role of Sammy the Little Sweep in his school production of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera, which was then transferred to Brixton Town Hall in London. But his professional break did not come until Britten hired him to play Sammy in another production of the opera, this time at the Scala Theatre in London, which he alternated with another boy soprano, David Hemmings. Soon after, he was hired by the English Opera Group for the role of Japhet in another Britten opera, Noye's Fludde, based on the story of Noah and the Great Flood. Crawford remembers that it was while working in this production that he realised he seriously wanted to become an actor. It was in between performances of Let's Make an Opera and Noye's Fludde that he was advised to change his name, as another young performer in the children's theatre group that Crawford was in had the same surname. While he was riding home on a bus after an audition, he noticed a lorry with the slogan "Crawford's Biscuits Are Best", which prompted him to decide to change his name to Michael Crawford.

He went on to perform in a wide repertoire. Among his stage work, he performed in André Birabeau's French comedy Head of the Family, Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn, Bernard Kops's Change for the Angel, Francis Swann's Out of the Frying Pan, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Twelfth Night, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, The Striplings, The Move After Checkmate and others. At the same time, he appeared in hundreds of BBC radio broadcasts and early BBC soap-operas, such as Billy Bunter, Emergency - Ward 10, Probation Officer, and Two Living, One Dead. He appeared as the cabin boy John Drake in the TV series Sir Francis Drake, a twenty-six part adventure series made by ITC starring Terence Morgan and Jean Kent. His film work included leading roles in two children's films, Blow Your Own Trumpet and Soapbox Derby, for The Children's Film Foundation in Britain.