Esther Anderson (Jamaican actress)

Esther Anderson (born August 4, 1943 ) is a Jamaican filmmaker, photographer and actress, sometimes listed in credits as Ester Anderson.

Anderson was born in the parish of St. Mary on the north coast of Jamaica.

Her father Randolph Wymess Anderson was an architect and planter.

Her mother, Ivy Mae Mahon, belonged to a well-established Indian community in St Mary.

Esther studied at Highgate High School in Highgate, Jamaica, and at the Quaker Finishing School, where she joined the St. John Ambulance Brigade.

At the age of 14, she moved to Kingston to live with her paternal grandmother at the family home in Half Way Tree.

Organisers of a 1960 Miss Jamaica beauty contest invited her to participate as "Miss Four Aces".

At this time she met former Governor of Jamaica Hugh Foot, his aide-de-camp Chris Blackwell, Premier Norman Manley and Jamaica's first Prime Minister Alexander Bustamante.

The jury awarded her the first prize, but changed it to third prize while Anderson was still on stage after realizing she was underage.

Anderson's father was angry she had entered the contest.

This and the excessive public attention following the contest led Anderson to use the prize proceeds to travel to England.

Anderson helped to develop the Jamaican music label Island Records from the early 1960s, selling Jamaican records with Chris Blackwell from a Mini Cooper, writing lyrics, taking stock, and promoting and managing all the Jamaican artists that went through Island Records, including Millie Small, Jimmy Cliff, and Bob Marley and the Wailers.

Anderson took iconic photographs of Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer and contributed lyrics to the albums Catch a Fire, Burnin', and Natty Dread.

In parallel with her photography and work with Island Records, Anderson steadily developed a career as an actress.

She secured roles in a number of early 1960s British television shows, including Dixon of Dock Green and The Avengers.

She played roles in movies such as Henry Levin's Genghis Khan for Columbia Pictures, Robert Freeman's The Touchables for Twentieth Century Fox, Ted Kotcheff's Two Gentlemen Sharing, Jerry Lewis's One More Time for United Artists, and Sidney Poitier's A Warm December for First Artists.

In July 1961, Anderson arrived in London, where she began modelling for the artist Aubrix Rix, an illustrator for Woman's Own magazine whom she had met in Kingston with Dr Ken McNeill.

She studied drama at the Actor's Workshop in London.

She combined her studies with a modelling career, doing photo shoots and commercials for Africa and Asia.

She was tested and won the contract for a series of commercials as the dancing girl advertising Kent's Doncella Cigars.

She was offered a role in a documentary film by Jo Menell, who was a producer journalist for the television programme Panorama.

The film was directed by Riccardo Aragno.

They filmed part of the scenes at the Crazy Elephant club, where Anderson worked as a DJ at nights.

As a dancer, she had trained with Trinidadian Boscoe Holder, brother of Geoffrey Holder, while going to drama school.

Anderson and her sister Thelma (later Tiffany Anderson) auditioned for the producer Elkan Allan and director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, and they teamed up as dancers and choreographers for Ready Steady Go!, the number-one pop show on British television at the time.

They appeared as the Anderson Sisters, with The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Walker Brothers, Sonny and Cher, Cathy McGowan and Donovan.

Anderson was offered a part in a film that Marty Ransohoff was making in Europe called The Sandpiper (1965).

She helped to launch the film industry in Jamaica, acting as co-producer of the film The Harder They Come (1972), urging director Perry Henzell to give the lead to local Jimmy Cliff rather than to American Johnny Nash.

In this latter film, her role of an African princess won her a NAACP Image Award for Best Actress in 1973.

She coached Cliff for the partly autobiographical role and organised financing for the soundtrack, bringing in Chris Blackwell to put up the US$5,000 needed to complete the film as well as releasing the soundtrack on Island Records (1973).

Her photographic collection was exhibited at The Photographers' Gallery in London.

She is also represented by Bill Gates' agency Corbis and the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.

Anderson continues to develop her work as a photographer and documentary maker.

She has been exhibited by La Tete Gallery in Paris, curated by Galaad Milinaire, The Photographers' Gallery in London, the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, Canada, and in the Caribbean by Niki Michelin in Antigua.

Her portraits include as subjects: Louise Bennett, Marlon Brando, Bob Marley, Amanda Lear, Catherine Deneuve, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Denzel Washington, Jacques Chirac.

As a filmmaker, Anderson's first film Short Ends was an official selection at the 1976 Edinburgh Film Festival.

She researched the lives of people of colour at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, developing the idea of making films on positive role models.

The first of these films, The Three Dumas (the story behind The Count of Monte Cristo), was produced in collaboration with architect Gian Godoy under the banner of Trenhorne Films (UK), and is a dramatised documentary about novelist Alexandre Dumas and his ancestors: the grandson of the French Marquis de la Pailleterie and an enslaved African, Dumas overcame all the obstacles of prejudice to become a role model of contemporary literature.

Anderson herself portrays General Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution.

The avant-premiere of The Three Dumas took place in 2005 in France at Villers-Cotterets, birthplace of Dumas, to coincide with the inauguration of a statue of him in the presence of the French Minister of Culture.