 'Drink's for squares, man': in such words, hinting at darker depravities, does Adam Faith announce his rebel's credentials in his debut film, Beat Girl (d. Edmond T.Gréville, 1959). It is not his fault that yesterday's iconoclasts look so tame forty years on. Born Terence Nelhams in London on 23 June 1940, he became a good-looking, popular teen singing star of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and first hit success with John Barry's 'Drumbeat' series (BBC, 1959). A competent actor, he gave two impressive thug studies in Never Let Go (d. John Guillermin, 1960) and Mix Me a Person (d. Leslie Norman, 1962), ably supported David Essex in Stardust (d. Michael Apted, 1974; Faith was BAFTA-nominated) and Roger Daltrey in McVicar (d. Tom Clegg, 1980), and had some success on TV, notably in the Soho street-life series Budgie (ITV, 1971-72), as an aspiring loser, and in Love Hurts (BBC, 1992-94). He went into music management in the 1970s. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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