Actress Tara Fitzgerald told last night how she was mugged at knifepoint
on her way to star opposite Peter O'Toole in a West End play.
She passed out when she was dragged into a garden and robbed in Notting
Hill, West London, shesaid.
'It was very frightening. Apart from a few scratches I wasn't hurt,
but it has left me very shattered and, really, I want to forget all about
it and put it behind me.'
Staff at the Apollo in Shaftesbury Avenue, where she made her West End
debut last week in KeithWaterhouse's new play, Our Song, said O'Toole
was 'horrified' and 'very comforting'.
Miss Fitzgerald, 24, said she was attacked after leaving lunch with
friends on Saturday afternoon. Afterwards she took a taxi to the
theatre, where staff had already alerted the police to her failure to arrive
for the matinee.
Her agent, Caroline Dawson, said: 'She was wandering around in a daze
afterwards and hasn't even been able to tell me if anything was taken.
Her understudy Cara Konig went on in the matinee, but Tara went on in the
evening and she and O'Toole gave the performance of their lives.'
Producer Michael Redington said: 'Tara's a very plucky girl. She was
terribly shaken but insisted on going on.'
Miss Fitzgerald starred in the film Hear My Song and the TV series
The CamomileLawn and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
