Foreward What is it about the far-flung shores of sunny California that draw hundreds of thousands of Brits to up-sticks from a rainsodden UK and trek halfway around the world? Who knows? But they swarm off the big metal birds from London armed often with just a suitcase, hope, burning ambition and self-belief. And that is what thousands have done. California is now home to over 500,000 number of Brits and these numbers are growing every year. Is it like living in the UK? No absolutely not. Do they speak the same language? Nope. Are they culturally similar? Not one bit. And if you move here he thinking that the answers to those questions are incorrect then you will be in severe trouble. People seem to move here for many different reasons. For many of us, it is a quest for fame and fortune. For some it is a flight of fancy, a chance to experience a whole new life, to run away from troubles at home. Perhaps it is the dream of a romantic encounter thousands of miles from home, unburdened by the daily grudge in the UK. For others it is simply a quest for the sun. Life is, in many ways, much easier in California. You can drive everywhere, you don't have to fight your way onto public transport. The food and drink are a amazing and healthy. Store staff are polite and attentive and will pack your bags. (a trait long since lost in the UK). They even fill your car with petrol. You can sunbathe, ski, climb, shop, gamble and relax. Pretty much all in one day. So how do all these Brits fare in a foreign land? Well extraordinarily well it would seem. And it's not just in the industries you would expect. It's across the board from the creative industries to business, pharmaceuticals to sport. You can watch Brits in movies, on the stage, on tv, in sporting competitions and this year a Brit even directed the half-time show at the very heart of Americana - Superbowl. In this book, Dawn Bowery has taken an eclectic group g of Brits now residing in California and has skilfully managed to visually capture the essence of each of her subjects. Her beautiful photographs show the very drive, grit, determination, will-power and often madness that is needed to succeed here. Her interviews with the subjects further add to the visual imagery, providing thoughtful and incisive commentary on each individual journey. Read, absorb. Let it wash over you . And then be inspired and follow your heart. You don't have to dream about California, you can live it. Dr David Bull
Steve Dennis Ghost Writer Some say that if you can fall in love with a woman when you've seen at her worst, then it must be love. When I first laid eyes on the City of Angels, after indulging in a long-distance affair in my own head, she wasn't at her seductive finest: she was bedraggled, on her knees, broken, and looking pathetic. Held up for all to see as the shame of the United States of America. It was 1992, I was 21-years-old, and a return air fare from LHR-LAX cost ÂŁ150 -- that's how much people wanted nothing to do with Los Angeles in those months following the Rodney King riots. But I was one of those naive bargain-hunters who arrived with a sense of adventure, adventu checked my death-wish into a Travel Lodge in Inglewood (one of the epicentres of racial conflict) and witnessed the ugly under-belly to all that glitters and shines. Despite that, and after two weeks of cruising the Pacific Coast Highway with my friend Simon, something inside told me that one day...one day...I would return to set up a life here. Back then, I was a cub reporter on the Ilkley Gazette in West Yorkshire, monitoring the parish pump and golden wedding anniversaries in the Wharfedale region where I'd grown up, and where the notion of a life in LA seemed as realistic as one in a Russian space station. But I returned from my travels with my piece of moon rock: a movie review of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. I pleaded for a by-line in my weekly newspaper that said 'Steve Dennis reports from Hollywood'. My editor rolled his eyes, but humoured my ego and placed my wish into print. One day, I kept telling myself. Cut to 2008 when, after navigating my way from parochial to national newspaper journalism and, in 2003, to a career as a ghost-writer of autobiographies, I returned to LA to reunite with a long-distance girlfriend I'd met in Rome, and to meet an A-list entertainer with a view to writing his life story. stor I decamped to Marina-del-Rey for three months and that's when everything clicked into place: the life, the love, the career, the opportunity. The need to live here. As things turned out, the relationship with the girl didn't last and nor did the great life story with the A-lister who decided he had more chapters to live. But it was those vehicles - that serendipity - that brought me to a life-changing decision to leap from London to LA in July 2008. One year later and seventeen years after my first visit, I earned my Green Card and now live in the Venice Canals, one block from the beach. I remember when this life seemed beyond impossible and beyond my capabilities. But I work with 'the lives of others' every day, charting the trajectory of each person's ambition, success or fame. In each and every story, it is the perseverance with, and the belief in, the impossible that turned them from dreamers into achievers and it's the endless possibilities contained within that make life in LA feel so alive.
Alan Selka Butler As we drove down Windsor my prospective employer turned to me. "Have you ever seen the Hollywood sign, ole boy?" He enquired in melodic tones. "No, Sir, I don't believe I have." As I followed his gaze up through the trees and saw that iconic billboard for the first time, Robert Evans was driving me through Paramount's gates.That was twenty years ago and I am lucky enough to still be in his employ today. Over this time we have developed a friendly collaboration but in the best traditions of my profession the role is intimate without being personal. I was born into a textile family in Yorkshire. Already in decline, the woollen industry died and finished. "A dilettante" I once read "is, like God, everywhere but nowhere." This might nicely describe a butler too. When I applied to the Right Hand Employment Agency, almost as a joke, I little thought that I would still be in the profession thirty five years later. Since leaving Art School I had spent a year in Paris working at the Moulin Rouge, paid a visit to Salvador Dali in Port Ligat and spent a year on pilgrimage to the shrines of Ludwig II in Bavaria. Now I was looking for my next adventure. The canon of butlery is extensive. While growing up I was fascinated by the mysterious style of these life enhancement executives who seemed devoted to lifting forever fo the cares of daily life from their employer's shoulders. Being a committed surrealist, Monarchist, and absurdist, devoted to anachronistic standards, I have found the profession an excellent fit. I love clothes and have a perfect body for them‌the sort that needs covering. This passion was immediately apparent to my first employer, who before she gave me the benefit of the doubt observed that I had no experience in the job and I should realize that it was not all dressing up. I came to America when I was offered a position in New York. I was pleased to leave England's undeclared civil war behind. Perpetuated by a cancerous cance class system (yobbery for snobbery) and manifested each Saturday in football stadiums, this conflict was the result of hopelessness. How liberating New York felt in contrast. I had never encountered such optimism nor such public decency. We lived in the Penthouse at 1040 fifth Avenue directly above Jackie Onassis. In spring I would set the table on the balcony with silver so highly polished it was almost impossible to distinguish the true shape of the candlesticks which looked quite liquid in the evening light. A strawberry sunset lit up the West side where buildings already sparkled with electric lights. Seagulls flew past and as I looked down into the glowing Temple of Dendor strains of Puccini arose from Central park where 100,000 spectators, peacefully picniced on the great lawn. Wow, Civilization! On the East coast I felt a distinct benefit in being English. (more so than in England anyway!) There, trans Atlantic ties are still current but any such advantage evaporates as one travels West. It took me two years to start enjoying LA. Eventually, however, something strangely wonderful occurred. One day I woke up, possibly after rain when the air was washed clean and the sun, that I never knew as a child, shone through, th and in the twinkling of an eye all the little gems that I had discovered around the city fused together. They formed the new lens through which I saw my surroundings. As if by magic the concrete shanty town disappeared and life became a celebration of those rare eccentricities that make LA unique. For seventeen years I lived in bohemian bliss in a small cottage in South Pasadena and for some years now it has been my privilege to live at Woodland, Mr. Evans' idyllic home in Beverly Hills where I and my colleagues continue to assist our employer in his pursuit of happiness. Not a day goes by without me thinking how lucky I am to have had this American experience.
Ioan Gruffudd Actor It was my first ever proper job. I flew in to LAX then on down to San Diego, got picked up by a mini van at the airport and was driven across the border into Mexico and onwards to Rosarito. I dumped my bags and was about to step into the most delicious hot, LONG shower when the phone rang and a voice claiming to be Martin Jarvis was on the other end. Martin Jarvis, veteran actor of stage and screen whom I had idolized all through my years at Rada. He wanted to speak to me. In fact his orders were pretty much to come straight down to the bar now and we’d have a good old chat about things. Apparently, ‘things’ on this set hadn’t been going all that smoothly. Ah, the shower king!” beamed Martin with open arms, as I approached. app Then, after the tinies and most perfectly executed dramatic pause he declared “Now…“I’m going to sit here, you’re going to sit there, I’m going to have a glass of Chardonnay, and… (another perfect pause) what will you have?” He deftly recounted the events in Rosarito: on-set affairs, firings and re-hirings, punch-ups between actors, random calls to set in the middle of the night and one spectacular tale of a real life attempted poisoning by clam chowder. It was, by all accounts, a bit of a mess. It all sounded terrifying. We closed up the bar several hours later with Martin assuring me that I would a) come out alive, b) have a lot of fun and c) work again. It was hard. I drank a lot. Cried a lot (Boys do cry). I missed home. We literally had cabin fever. Soon I realized that, like the American actors, the intelligent thing to do was to take a plane up the coast to Los Angeles whenever I had a couple of days off and audition for whatever I could. My manager found a place for me to stay in a guest house on the estate of Helen Mirren and Taylor Hackford. The back of the house led up to a little vantage point where you could look out and see almost the whole of LA. Every time I went up that little path and stood looking over this immense city I would feel a surge su of excitement, twinned with a very unusual feeling of calm. I would spend hours there, watching the lights, the cars, the little Spanish houses that had contained every person who’d ever come to this town with a few dollars and a dream. During one of those visits, I just knew. I knew that this was the city I would end up in. At some point in my life, it would just be time. And it was. Eventually. One day, on another set, I met an amazing girl. We quickly found out that we were both as crazy about moving to LA as we were we about each other and not long after that we packed our bags and alighted in a little rented house in the Fairfax district with lemon trees in the back garden. Not long after that we got married in Mexico, an irony which wasn’t lost on me, and few years later she gave birth to a beautiful daughter just after we made the move to our very own Spanishstyle house in the ‘flats’ of West Hollywood . just like the ones I used to look out on from my vantage point all those years a go. I’m not absolutely sure, because I haven’t been back, but I like to think ours is one of the ones you can actually see from there. Oh, and the crazy movie came out. It did ok, actually. actuall It was called Titanic.
My ‘Go West’ odyssey began when I was a star-struck schoolboy in England, and by star-struck I don’t mean infatuated with movie stars or athletes but heavenly bodies – the Moon, Mars and beyond. I’d watch the Apollo moon landings, and all I knew was that I wanted to be an astronaut, to take that one small step. I wrote to NASA and they responded with a personal letter telling me that opportunities for astronauts were very limited but had I ever thought about being an engineer? This caring and mentoring act had a huge impact on me. Here I was, a dead-end kid from Wolverhampton getting a personal letter from the U.S. space agency who was landing people on the Moon at a time when England was full of strikes, depression dep and no-future attitudes. I was working-class, smart, worked hard and I could have been accepted by any university in England but no matter how far I’d have gone I knew I’d always be looked down upon by the upper-class and not be able to realize my full potential. After NASA’s encouragement I was sold on coming to America and becoming a space engineer. Everything I did was focused on that goal. I built a man-powered aircraft hoping to win a ten-thousand pound prize that would finance my way out west. It didn’t win, but it got me noticed and that lead to a scholarship. I had teachers at my high school tell me I was throwing my life didn away by going to ‘America’s inferior university system.’ Such risk-averse, conservative attitudes only made me more convinced to go to a land where the motivations I felt and the dreams that inspired me were encouraged, not shot down. So with that scholarship and a lot of hard work and blatant self-promotion, I made it through degrees in Astronautics at Stanford University. I went on to work for every major aerospace company and for NASA. I’ve achieved many things in the space business, and I still believe one day I’ll get to go into space, probably p as a tourist on one of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flights, but for now, here I am in LA, flying satellites, living the dream and still star-struck by those heavenly bodies. Another of my passions is writing and while at Stanford I took advantage of the university’s interdisciplinary approach to advance my creative writing skills. So in addition to keeping satellites flying around the globe I enjoy a burgeoning career in the sex business as a writer of erotica novels. I’ve published ten full-length one-handed readers and hundreds of short stories. I hold court at Hustler Hollywood where whe I present spoken word evenings to a soundtrack that I DJ, blending another of my careers into the mix – rock and roll. To indulge my passion for music I founded the One Step Beyond nightclub in Northern California, and it still has an amazingly loyal following even though it’s now closed. I continue to DJ in clubs and present bands because if I hadn’t become a rocket star I would have been a rock star. I go home to England and I enjoy it; there’s a nostalgia factor and a comfortable feeling but it quickly wears thin, and I find myself craving an LA fix because it’s it so much more optimistic here. Trying lots of things and not getting down by failure but just going on to something new until you succeed is a way of life here. It reminds me of that Kipling quote on the player’s entrance at Wimbledon – “If you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” I think it should be inscribed under the Hollywood sign too because those words pretty much sum up the LA attitude that you need to have to survive and prosper here, and that we Brits in LA seem to embody. I was attracted to America because it was, as the cliché goes, the land of opportunity, opportunit and in that regard LA is the Epicenter of Opportunity for us Brits. You really can do it all here and not worry about the downside or not being from the right class or doing the right thing or speaking the right way. That’s the beauty of being a Brit in LA. There are no limits; where else could I have a life filled with sex, rockets, rock and roll and cricket!
Nigel Lythgoe TV Executive / Dancer / Choreographer I first came to America in 1972 as the choreographer for the wonderful British diva, Shirley Bassey. She was co-headlining at the Hilton Hotel, Las Vegas, with Bobby Darin. We arrived three days before opening night to acclimate. It was the first time I had experienced that kind of dry heat and as we stepped out of the airport I felt like I was walking into a giant hairdryer. Tom Jones was appearing at Caesar’s Palace, Jimmy Durante at the Desert Inn, and someone I had grown up worshipping was at the very hotel we were staying in. What a thrill when the following night with my heart pounding I got to see the greatest hero of my childhood, the King himself, Elvis Presley. he Who would’ve thought that some 30 years late — on my return to the U.S. with “American Idol” — I would become dear friends with his daughter, Lisa-Marie, and his ex-wife Priscilla. In 2007 for our charity episode “Idol Gives Back,” with the help of some televisual magic, I used Elvis’ 1968 soundstage performance of “If I Could Dream” to put him and Celine Dion together in a duet on the “Idol” stage. It was through this that I met the Presley family and became firm friends for life. It was “Idol” that brought b me to America to stay. In 2000, I revived an Australian format called “Popstars,” which was a behindthe-scenes look at putting together a pop band. Originally created in New Zealand, it was a huge hit out in the antipodes. I was determined to make it work in the U.K. As Controller of Entertainment and Comedy at London Weekend Television, I found it an easy sell to ITV. Sure enough it became an enormous success, and as I was a judge on it I became a “Saturday Night Celebrity” with my very own tabloid nickname, “Nasty” Nigel. It was the concept of “Popstars” that inspired Simon Fuller to create “Pop Idol.” Instead of putting together a band, he wanted to find a solo artist. Instead of judges picking the eventual winners, he wanted the public to vote. It stood to reason if the public liked them enough to vote for them, they would like their records too. Fuller was already hugely successful as a manager with the Spice Girls and S Club 7, so I was confident this would work. I left my job at LWT and joined Simon’s company, 19 Entertainment. I had no idea how successful it would turn out to be. Mind you, no one did! A year later, in 2001, “Pop Idol” was a huge sensation, and I traveled to the U.S. to make an American version. We were told to pack enough clothes for three th weeks. That’s how long people thought we would be on the air. After all, the show had been turned down by all the major broadcasters. Except FOX, who, if the truth be known, didn't have that much faith in it either. Against all odds and expectations, “Idol” has now been on the air for 12 seasons. It has received nearly 70 Emmy nominations, won the prestigious Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Governors Award and made $172 million for charity. The young artists from “Idol” have sold more than 100 million tracks. They have won countless awards, including Grammys, Billboard Awards and even an Oscar. We conquered America with a simple idea — a dream that could transform a coffee barista in Charlestown into the most famous face on television, that turned an Oklahoma farmer’s daughter into a global superstar. I feel we brought the “American Dream” back to America, and in doing so we have also made our own dreams come true. I came to America believing I would stay for three weeks, and I now realize I will remain here for the rest of my life.
Ross King Television host A boy from Glasgow dreamed of one thing - being a weatherman in Los Angeles. Cue the sound of a needle being scratched across a record! No, I wasn't being silly, but I did always have a childhood dream of LA shaped by TV shows - did the cops really race around like Starsky and Hutch? - songs about Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevard, and, of course, the Hollywood sign! Well, "cut to" 2013 and I can see that sign from every room in my house. Okay, I'll show off even more: I can see it from my pool and hot tub too! I was singing and acting at an early age then joined the local radio at sixteen to become a blonde long haired DJ. I followed my dream and first arrived in LA in 1995 to cover the Oscars for the BBC and I loved every minute. I had an offer to stay but was having a ball in London and so, reluctantly, I returned home. But I vowed to come back to a place that I strangely felt I had l ived in before. It was Christmas 1999, and I was waiting to go on stage at Sadlers Wells in London. I should have been buzzing, but I felt flat as a pancake. What was wrong? America was calling. And so a new year, a new millennium, a new life beckoned in LaLa land. I finished the show, got on a plane and, three weeks later, was on a beach in Malibu making a movie! I arrived at a time when they wanted Brits to be bad and I was. Well, my acting was! I played the hero's best friend who was a baddie! Acting class came next. For three years, Cameron Thor put me through my paces and, after three more movies, he got me ready to be…a TV weatherman! KTLA Channel 5 had an opening on the News at Ten alongside the legendary Hal Fishman. At first, I dismissed it. All I was interested in was waking up every morning and saying "It's sunny!". But then a friend told me David Letterman had started out as a weatherman. It was, said the friend, all about the personality in LA and not about the weather. Long story short, I applied, the auditions were done live on air and I got picked. After six months of almost eternal weathe sunshine, I was offered the Entertainment Anchor job. Six years and four Emmys later (plus a couple of movies) I said a fond farewell to KTLA and 'Hello' again to my old gang at GMTV on ITV (now Daybreak/Lorraine) to become its LA Correspondent. There have been highs and thankfully not too many lows. The highs have almost been higher than heaven. Like the time when, on KTLA, I sang "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer", accompanied on the mouth organ by Stevie Wonder. Or when I disappeared on holiday to Hawaii, not thinking I had a chance of winning my first news Emmy, only to receive a rather excited disappea and drunken phone call from my producer to tell me I had won! I've been privileged to have covered Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globes. I have met and interviewed just about every major star. More importantly though, I have made friends...real ones. Brits, Aussies and, yes, even Americans! I love the "anything is possible attitude" and the "go for it " mentality. I do love Americans. Well, one in particular: Brianna, a girl not from Ipanema but Pasadena, and soon to be my wife. She's got everything I love about Americans, plus she gets British comedy. Result! What do I miss about Britain? Square Squa sliced sausages and a wee bit more than that…my family. Most people who move here dread one flight: the one when you fly home after a loved one has passed. I recently made that hardest journey to say farewell to my Dad. I was so lucky to have had the most amazing father for such a long time and to have been able to share my American dream with him. He really wasn't sure about me coming here but after his first visit he simply said "I get it". He loved the PCH as it dropped down to the Ocean just after Malibu; it was his favourite place in the world and he's come back here…. with his ashes scattered scatte where he always felt at peace. And I know my dear old Dad is here with me…keeping an eye on his boy from Glasgow.