Character: Austin Carmichael
Actor: Anton Lesser
Episode: Eagle Day
Anton Lesser was delighted to renew his 20-year working relationship with Michael Kitchen in Foyle's War.

"Michael and I first worked together in Jonathan Miller's BBC production of King Lear, back in 1982, then we did a lovely film about Freud together, and more recently we were both in Lorna Doone. It was lovely to have some scenes together in Foyle's War."

Anton plays Austin Carmichael, the curator of the Whittington Gallery in London, which houses a collection of priceless French Impressionist paintings and drawings. To protect the treasures in the war, Carmichael arranged to move them to Wales.

Says Anton: "Carmichael is pretty dapper and dandy and he's aware of how he looks. He's erudite and a bit of an intellectual who thinks his job is very significant in a grey world.

"He's a lover of beautiful things and anxious to protect them. He feels that there are people who appreciate beauty and those who don't. But he misjudges people - he starts off regarding Foyle as a philistine until he realises he is quite an aficionado. I think of him as a clever, but silly man."

While he was filming Foyle's War, Anton was also working on Peter Kosminsky's The Project for BBC1.

"I play an independent PR consultant - a spin doctor. It was good fun to do, although I don't know much about politics. My hair gets cut in the show from long to short, so the make-up department on Foyle's War had to work around that for Carmichael."

Anton's many other roles on TV include Waking The Dead, Peter Ackroyd's Dickens, Perfect Strangers, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Pure Wickedness, Vanity Fair, The Politicians Wife and The Mill on the Floss. His film work includes Charlotte Gray and Imagining Argentina.

On stage he has appeared in Art at the Wyndhams Theatre, Private Lives and The Birthday Party at the Royal National Theatre and the title role in Richard III at the RSC.

September 2002; Publicity Release