Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Rockie girl Chrissie has carved out a career in the movies
A FORMER Rockwell High School pupil who has gone on to work on major blockbuster films has told how she was “written off” at school.
Chrissie Overs, who was one of the first special effects technicians in the country, has worked on Aliens, GoldenEye and Reign of Fire among a number of other big budget movies.
Speaking to the Tele, the prop maker, who has rubbed shoulders with Sigourney Weaver, Christian Bale and Pierce Brosnan, said she had no idea what she would do after leaving school at the age of 15.
After moving to Manchester in the 1970s and working with a photographer on catalogues, she picked up her big break on Granada TV.
Although admitting she had no background in model-making, she threw her name into the hat for a series of children’s puppet films.
She said: “I had been advised that Granada TV was working on some new children’s puppet films. I wasn’t convinced I would get far. I hadn’t been to college or anything like that.”
Chrissie went down to Granada studios with a cardboard box that contained a few of her homemade models and was offered the chance to start work days later.
She added: “I suppose that was really the start for me.
“I went on to work at a propmaking company at Shepperton Studios for a while.”
Chrissie’s big break in the film industry would come in the form of 1980s sci-fi adventure blockbuster Flash Gordon. She said: “I was wandering around the studios one day and saw a workshop — it was the making of Flash Gordon.
“Through the puppet films I’d done at Granada, I had a union card, so I walked in and asked if they needed any model-makers.
“As soon as they knew I had a card, they said I could start — that was the first major feature I did.
“Once you’ve done one film and they know that you are up to the job, you go on to other ones from there.”
Chrissie also became part of another 1980s hit movie, Aliens, working as part of the creature effects crew.
She said: “In those days effects were much more creative — you actually had to make things for real and make them happen.
“I also did a scene on GoldenEye where Bond and one of the females rolled down into a satellite dish.
“They were actually just threeinch dolls loaded up with springs, so they were wobbly.
“I tied them on to a fishing