He will portray Churchill in 'Young Winston' movie

By Donald Forbes

LONDON (P) Simon Ward, virtually unknown as an actor, is on the brink of stardom because he looks like the late Sir Winston Churchill.

He will portray Churchill in his years as a young cavalry officer in India, South Africa and the Sudan. The film, called "Young Winston," is based on the autobiography "My Early Years." Producer Carl Foreman plans to spend $6 million on it.

Foreman and director Richard Attenborough spent six months seeking the right actor. They talked to 400 aspirants, among them some big names, and screen-tested a dozen.

In the end, Ward's physical resemblance to Churchill clinched the part, but a solid grounding in the theater didn't hurt.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't really believe it myself," Ward said. "The resemblance really only struck me when I was watching some rushes of a sequence reconstructing 40 really hairy minutes Churchill spent under fire when a British army train was ambushed by the Boers in South Africa,

Simon Ward as young Winston Churchill

professional he has worked almost entirely in the theater or in television.

He is hoping that a successful "Young Winston” will shut off an area of his career which has provided him with work but increas-

“Then, quite suddenly, I ingly less satisfaction-playing juveniles. He is a blond 6-footer.

could see it... there was a strong likeness about the eyes and the forehead."

Now 29, Ward joined Britain's National Youth Theater at 13. Since becoming a

"Whenever television

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directors are looking for someone to play a boy in his late teens-and usually homosexual with it-they seem to think of me," he said.

"Parts like that bore me, but when work is difficult to come by, I've had to accept them."

He and his wife, actress Alexandra Malcolm, have two daughters.

"Quite often, when there was no work, I thought of giving up acting altogether," he said. "But I could never think of anything else that I wanted to do. You know, you begin to despair of the break-through ever coming and it can be very depressing. In the end, however, acting is the only job I know so I've kept at it."