How To Make It In Hollywood

10 years ago Jeremy Bolt made a low budget but commercially successful thriller called Shopping. Since then, no other contemporary Brit producer has ridden the Hollywood roller-coaster quite like Bolt from practically bankrupting Warner Brothers with Soldier 'the most expensive straight to video action movie in UK history' (his words) to an $80 million opener for current release Resident Evil and a project slated with Tom Cruise. In the second part of our guide we meet a Hollywood survivor, who's still only 36.

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When was the first time you went to Hollywood?
When I was a production assistant to Ken Russell who was making a film called Whore. It was like the first day at school. Exciting but very intimidating. All the films I consumed between the ages of 14 and 21 the key period when your tastes are formed I think - were US films. So I knew right away though that I wanted to get a handle on it somehow.

How did you break in?
I decided I had two options. The first would be working as a reader or junior executive at a studio and working my way up. A number of Brits, Peter Rice at Fox Searchlight, Paul Lister at Dreamworks, Benedict Carver, now the VP of Acquisitions at Screen Gems, have done this very successfully. I wanted more independence so I investigated the career of one of my heroes, Larry Gordon who was Walter Hill's (The Warriors) producer. I went for the second option, which was to attach myself to some sort of talent and get taken seriously that way.

Don't you need a Green card to work with a studio?
The Brits I mentioned may have attended universities or film schools out there. Basically if a studio wants to employ you they'll sort out the immigration issues.

Then you met Paul Anderson?
I met him and we immediately got on because we shared the same taste in action movies: Alien, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard etc. We made Shopping in the UK, which the Americans didn't exactly love but could recognise there was talent behind the camera and a desire to reach an audience. Then Paul was asked to do Mortal Kombat.