Hooten & The Lady

Season 1 ITV Choice (*123) 20:00 Action

Michael Landes plays treasure hunter Ulysses Hooten in Indiana Jones-style adventure series Hooten & The Lady (2016-current) and it’s a role he calls “my favourite”. That’s hardly surprising, since his career got off to a rough start… Michael played Jimmy Olsen in the sci-fi show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997) but was fired at the end of season 1 “because I apparently looked too much like Dean Cain, who played Clark Kent/ Superman,” says the 44-year-old.

Michael jokes that he’s been act1

ing since school – “I was the class clown – I went to a Catholic school and the nuns shouted at me all the time”.

He only considered acting as a job 2

after being cast in his high school stage production of Annie Get Your Gun. By 16, he’d bagged his first TV role, playing Kirk for a few episodes in iconic drama show The Wonder Years’ (1988-1993) first and second seasons.

For his role as Jimmy, Michael fol3

lowed paparazzi around in LA to learn their techniques. He could’ve looked closer to home though – Mike’s father-in-law is acclaimed Scottish photographer Harry Benson, best known for his work with The Beatles, Michael Jackson and US presidents.

In October 2000 he married 454

year-old Wendy Benson, who played Barbara in sitcom Unhappily Ever After (1995-1999). They met while shooting indie movie The Gentleman From Boston in 1999 and have two kids, daughter Mimi and son Dominic.

Hooten & The Lady was filmed 5

largely in SA and while Michael says “it’s a lovely place”, he’s petrified of snakes and adds, “Our snake wrangler found, like, 37 in one week. Five were black mambas – it was crazy!”