Background and Early Work
Lindsay-Hogg was born in New York City to actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, and was educated at Trinity School in New York and at Choate School in Connecticut. Fitzgerald and her husband, Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th Baronet (1910-1999), led him to believe that he was their natural son; however, his biological father was Orson Welles, the actor and film director. For years, rumors about his true parentage abounded, but Lindsay-Hogg was uninterested in them. He first met Welles as a teenager, acted with him in Ireland, and continued to meet with him sporadically for the rest of Welles' life. Lindsay-Hogg's step-father was Stuart Scheftel, who married Geraldine Fitzgerald when Michael was six, after she had divorced Sir Edward.
His career began directing the 1960s British pop programme Ready Steady Go!, a forerunner of MTV-type programming. This work led to an unaired television special, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1968), which was finally released in 1996.
In January 2010 came word that Lindsay-Hogg was going to take a DNA test to determine if famed American filmmaker Orson Welles, who was friend of the family's, was in fact his father. The test gave no result, as the hair from Sir Edward that was used in the test did not contain a follicle. Confirmation of his true parentage came after Lindsay-Hogg sent a copy of his unpublished autobiography to his mother's friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who confirmed that Welles was his father. Lindsay-Hogg's memoir, Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond, was published in the fall of 2011.
Lindsay-Hogg married the former Lucy Mary Davies in 1967; they divorced in 1971. Lucy Lindsay-Hogg subsequently became the second wife of the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon in 1978.
For ten years, in the 1970s, Lindsay-Hogg was romantically involved with British actress Jean Marsh. He had also been involved with Gloria Vanderbilt, who was the person who finally confirmed Welles' paternity to Lindsay-Hogg.
He acceded to the baronetcy in 1999, upon the death of his legal father, Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg.
Read more about this topic: Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Famous quotes containing the words background, early and/or work:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Gratefully accepting the proffered honor, [to inscribe a new legal work to him] I give the leave, begging only that the inscription may be in modest terms, not representing me as a man of great learning, or a very extraordinary one in any respect.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)