On Episode 83 of the Capes and Tights Podcast, Justin Soderberg is joined by actor Alex Hyde-White to discuss his recent book, In the Volume: My Life in Film and TV, as well as his role in the unreleased 1994 The Fantastic Four movie.
Alex Hyde-White, also known as Punch (at least to his friends), is an English-born American film and television actor. In 1978, he signed with Universal Pictures as one of the last “contract players” in Hollywood, in a group that included Lindsay Wagner, Andrew Stevens, Kim Cattrall and Sharon Gless.
Under contract to Universal Pictures at age 18, Hyde-White’s first television job was one line – “leave my mother alone” – spoken to star Jack Klugman on the television series Quincy M.E. He recurred in several episodes, each time as a different character and also made numerous appearances in Battlestar Galactica and later Buck Rogers in the 25th Century which also featured his father Wilfrid. The only time both father and son appeared on screen together was on The Merv Griffin Show in 1980. A clip from that show is featured in his film Three Days of Hamlet.
In 1994 he played the Marvel Comics superhero Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mister Fantastic, in a motion picture adaptation of Marvel’s flagship comics series The Fantastic Four. The film was low budget and made by certain parties in order to retain the film rights to the property; it was never released. Bootleg copies of the film made the rounds, and the film has acquired its own following. Hyde-White is regarded by many comics fans as the best embodiment of the character, who has since been played by Ioan Gruffudd and Miles Teller.
Through his production company TMG, named after his mentor, Washington attorney Steven Martindale, he produced the 2002 independent romantic drama Pursuit of Happiness, which starred Frank Whaley, Annabeth Gish, Adam Baldwin and featured Jean Stapleton in a cameo as the advertising agency’s owner. Stapleton’s son John Putch was the director. Putch had directed Alex previously in Deep Water and in Murder 101 for Hallmark. Alex has worked with Steven Spielberg three times, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as Young Henry Jones Senior and Catch Me If You Can as Dick Kesner, the divorce lawyer, and Tintin.
Alex Hyde-White‘s In the Volume: My Life in Film and TV is available wherever books are sold, including The Briar Patch. It is also available in audiobook format read by the author himself.
