15 Facts About Lewis Collins

Lewis Collins was educated at Gautby Road Primary School, Grange School in Birkenhead and the Birkenhead Institute School.

In late 1964, Lewis Collins quit hairdressing to become the bass player with The Mojos, performing on their charting singles "Goodbye Dolly Gray" and "Until My Baby Comes Home", and moved from Liverpool to London with them when the band appeared to have good commercial prospects.

However the band failed to chart again and broke up, and finding himself in the midst of cosmopolitan London in 1966 during the Swinging Sixties, Lewis Collins made a living engaged in temping work such as delivery van driving, cleaning windows and being a waiter, before deciding that he wanted to become an actor after hearing a play being performed on the radio.

On graduation from LAMDA Lewis Collins joined the Chesterfield Civic Theatre's Repertory Company in 1971, moving to the company of the Citizen's Theatre, in Glasgow in 1972 under the director Giles Havergal.

Lewis Collins then went with Havergal on an acting teaching tour with the Prospect Theatre Company in the United States and Canada, before returning to the British Isles to appear in London's West End, starring in City Sugar and The Threepenny Opera, and at the Royal Court Theatre in the play The Farm in 1973, directed by Lindsay Anderson.

Lewis Collins performed in a pantomime of Babes in the Wood at the King's Theatre in Southsea in Christmas 1983.

Lewis Collins thought of Collins as an alternative after seeing a recently filmed episode of The New Avengers, in which Collins and Shaw had appeared alongside one another and there had been a noticeable dynamic tension between them, both in their acting style and off-screen private personalities.

Lewis Collins was a private in the 10th Battalion Parachute Regiment of the British Army from 1979 to 1983.

Lewis Collins regarded this failure in retrospect as the key missed opportunity of his acting career.

In March 1997, Lewis Collins announced in an interview on British television that he was in discussions with a production company to star in a new series based on The Professionals, reprising his career signature role of William Bodie as the CI5 Agency's Chief in the part played by Gordon Jackson in the original series.

However, after months of negotiations it was announced by the producer David Wickes that Lewis Collins had been dropped as a casting option for the role for undisclosed reasons, and it had been given to the actor Edward Woodward instead.

Lewis Collins' final acting performance was in an episode of the British television police drama series The Bill entitled "034" in 2002.

In 2003, Lewis Collins left Britain and abandoned acting, and later in life had a business in the United States, selling computer equipment.

Lewis Collins held a private pilot's licence, a black belt in jujitsu and had trained in karate.

Lewis Collins's hobbies included parachuting, motorbikes, collecting firearms, sports shooting and playing musical instruments.