Actor Martin Shaw hated playing Doyle in The Professionals and was “miserable” throughout the years of filming and said that prior to taking the role, he was a “real actor”.
Actor Martin Shaw has revealed how he hated playing Doyle in TV Show The Professionals – saying he was “miserable” the whole time.
The 80-year-old played Raymond Doyle – an highbrow ex-cop – alongside William Bodie, a ladies’ man and ex-paratrooper.
The pair work for CI5, a secret agency used for fighting crime beyond what police can handle. They combat terrorism and other threats to national security that leave simple coppers out of their depth.
Speaking this week about being in the fast-paced and hard-hitting show, which ran for five series from 1977 to 1983, Shaw said that prior to taking on the role, he was a “real actor”.
Among the roles he played were acting opposite Laurence Olivier in The National Theatre’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday in 1973, and the lead in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1974.
When asked what it was like to be in The Professionals, which had around 15 million viewers, he said he hated it.
He said: “I’d had three or four major successes in the West End, at the National Theatre, the Royal Court and on television.
“When the role of Doyle came along, I took it without thinking where it might lead.
“After the end of the first series, I asked if I could be released and, quite rightly, they held me to my contract.
“This meant four and a half years of misery because the independent production company was not nice to work for, and the loss of privacy was horribly uncomfortable.”
He added: “All the kudos I’d built over ten years vanished for a spell as I became identified with that kind of role.”
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