Best Sellers

Tempus certainly fugit. It's hard to believe that 22 years have passed since master comedic actor Peter Sellers appeared in these pages and on our cover in a special feature we called Sellers Mimes the Movie Lovers (Playboy, April 1964). Recently, though, that fact stared us in the face in the decidedly postadolescent form of Victoria Sellers, daughter of Peter and actress Britt Ekland, who was born about a year after that issue hit the stands. Two decades later, here she is, all grown up and starring in her own version of that memorable pictorial. Sellers, who died of a heart attack in 1980 at the age of 54, left some rather large footsteps in which to follow. But having been raised in the whirlwind of her parents' lives. Victoria has developed a fairly long stride herself. The quintessential movie-colony child, she has had four mothers and two fathers. She has a half brother and a half sister from an earlier marriage of her father's and a younger half brother born of her mother's union with movie and record mogul Lou Adler. When she was a teenager, her mother's live-in companion was rock star Rod Stewart--a situation most teens would envy. But for a child with Victoria's background, it was nothing special. "I didn't really know who he was," she admitted. "I suppose I had heard his songs, but when I was living there--that was from when I was 11 till I was about 15--I didn't really make the connection.

"Later on, I did go on tour with the band a couple of times. That was exciting. In London, right after a concert, we'd jump into this big limousine, and all these people would be running around, looking in the windows, and it would be just little me sitting there. I knew then that Rod was a star. But it didn't really matter to me when I was living at his house."

Nowadays, Victoria would attend any father-daughter functions with Slim Jim Phantom, ex-drummer for the Stray Cats, who now plays with a group called Phantom, Rocker and Slick.

"Yeah!" says Victoria, laughing. "It's Slim Jim Phantom, my mom's husband. He's 25!"

The idea boggles her mind, but she's used to unusual situations. "I like him, but I don't really consider him my stepdad. He's a nice man, and my mom loves him, and he makes her happy, so I guess I can't complain. I can handle it. My mom has gone out with younger guys than that." We tried to picture a visit to the principal's office with this cast of characters playing the leading roles. It wasn't easy.

"I know," agreed Victoria, rolling her eyes skyward. "If my mom knew she had to go in to school, she would get conservatived out. If she knows she has to dress like that, she will. But she's not usually the kind to adopt a conservative look. Now that she's got a rock-a-billy husband, she's kind of into that kind of clothing.

"But when I'm her age--she's 43 now--I hope I'm having as much fun as she is. I'm going to be swinging!"

The truth is, Victoria has been swinging all her life--though from her vantage point, it was just the way everyone lived. Born in London, she has lived in countless homes, from the south of France to Southern California. She's an expert on nannies and a walking catalog of private schools. To a large extent, she has had to raise herself, providing the continuum in her life through a succession of guardians. Her friends were her parents' friends and their children, so an evening at home was like a Hollywood opening night.

Victoria is reluctant to name-drop, considering it poor form. She tries to keep the Sellers name out of things. But she's beginning to realize just what a special life she has led:

"Dad was friends with David Niven, Spike Milligan, Cary Grant. He was really close to George Harrison. We used to go to his house, and my dad would play drums with him. George Hamilton--my mom was good friends with him; and Warren Beatty--my mom was friends with him. And Jack Nicholson. He's my little brother's godfather. My best friend used to be Alexandra Curtis; her dad's Tony Curtis. And then I was good friends with Jason Bronson, son of Charles Bronson, and Jennifer Nicholson--her dad's Jack."

Could any child fail to be affected by all this stellar commotion?

"I don't know," Victoria said, shrugging, "it's no big deal. It was fun. I wouldn't want to be, say, like some of my girlfriends who've lived with their parents in one house all their lives. Me, I've moved (concluded on page 142) from here to there, different schools all over the place. And I really wouldn't change it."

Life with the mercurial Peter Sellers provided some, well, interesting moments for the young Victoria. She, of course, viewed him differently from those who knew him only from his movies.

"I knew what he did--I went with him on the sets and saw it--but it was like, 'Oh, well, that's what he does.' I didn't fully understand.

"He was always nice to me. He almost never said no to anything. He always let me have parties or do whatever I wanted to do. He had a house in the south of France. We'd go there for the summer, and he'd get me a water-skiing instructor and water skis, all that stuff. I'd be out all day on my skate board or on my bike, or water-skiing or whatever, having a great time.

"But then there were other times. For instance, once I went to London to see him when he was staying at the Dorchester Hotel. I was sitting in the hotel room with Dad, his wife and my older brother and sister, and they were all watching my dad on a taped TV interview about his new movie, Being There. I wasn't watching. I was reading a magazine. Dad got mad because of that and threw his drink at me, told me that I was leaving on the next flight back to L.A.--and I had just gotten there. So off I went, crying, to my room. As it turned out, he didn't send me home, and later that night we all made plans to go out to dinner. My favorite color then was purple, so I was wearing a purple shirt, pants, shoes. My dad had this weird idea that some colors were bad, so he freaked out because I was wearing all purple. I couldn't change, because everything I had brought with me was purple. So then he got on me for that. I went to my room and didn't talk to him for, like, a day and a half. I just stayed in my room, and finally he called me out to say he was sorry. Then he gave me, like, $1000--this was when I was about 13--and told me to go out and buy a new wardrobe so that I wouldn't have to wear purple. Then we made up.

"I was used to it from an early age, so it was just 'Oh, God,' you know, 'my dad's freaking out; time to go downstairs,'" Victoria continues. "I just knew how to deal with it. And I knew that it would be OK.

It was just him having, like, a young kid's fit as an older man, and I could handle that, because I had seen it for a long time. I was mature for my age. I had always been with adults, so I could deal with that sort of thing. It didn't bother me that much. I mean, it did, but I wasn't going to freak out about it, like my dad.

"He would freak out and then, in the morning, he'd do this yoga thing on his head. 'Ohhhmmmmm,' he'd chant for, like, three minutes. He had this little statue of someone with a whole bunch of arms and an elephant nose, some yoga god. He was into the yoga thing, he and George Harrison. Together they got into all that Krishna, yoga stuff.

"Still, it was great. I wouldn't change it. I look at my friends' parents, their moms going out to tea together. My mom going out for tea with other moms would be a joke! She's wild compared with other mothers. No way would my mom fit in with that, especially with all the boyfriends she's had and her rock-a-billy husband. 'Sure, let's go out to dinner with the Feldsteins tonight, Mom. We're going to go to Chasen's.' My mom would go, 'Woo hooo!'"

With Victoria's background, a show-business career was inevitable. As will be the comparisons to her father. Luckily, Victoria's genes contain the spark of a similar comedic talent. She's animated and quick-witted, often doing little character bits or changing voices in midsentence. When she relaxes, she tends to sprawl, limbs going in all directions. It's partly youth; but you get the impression that she's not going to grow up much more than she has already. That's good news, we observed, because, in a lot of ways, show business demands perennial youth.

Victoria thought that over for a second, then laughed. "Possibly that's so, yeah. You grow up, but you find a way to just be silly all the time. And your excuse: 'I'm an actor; I don't know what you're talking about.' Yeah, I think so.

"To be successful as an actor, you've got to not mind anything, I think. I don't know how to say it. Just, like, be loose, carefree about things, like a kid is. You can always be childlike, because you're allowed to."

While she feels no real pressure to follow her father in the pratfall business, the desire and the opportunity are certainly there--and Victoria is preparing, notably by working with the Groundlings, a comedy improvisation group.

"I didn't have to choose to do comedy, but that's what I want to do. I want to do funny women in films. I want to be an actress who keeps going in the movies. I don't want to be someone who was in the movies when she was younger and then, when she's older, is forgotten."

Forget Victoria? Fat chance.