Feature copywriter

Whatever happened to Tom Brown?

Thirty years on, the child actor is still in a studio. But he’s changed roles. Kevin Walsh tracked him down.

When you’ve got an Emmy sitting on the mantelpiece at 16, you have every right to be pleased with yourself.

“Yes,” says Anthony Murphy, “but early success can bring its problems. Too much too young. Everything after that can tend to be a bit of an anti-climax.”

We’re sitting in his studio, at the top of his magnificent honey-coloured house, perched on a plateau high above Carcassonne. Out of the window, the driveway sweeps away into the distance, flanked by poplars. We are surrounded by dozens of framed paintings, unfinished canvases and sketches.  A jumbled rainbow of soft pastel sticks is spread out over the table beside us. Freshly-squeezed oil paints sit on palettes dotted around the room. And brushes – dozens of them, in various states of repair - lie lazily on their sides, or stand stiffly to attention in jars of turpentine.

Thirty years ago, Murphy was in a studio of a different kind, in the starring role of the BBC series ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays.’ So how did it all happen? Pushy parents, stage school, queuing at 5am outside theatres, endless auditions?

“Nothing like that,” he says. “It just happened. One day they turned up at the school and started auditioning kids. And for some reason, they chose me.”

They hadn’t turned up by accident. After all, if you’re making a series about a public schoolboy, where better to find a lead actor than at Westminster, one of the country’s top public schools? Murphy’s cut-glass accent, easy manner and impromptu miming won him the part.

So what was it like attending the Emmy awards ceremony, I ask. Did he get he red-carpet treatment? Was he the Jamie Bell of 1973?

“Never went,” he says. “They didn’t think I’d win. People say awards ceremonies are fixed, that the winners know in advance. But not that one – otherwise the BBC would have sent me.”

So instead of rubbing shoulders with Jack Klugman (Oscar from ‘The Odd Couple’), Mary Tyler Moore and most of the cast of ‘The Waltons’ in Los Angeles,  he learnt of his success second-hand back in London.

He was already famous, and the Emmy only added to his fame. He smiles broadly and his eyes twinkle as he remembers being mobbed by screaming schoolgirls in Westminster Abbey. “Yes,” he says dreamily. “I was with Mark Lester when it happened.”  Oliver and Tom Brown in one place: a treat indeed for those excitable teenagers.

He grows serious. “The trouble was that girls always said ‘I bet he can get any girl he wants.’ As they all thought that, I ended up with no-one. Happened all the time.”  He does, however, confess that one 16-year-old was ‘sweet’ on him: none other than a teenage Nigella Lawson.

Fame meant having his picture splashed across the pages of the tabloids – he fondly remembers one photo of him in the Daily Mail looking earnestly studious, poring over a copy of ‘Othello.’

So he was launched. What next for the bright young star of the small screen?

In a word, nothing. He didn’t seek more acting work. Time passed and so did his fame. Back at school, he became a ardent Russophile, devouring all things Russian for three years. Behind him, on the bookshelf, I notice row upon row of books on the subject, including a well-worn copy of ‘War and Peace.’ In the original Russian, of course.

So fame didn’t make him go off the rails? “Oh heavens, no!” he counters. “That came much later.”

His Russian studies took him on a scholarship to Oxford, where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. After coming down, he headed for the West of Ireland, where his Anglo-Irish family had lived for generations. With a wealthy new wife in tow, he set up as a potter and aerial photographer. “Flying microlights over Connemara gave me an appreciation of form,” he says. “Nothing quite like it.” Their relationship burnt bright for four years, but the flame eventually flickered and died. They separated, and Murphy returned to London.

And to responsibility. Under family pressure, he took up law, qualifying as a solicitor and then a barrister. But his career in chambers was startlingly brief. “A day,” he chuckles. “I woke up on the second morning with a hangover and phoned them to say I’d changed my mind. They were livid.”  Instead, he drifted into corporate law, first in London, where he met and married his second wife, then Paris.

But the artistic streak runs deep in the Murphy family. His Aunt Mary painted watercolours, which fascinated young Anthony. His uncle, the poet Richard Murphy, friend to Ted Hughes, Silvia Plath and Patrick Kavanagh, had led the life of a starving artist in Ireland for many years.

Murphy started painting in Paris to relieve the boredom of corporate law - “a bit like an endless game of chess”. And one day he walked out.

Painting day and night for year, he slowly assembled a collection. The resulting show in London was a near-sellout. But Paris was expensive, and true to his Anglo-Irish roots, he was displaying signs of ‘large country house syndrome.’ He and his wife headed for the South of France. To the Aude, where his idol, the artist Russell Scott, lived. Inspired by a visit to Scott, he settled just outside Carcassonne. Ten years later, the enormous, rambling domaine is still a work in progress.

He adores the South of France, and rarely leaves: “I feel the need to get away less and less nowadays. Mainly weddings and funerals.”

His fame as a painter has spread, leading to shows in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London. His moody, brooding canvases became hot properties around the world.

So does he ever regret leaving the dizzying heights of the legal eagles? He doesn’t miss a beat. “No. I just couldn’t see myself doing something I didn’t enjoy for years and years,” he says.

He misses the showbiz glitz even less. The BBC contacted him recently about putting out a video version of ‘Tom Brown’ but Murphy was lukewarm about the idea, which they later dropped. It’s a decision he now regrets, as his children are at an age where they would enjoy watching it.

Meanwhile, back in the studio, it’s down to work. “You’ve got to create the right conditions for work,” says Murphy. “You know - calm the mind, enter an artistic state.”

He moves to an oversized silver CD player and fumbles with the controls, displaying the classic signs of artistic technophobia. I wait for the delicate strains of Mozart to fill the studio. Or perhaps Beethoven.

The silver beast hums to life. Red and green lights twinkle. And the studio is filled with joyous music. ‘Knowing me, knowing you’ by Abba, if I’m not mistaken. Murphy notices my surprise, and says sheepishly: “I’m afraid my musical tastes are a bit 70s.”

He dips his brush in a rich green and sets to work on another painting. One last question, I ask: what would he like his epitaph to be? “Nothing too much,” he suggests.

He may have to rethink that one.

Words and pictures © Kevin Walsh, 2003.