British Stars Donate Film Fees to Charity
All actors working on a cameo film in London have agreed to donate their compensation funds to a theater-based charity.
The upcoming film, “Run For Your Wife”, is based on the 1983 play by Ray Cooney, who will now direct the movie version.
The film has over 80 cameo roles that will be played by celebrities such as Sir Cliff Richard and Rolf Harris, among many others.
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A spokesman said that the cameo stars agreed to forgo their fee because they all know the director Cooney so well.
Cooney said on the film’s website said that he was offered large sums of money from film companies for rights to make the movie. Yet he turned them down, and chose the set of the movie in the U.K. and to work on the script himself.
Of his most successful comedy, Cooney said, “I have come up with what my colleagues all think is a terrific screenplay,” BBC reports. “Run For Your Wife” lasted nine years in London’s West End as the longest-running comedy play ever.
“None of the humor has been lost from the original stage version, but it has been ‘opened up’ in a way that anyone who missed seeing the stage version (is there anyone!) would never guess its ‘theater background,’” Cooney wrote on the film website.
Richard Briers, an actor in agreement to donate fees to the charity, is already involved in many different charities. He serves as President of the Parkinson’s Disease Society and helped launch a Sense-National Deafblind and Rubella Association campaign.
Other cameo actors include Denise van Outen, Sarah Harding, and Neil Morrissey. Smaller roles have been filled by actors like Maureen Lipman, Ray Winstone, and Sylvia Sims. The play-made-movie tells the tale of Danny Dyer, a happily married bigamist, and is not expected to be released until next year.
