GLOUCESTER, England (AP) — Waiting in the wings on opening night of “Beauty and the Beast,” Michael Edwards felt the nerve-wracking jitters he experienced four decades earlier staring through thick glasses down a perilously steep ski jump.
The athlete-turned-performer better known as “Eddie the Eagle” was no stranger to fear, but this was different: he was about to face a theater packed with children.
In ski jumping, he might break his neck; here he only risked tripping over his lines and failing to win laughs.
Edwards has added acting to the bustling business of being Eddie the Eagle, feathering his nest and stretching his celebrity far longer than his brief flight as Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper won him fame despite finishing last in the 1988 Calgary Games.
There is almost nothing he hasn’t done since he entered the spotlight. He has recorded songs, danced on ice, dressed twice as a chicken (eagle suits are scarce), been interviewed in an Amsterdam brothel, filmed car and spectacle commercials, and spoken for hours at a time about what he knows best: how he landed here.
“I’m always very, very grateful that I got christened Eddie The Eagle and it’s amazing that I’m talking about it 38 years later,” he told The Associated Press. “I’m hoping that I encourage other people to get out there, get off their bum and go for their dream.”
Unlikely beginnings
It didn’t appear early on that Edwards was headed for fame.
He grew up — and still lives — on the edge of the Cotswolds, in western England where snow is rare and the hills would never be mistaken for mountains. His father expected his son to follow him into plastering — as he did after his father and grandfather.
But an adolescent Edwards had different designs after a school trip to the Italian Alps sparked a passion for skiing. He became a fixture at Gloucester Ski Centre, where a bristly plastic surface shorter than three football fields offers year-round skiing.
He became a good downhiller, but didn’t make the British ski team for the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. Undeterred, he set his sights higher after realizing Britain had no ski jumpers.
A legend is born
Edwards went to Lake Placid, New York, where he rummaged for skis and gear, including a helmet with no strap that he secured with string and oversized boots he padded out with five pairs of socks.
At 22, he was learning what the world’s best jumpers began mastering as children.
“It was like a crash course. And, yeah, I did take huge risks,” he said. “When I finished ski jumping, I was just as scared to do my last jump as I was to do my first. You never get used to it.”
Short on cash and lacking sponsors, he scrounged food from trash bins, slept in barns, a car and even a mental hospital in Finland — not to mention medical hospitals.
“It would be easier to name the bones I haven’t broken,” he quipped.
He fractured his skull twice — while wearing a helmet — broke his jaw, smashed his collarbone in five places, broke three ribs and damaged a kidney and a knee. It didn’t stop him.
He worked up to bigger jumps and competed internationally. Despite efforts by British sports federations to prevent him competing, he eventually jumped far enough to represent Great Britain at the Olympics.
From chump to champ
Edwards arrived in Calgary to a sign welcoming “Eddie the Eagle” — unaware it was for him.
Reporters loved his enthusiastic underdog determination and physical appearance. He was hefty by ski jumping standards, had a lantern jaw, wispy moustache and eyes that bulged behind thick lenses in his pink-rimmed aviator-style glasses.
Few outside the ski jumping world remember the winner, “Flying Finn” Matti Nykänen, who soared over 120 meters and swept all events.
The most famous remains the man who finished last — 19 meters behind his nearest competitor, but setting a new British record of 71 meters (77 yards).
Edwards flapped his arms madly after landing and the crowd of 85,000 went wild.
He returned to a hero’s welcome, escorted by police through throngs at London’s Heathrow Airport.
“My feet didn’t touch the ground for, oh gosh, about three and a half, four years,” he said. “I was traveling all over the world opening shopping centers, golf courses, hotels, fun rides, doing lots of TV shows and radio shows, meeting film stars, TV stars, musicians, bands, famous people, royalty, all over world and it was amazing.”
Eagle’s wings clipped
The ski jumping world was less enamored and made sure there will never be another ski jumper like Edwards.
“We have thousands of Eddie Edwards in Norway,” groused Torbjorn Yggeseth, the ski jump technical director for the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), the sport’s regulatory body. “But we never let them jump.”
What’s known as the “Eddie the Eagle rule” set a minimum distance beyond his reach and ended Edwards’ jumping ambitions.
As promotional opportunities evaporated, Edwards returned to plastering.
Then a winning turn on Splash! a reality diving contest, helped revive his second career in 2013. Three years later, the biopic “Eddie the Eagle” starring Taron Egerton as Edwards and Hugh Jackman as his coach allowed him to retire his trowel.
He now earns 3,000 to 12,000 pounds ($4,000-16,000) for talks several days a week, helping him recover from financial setbacks.
Much of the small fortune he earned from his first wave of fame vanished because a trust fund required to maintain his amateur status was poorly managed, he said. An emotionally taxing divorce in 2016 with the mother of his two daughters drained more savings.
Long-awaited medal
The “Beauty and the Beast” adaptation at the Watersmeet Theatre in Rickmansworth, outside London, is his second foray into pantomime.
Panto, as it’s known, is a uniquely British take on classic fairytales at Christmastime that blends music, dance, slapstick, cross-dressing, jokes for kids and bawdy humor for their parents and often stars minor celebrities alongside aspiring actors.
Zany plot twists sneak in references to Edwards’ fame even though half the audience wasn’t old enough to have even seen the movie when it came out — never mind watching him in the Olympics.
“Jump” by Van Halen plays as his character, Professor Crackpot, the bumbling father of Belle, enters the stage toting his latest invention — jet-propelled skis.
At 62, Edwards’ once-blond hair is shaved, his moustache is missing, his underbite has been surgically corrected and his glasses are gone — his nearsightedness corrected with implanted lenses.
A recurring gag has children in the audience shout, “on your head,” when he fumbles in search of his gigantic eyeglasses.
He later skis on stage in a replica of his baby blue ski suit from Calgary. He tucks into a downhill position to outrun Santa’s sleigh bearing down from a video projected behind him. Edwards flies off a jump, sticks the landing and is presented with a gold medal.
The scene served no plot point, but recognized what Edwards is best known for: taking a leap and landing on his feet. It’s a crowd pleaser.
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