Duncan Heath

Duncan Heath (b1946) is a leading British talent agent and the co-chairman of the Independent Talent Group, Europe's largest talent agency, based in Soho, London. His clients include many leading figures in the British film industry, including Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Sam Mendes and Mike Newell.

Heath was born in 1947, the son of Sir Barrie Heath (1916–1988), a decorated former Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot and later chairman of the engineering giant GKN. Their relationship was not always cordial and Heath later recalled that his father disapproved of him entering the entertainment industry, adding that he "wanted me to go work in some dark Satanic mill somewhere".

Contrary to his father's wishes, he began his career in advertising, and then in 1971 joined the William Morris Agency in London as a runner, beginning at the very bottom of the industry. After less than a year he had been fired for behaviour he later described as "insolence and mild violence".

In 1973 he and his wife-to-be Hilary Dwyer founded the talent agency Duncan Heath Associates. In an interview with the Financial Times in 2002, Heath said "she introduced me to a lot of people - if it wasn't for her it wouldn't have happened." He found the money to start the business by betting the remains of his wages from William Morris on a horse that his mother had running at Newbury. The horse came in at 35:1 and Heath found himself with £3,500, a sum he described as "a shitload of money in the 1970s". He bought a fifty percent stake in a company owned and run by Christopher Long, a former ICM agent, though at first business was slow. "We spent most of our time hanging around theatres asking actors if they wanted an agent. Most of the time they just told you to fuck off."

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