I found it hard to express myself in school or through language and writing. 'I might still have been a struggling painter and decorator if I hadn't met Ewan McGregor,' said Charley (Above the best friends in 2007's Long Way Round) Acting saved me from my terrible dyslexia.ĭad wanted me to act because it was a clever way of boosting my confidence. The actors thought Dad was mad because Charlie was missing all the fingers on one hand and could barely hold the paddle himself. Charlie was the canoe expert who taught Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Voight how to paddle. That's all I can remember, apart from Charlie Wiggin, who became a lifelong friend. I always felt disappointed in later life, because as the director's son I should have got a better deal than a tricycle. I just sat and stared at the bike like some obsessed, starving dog. I was four at the time and my father said to me, 'If you sit there and do as you're told you will get that' - pointing to a beautiful red tricycle that was parked by the set. It was my dad's big movie as a director, and at the very end there's a scene where Jon Voight comes home to his wife. I was a child actor in Deliverance, but not the banjo player. I was paid with a tricycle for my first major film role. Now 44, Boorman lives in Fulham, London, with his wife Olivia and their two daughters, Doone and Kinvara. Last month he set off on a motorbike ride from Cape Town to Victoria Falls, and a third instalment of Long Way. Since then, Boorman has filmed two more long-distance adventures called By Any Means. They followed it up in 2007 with Long Way Down, riding from John O'Groats to Cape Town. The pair discovered they were both motorcycle-mad, and in 2004 they embarked on a 19,000-mile road trip from London to New York via Asia, in Long Way Round. His biggest break didn't come until 1997, however, when he met a young actor called Ewan McGregor. Charley went on to appear in a string of his father's films during the Eighties, such as Excalibur, The Emerald Forest and Hope And Glory. Yet the amiable biker was in the spotlight first, with a brief appearance in the 1972 thriller Deliverance, directed by his father, John Boorman. My fingers felt like crisp packets,' said Charley BoormanĬharley Boorman has made a career out of being Ewan McGregor's best mate. I was racing in the Paris-Dakar Rally when I had a bad crash. 'I once rode 250 miles with two broken hands.

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