Independent fansite for the star of Waking the dead, Shoestring and Framed

Trevor Eve is one of country’s best-known leading actors with roles in Waking The Dead, Hughie Green Most Sincerely and the legendary Seventies private detective series Shoestring.
In Framed he plays Quentin Lester, a shy, reserved curator from the National Gallery, who, by chance, finds himself in a remote Welsh Village at the centre of a chain of events that will change his life for ever.
Speaking about his character, Trevor says: “He is very different from the roles that I usually play. Well, he is not a criminal investigator, for once, or even a game show host. (Laughs)
“I think he is a sensitive man. He is very shy, who can’t understand the inadequacies of the human race.
“He is the senior curator at the National Gallery, someone who has devoted his life to art and the appreciation of art. He is intolerant of people and doesn’t find them as fascinating as the canvasses that are in front of him so, when he has the opportunity to go into isolation with all of the paintings, he is very excited by this.
“In the end, though, it’s the interaction of the locals in the Welsh village which brings him round to an appreciation of people.
“In particular the character of Angharad, I think she is the one responsible for making him realise that beauty lies within people and not necessarily on canvas – and it’s been great working with Eve, she’s delightful, a really lovely girl.”
For Trevor it was Frank Cottrell Boyce’s script that really attracted him to the drama.
“Frank has created a wonderful world, which is a blend of fantasy and reality. I think the fascinating thing about him is that he doesn’t have any cynicism. He is a very un-cynical writer and I think that is rather charming and something that’s exciting to experience in this particular day and age.”
Did he do any research into the role of a curator?
“Yes, I have, I’ve spent time in the National Gallery and it’s not an effort believe me – I mean it’s just wonderful. I just think the work is just spectacular, you read about it and you read about the lives of the artists and it’s amazing.”
Framed was mainly filmed on location in Cardiff and on the mountains of Snowdonia. Speaking about the location, Trevor says:
“It’s a spectacular setting. I mean the landscape is so dramatic, it’s quite wonderful up there apart from the fact it seems to rain most of the time, but it’s breath-taking.
“I have really enjoyed filming in Wales; my mother was from South Wales so most of my holidays as a child were spent in the Mumbles of Swansea, so it was my home. And part of my family still live in Swansea, so it’s familiar environment to me.”
As well as acting alongside established actors such as Eve Myles and Bob Pugh, many of Trevor’s scenes were with Samuel Davies and Mari Ann Bull, who play the Hughes children. So did he have any words of advice for the young actors?
“I’m wiser than that, I wouldn’t attempt to give a single word of advice. I think they are really talented; their level of professionalism is amazing. They are more professional than me and I’ve been at it 35 years!”
Born:
In his role as TV super sleuth Eddie Shoestring, Trevor Eve drove a used car and dressed in rumpled clothes — just like Peter Falk portraying Columbo. Unlike Columbo, though, Eddie went on the radio to get his cases from telephone callers, then later explained the outcome to listeners. Playing Eddie Shoestring made Eve famous in nearly every household in Great Britain in 1979 and 1980, when nearly half the population of the country tuned in on Sunday nights to watch him ratiocinate in 21 episodes. The role catapulted the Shakespearean-trained actor to superstardom in Britain and won him important roles in other productions shown on both sides of the Atlantic.
His portrayal of cruel Mr. Murdstone in the 2000 TV miniseries David Copperfield earned him critical acclaim from London to Los Angeles. When Warner Bros. signed him on for a 2002 film, Possession, he was asked to perform with Gwyneth Paltrow in a sleuthing saga of another kind — about scholars who hold their Sherlock magnifiers to the love lives of two Victorian poets.
Eve was born on July 1, 1951, in Birmingham, England, as the younger son of a businessman. In school, he played cricket and read stacks of film magazines that fed his fascination with acting. After practicality led him to enroll at Kingston Polytechnic in London to study architecture, his desire to perform overcame his desire to design. So, after looking up drama schools in the telephone book, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, got noticed playing Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, then lucked into productions directed by Laurence Olivier and Franco Zeffirelli. Not long afterward, Eddie Shoestring was born.
Although Eve has also starred in other detective dramas — including Heat of the Sun, in which he plays a Scotland Yard investigator sent to Kenya in the 1930s to clean up corruption — he is equally at home in horror (Dracula, 1979), politics (The Politician’s Wife, 1995), classic drama (A Doll’s House, 1992), and history (Parnell and the Englishwoman, 1990, and In the Name of the Father, 1993).
On the stage, Eve won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1997 for his performance in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. After he and his wife, actress Sharon Maughan, founded their own film company in London, Projection Productions, Eve produced two major TV programs: Cinderella (2000) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (1998). In the latter production, he had the daunting task of supervising one of Britain’s greatest actors, Ian Holm, and one of its most promising newcomers, Kate Beckinsale. Although he no longer suits up as a batsman on the cricket field, Eve does enjoy tennis and golf. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide