STAR TASTES THE HORROR OF BEIRUT

My hostage nightmare

Colin Firth had to submit to a nightmare ordeal in the rote of Beirut hostage John McCarthy. 

Colin suffers from claustrophobia and had to overcome his fear to film a harrowing scene in a confined space.

He was locked in the boot of a car... and covered in sticky tape from head to toe so that he was unable to move a muscle.

"Even being put into the boot for a short while was nerve-racking.

"Being wrapped up in tape like an Egyptian mummy was even more frightening.

There is nothing left sticking out except your nose," he says.
 

This was the horrific way hostages were moved from one hiding place to another.

"It was an appalling experience, even though we were trussed up like that for just a couple of hours. 

"The real hostages were forced to endure it for 10 hours under threat of death and must have wondered if they would ever get out alive."

Granada's controversial £1.5 million drama documentary "Hostages" was filmed
partly on location in Israel.

It shows the appalling deprivation and brutality endured by McCarthy and his fellow hostages during more than five years of captivity.

Colin said he found the eight weeks working on the programme a great ordeal. But it only gave him the merest clue as to what the hostages went through.

"I got the odd bad dream about it and was glad when filming was over," he says.

Colin insists he had no regrets playing McCarthy, who opposed the making of the programme and refused to co-operate in any way. For Colin felt "Hostages" was an appropriate and honest account of what happened.

"It is as much a celebration of the hostages as anything else."

McCarthy, who was freed in August last year and has written his own account of the ordeal, says he will not watch it.
 

Conrad Asquith appears as Terry Waite, and Oscar-winner Kathy Bates takes the role of Anderson's sister Peggy Say.

The programme also shows how relatives and friends struggled against official indifference.

Natasha Richardson, who plays McCarthy's girlfriend Jill Morrell, says: "I have boundless admiration for her.

"She kept on coming up against so much red tape and brick walls.

"She could have just curled up in the corner but she didn't. She fought and continued to fight."
***************