The problem with acting, like so many other creative professions, is that compared with all the young and not so young hopefuls, there are all too few jobs around.  Kim Fortune was no exception to the rule.  "When I stop and think of all the different jobs I've done between acting work.  I left home at sixteen and there aren't that many jobs for guys that young, without qualifications and desperate to act.  I've been a garage mechanic, a street-seller of underground newspapers, all sorts of things.  Then when I wasn't actually acting, I've worked as an Assistant Stage Manager (the theatre's supreme dogsbody) for ten quid a week.  I did that in Bath, Wolverhampton, Newcastle and lots of other places.  And gradually you pick up little parts."

 

These days Kim, now 23, is in pretty regular demand, though if he does have a few months out of work, he's less worried about getting temporary work than in the old days.  "It's become much easier since I discovered that people believed you if you said you'd learnt how to do things, even if you didn't know them all that well.  Every job I did was used as experience for getting the next one, and while nothing, hopefully at least, had to last more than a couple of months before some acting arrived on the scene, I was able to get by."

 

His recent career, Crossroads apart, has taken Kim a long way from the paper selling and the garage.  He appeared in TV's massively acclaimed 'Glittering Prizes', in which he played the younger brother of the star Tom Conte.  Then there's been an appearance with American movie star Timothy Bottoms in a film made in Czechoslovakia called 'Operation Daybreak'.  He's also appeared in 'Streetcar Named Desire' with Claire Bloom.  The part he played, The Collector, was coincidentallt an early role of another Crossroads star, Maurice Kaufmann.  The part in this Tennessee Williams classic drama also helped Kim towards his movie role.  "Lewis Gilbert, who directed 'Operation Daybreak' came to see the play, as one of the many people I invited along, and he liked me and we got together.  Then he gave me the job.  I hope I'll work with him again at some stage."