Peter elliott actor biography
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Peter Elliott
Peter Elliott’s first taste of a television career started with a hammer.
Before finding work in set construction, Elliott had a ‘wealth’ of jobs. “I call it a wealth," he says. "Other people would call me serially unemployed.” But at the age of 22, he finally found his calling — television. Building and painting sets for shows likeWoolly Valley, It is I Count Homogenized and Grunt Machine made him realise he’d rather be in front of the camera than behind it.
Elliott had been part of the amateur acting set in Christchurch before joining the Court Theatre in 1980, which led to acting parts on television — in McPhail and Gadsby, Pioneer Women and Hang on a Minute Mate.
After a stint in Australia, Elliott returned to Auckland and scored his breakthrough part — playing lawyer Paul Davison in Erebus — The Aftermath, a mini-series based on the tragic 1979 Air New Zealand Antarctic flight. “I had lots of cross examination stuff to do, taken directly from transcripts. We had to learn every comma and word perfectly, and if we got anything wrong we could have been sued. So it was tricky.”
Not quite as tricky was his next role as bad boy Rex Redfern, on gli
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Views
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Peter Elliott (British actor)
For the British actor, stunt performer, singer, and diver, see Peter J. Elliott.
Peter Elliott (born 1956) is a British actor best known for playing apes and other non-human characters in film and television.
Early life
[edit]Elliott grew up in Hertfordshire; one parent was a woodwork teacher.[1] He was trained as a Method actor at East 15 Acting School.[2] His interests as an early-career performer were in highly physical forms of acting, doing acrobatics, martial arts, and boxing.[3]
Acting career
[edit]Elliott's specialization in ape roles began in 1978, when he auditioned for the film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (released 1984).[1] Producers on the film, disappointed by a pre-production attempt to create ape movement using mime and animatronics, instead hired Elliott on the strength of a "very apelike" screen test.[4] Tasked with determining whether costumed human actors should be mixed with real apes on the production, Elliott spent two years as a head of research and development for the film (eventually opting for an all-human cast),[1] and was sent out to study simian movement at the Institute for Primate Studies at the University of Oklahoma.