Competition Judge

Gayle Hunnicutt, a native of Forth Worth, Texas, studied drama and film making at the University of California (UCLA). Her work there with the legendary filmmaker Jean Renoir led to a contract with Universal Studios and three films: P.J., The Eye of the Cat and Marlowe. At the same time, she met David Hemmings, a dazzling young English actor who was to become her first husband and the father of her son, Nolan Hemmings. David’s starring role in Blow-Up catapulted the young couple into the whirlwind of Hollywood. Luckily, they moved to London in 1969 where Gayle continued to work as an actress and has lived ever since. Her numerous film roles include Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy; L’Homme sans Visage, directed by the legendary Franju; The Spiral Staircase; The Sellout; Once in Paris; and Dream Lover.

Her first three Hollywood films were followed by a number of classic series for the BBC, The Golden Bowl and The Ambassadors, both by Henry James, and Colette’s The Ripening Seed, were elegant and intense costume dramas; they were followed by The Fall of Eagles in which she played the last Czarina of Russia.

Ride Across Lake Constance, at Hampstead, began Her theatre career in 1973. She played Hedda Gabler, Peter Pan, the young moralist, Hester, in Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, Yelena in Uncle Vanya and Lady Macbeth, Olivia, Viola and Miranda among Shakespeare’s heroines. She has also performed in plays by Shaw, Priestley, Clifford Odets, Ionesco, Simon Gray and Lillian Hallman.

During the 1990s, Gayle continued to appear in numerous television plays and series including Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett, Dream West, with Richard Chamberlain, Strong Medicine, with Dick van Dyke, Target, with Gene Hackman, and 19 episodes of Dallas. She played leading roles in The Saint, A Woman of Substance, Tales of the Unexpected and Voices in the Garden. Gayle has also made many appearances in Radio plays and Audio books, narrating John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird, Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, among others.

Her favourite leading men have included Gene Hackman, Paul Scofield, Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Jeremy Brett, Robert Powell, Dick van Dyke, David Hemmings, James Garner, George Peppard, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Michael York, Roddy MacDowell, Matt Dillon, Peter Fonda, Daniel Massey and fellow Texan, Larry Hagman, with whom she appeared in Dallas. With her acting partner, Frank Barrie, she has performed The Life and Loves of Edith Wharton around the world.

Gayle is Chairman of the London Shakespeare Workout (LSW), a charity run by Bruce Wall who leads Shakespeare workouts in prisons throughout England. She also finds time for her Buddhist studies and is a published author – Health and Beauty in Motherhood, Viking Press 1984. Gayle married the journalist and editor Simon Jenkins in 1978 and they have a son, Edward, 22, who is deputy editor of the music magazine, Under Cover. Her son Nolan is married with a new baby. His acting career has spanned theatre with Peter Brook and starring in a Russian costume drama being released ...