Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis (23 page)

The big day, June 29, dawned fine and dry. As was the tradition, I’d spent the night before the wedding – after cleaning up all the dog poo, of course – in a fancy hotel. I went for a swim in the hotel pool in the morning. Sam had a much more stressful start to the day – hairdo, makeup, bridesmaid dressing. I was ready in five minutes, just popped on my morning suit and
voila
.

As a treat to herself, Sam’s Nan had stayed at the hotel, too. As I made my way to breakfast, she emerged from her room ahead of me. She looked quite frazzled.

“Everything all right, Nan?”

“Oh no,” she said with a croak, “I’ve been up all night sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend.”

I had a friend video the entire wedding and, although he was involved in TV, I belatedly realized that he had nothing to do with actual camerawork. When we played it back I thought we’d mistakenly just got the cuts from the edit. All he did was point it in our general direction while he nattered away to somebody else. I tried to edit it but it was impossible; the best bits were when he filmed the table decorations during the speeches, and an extended shot of a polished hubcap (while we were getting out of the car outside the church). You could just see me in the reflection.

Daniel was grinning like a Cheshire cat when I joined him at the front of the church. “You should have seen the choir’s faces when I arrived,” he said. He did look quite extraordinary in his morning suit; with the top hat he was about seven feet tall. “But that was nothing compared to when they saw you.”

It was true, the poor things were all over the shop; I could tell Sam was on her way down the aisle from all the notes they were missing, even the organist was playing about as well as a blind monkey.

I turned to see my fiancée coming toward me. She looked absolutely stunning. It was quite something. I take most things in my stride but getting married was about as emotional as it gets. I’m sure other grooms will know what I’m talking about when I say there’s nothing quite like the moment when you hear the triumphant opening bars of the
Wedding March
and your bride enters the church. As I stood there and watched Sam walk down the aisle in front of our closest friends and family, I understood why marriage is the ultimate declaration of love.

The ceremony, I’m relieved to say, ran very smoothly – Daniel hadn’t lost the rings and nobody fluffed their lines.

However, things got a lot more “interesting” after the ceremony. As we left the church someone with a gravelly voice yelled, “Over ’ere, Mr. and Mrs. Davis!” We turned and were caught in the gaze of one lone paparazzo who’d gate-crashed the wedding. No celebs were invited but this guy still thought it would be worth it – he spotted that Sam was five months pregnant and in the next day’s
News of the World
we saw ourselves pictured under the headline: “Willow’s Shotgun Wedding.”

We made it to the reception and, after we’d eaten a magnificent meal, Daniel tapped his glass. Everybody turned to listen. I was more than a little nervous as to what he was about to say.

“I’ve known Warwick for just about my whole life,” Daniel began, “and I can safely say we’ve been through a great deal together and nothing ever caused our friendship to founder . . . Although there was one occasion when we nearly lost it and it was over a woman.” He grinned.

I looked at Sam and smiled nervously. What the hell was he talking about?

Daniel pulled out a very old, very crumpled bit of paper. I could see it had been ripped into dozens of tiny pieces but someone had stuck all the little bits back together with sticky tape.

Oh dear.

The penny had dropped. It was the letter I had written all those years ago detailing why Daniel didn’t like a girl that I was interested in. “Goodness, is it me or is it hot in here?” I said, reaching for a glass of champagne and trying not to turn bright red as Daniel started to read the letter in the voice of a teenager.

“Hello,
mon cheri,
that’s French for ‘my dear.’ I’m sitting bored in my French lesson thinking of you . . .”

My toes curled until I looked like I was wearing a pair of Persian slippers.

“How about
Le Kiss?
”

It was so, so painful to hear but I knew that worse was yet to come.

“P.S. You know Daniel said he couldn’t go to the party with you, well that’s because he doesn’t want to go with you. But I’ll go with you. How about it?”

Daniel had read it brilliantly, in a mock lovestruck style, and the entire room erupted into laughter.

I had to admit it was a brilliant speech.

“I’ve been waiting to do that for ten years,” Daniel said, “and it was even better than I imagined.”

“You just wait until your wedding,” I joked, “you’ll be lucky if your bride, if you ever find one, stays with you long enough to go on the honeymoon.”
^b

We honeymooned in San Francisco. George had invited us to his annual Lucasfilm family picnic at the Skywalker Ranch on July 4. The ranch is on Lucas Valley Road and this, so I’m led to believe, is a coincidence; it was already called that before George moved in. The invite said: “Bring a dish for pot luck.” Guests all bring a dish that goes on a huge table and everyone just digs in. It was a really incredibly idyllic family event; you could swim the beautiful man-made Lake Ewok or visit the on-site fire station for a ride in a fire truck. Then there was the animal barn, the fruit gardens, and the vineyards – and if none of the food on display took your fancy, you could visit the on-site restaurant for a fresh steak before taking in a movie in “The Stag” – the 300-seater Art Deco–style cinema.

So when George said, “Warwick, why don’t you and Sam stay on the ranch for a few days?” I only had to think it over for a nanosecond. “I’ll cancel our hotel reservations,” I replied.

The house we stayed in was amazing; every single room had a TV and video player. The windows were made from specially commissioned stained-glass designs. There was a huge station clock in the hallway, the biggest I’d ever seen. The main bedroom was so spectacular that we decided we wouldn’t spoil its perfection and slept in the children’s room.

We didn’t want to outstay our welcome, so after a couple of days we continued our honeymoon as planned. After having lunch with George we bade him farewell and headed to San Francisco to get some wheels.

We rented a red Ford Thunderbird. It came with a basic set of hand controls. You simply pulled back a lever on the steering wheel with your right hand and the car accelerated; and to brake, you just pushed back down. After a short practice run around the parking lot, I felt able to take on the streets of San Francisco.

We drove up Lombard Street, home to James Stewart’s character in
Vertigo
. It was indeed a street designed to cause light-headedness. It was on a thirty-degree hill and snaked its way up in a series of hairpin bends. It’s understandably known as the “crookedest street in the world.”

“Bring it on,” I thought. I was keen to get to the top and have a look at San Francisco from the surrounding hills. Almost as soon as we started to climb we were caught in a traffic jam. As we slowed to a halt, I looked for the handbrake.

“Where’s the handbrake?” I asked Sam, trying to balance the car, frantically pushing and pulling the lever back and forth.

We couldn’t see it anywhere. Eventually, Sam looked on the floor. “It’s down here!”

“Why, in a car adapted for disabled people, would they put the handbrake near their feet?” I wondered.

We were trapped. The street was one-way, there were no U-turns and no parking, so there was no choice. The only way was up. We were now stuck in this traffic jam, unable to reach the handbrake, so I sat there yanking at the “stop” and “go” control, alternately trying to stop us crashing into the cars in front and behind. They must have thought I was insane. I could see the driver in front nervously checking his rearview mirror, looking at two petrified little people sweating profusely and growing larger as we rocketed toward him before skidding to an abrupt halt, in a car doing a pretty good impression of a pimpmobile with a hydraulic suspension. I’d then release the brake and we’d roll back down toward the driver behind us with looks of dread on our faces before I thrust the lever back to compensate for the incline, spun the wheels, and shot forward again.

Finally, seventeen hair-raising hairpin turns later, we made it to the top. I was exhausted.

“Right,” I said, turning to Sam, dripping with sweat. “Seen enough of San Francisco?”

Sam nodded. We hit the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the world’s greatest drives, and cruised south, past picturesque Half Moon Bay and Big Sur with the Santa Lucia Mountains poking above the distant haze. We didn’t have a particular plan, we’d just stop once it got dark and stay in the first motel we could find – nearly all of them reminded me of the Bates Motel from
Psycho
.

It was incredible but all too soon we were on our way back to the much humbler-sounding Peterborough – just in time for the Stilton Cheese Rolling Championships.

When we returned from our honeymoon, everything was great – except for one thing.

We were flat broke.

Everything we owned was secondhand or had been donated to us by friends and family. The only new things we had were presents for our unborn baby (we’d opted to wait and see whether Sam was carrying a boy or a girl), who was now due in a few weeks. A brand-new crib was loaded with toys, clothes, and other baby essentials.

Although Sam’s pregnancy had been incredibly smooth, the doctors told us that the baby’s potentially large size meant she would need a Caesarean – so we already knew the birthday.

However, just as I’d finally decided to become an actor, the work had suddenly dried up. I had found an excellent agent, Paul Lyon-Maris, and constantly pestered him but at the time there was nothing for a short actor. Had this been a wise decision? Was I going to have to get a job selling insurance?

On the day we were due to go to the hospital for the birth, I heard something very heavy thud through the letterbox.

Could that be . . . a script?

It was.

The return address was Hollywood, California. I excitedly tore the bulky packet open, pulled out a wad of paper, and looked at the front page. It had one word on it:

Leprechaun
.

“Aha!” I thought, “this is more like it.” Just then it was time to head for the hospital. The plan was for Sam to give birth by Caesarean. We traveled down with Denise, Sam’s mum, and it was soon time to say good-bye. All I could do was tell Sam I loved her before the porter wheeled her away.