Spaundau Ballet’s Kemp Brothers Shoot Their Way to Screen Success

“Ugh!” cries Londoner Gary Kemp. “The smog is really getting to me. My eyes are getting really itchy and are red all the time. I can hardly seen any buildings. Is it always like this?”

Gary, 30, and his 29-year-old brother Martin are catching a few rays poolside at the Bel Age Hotel. They’ve been on a whirlwind tour of America to promote their film “The Krays,” a violent melodrama about the powerful British gangsters, twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray, who became media darlings in the 1960s, befriending such stars as Judy Garland and George Raft while slicing up and gunning down their enemies.

Though best known as members of the rock band Spandau Ballet, the Kemp brothers were child actors. “We also did a lot of stuff as teen-agers,” says the outgoing Gary, who plays the psychotic Ronnie. “But you don’t have to think much about it then. I get cold chills when I think back to what we took on. They’re so infamous, so larger-than-life. Yet, this was difficult to turn down.”

In 1969, the Krays were sentenced to 30 years in prison for the grisly murder of two of their foes. Reggie is in solitary confinement and Ronnie is an a maximum security psychiatric prison.

The Kemps went to visit the now 56-year-old Ronnie before production began last year. “Since he is in a hospital he gets to wear his own clothes,” says the soft-spoken Martin, who plays Reggie. “He was wearing a dark blue suit and a silk shirt. It was a weird experience. I felt it was slightly distracting. It was distracting enough not to meet Reggie.”

“The Krays” was the No. 1 box-office attraction in England earlier this year for five weeks. Its success has convinced the Kemps to seek their fame and fortune on the silver screen.

Gary whips off his sunglasses and peers up into the blazing sun. “I have some regrets,” he says. “Part of me wishes I had pursued acting, but I suppose I thought there would be better parties in the music business. I fancied myself a young man traveling the world.”

“When you’re young, the grass is always greener on the other side,” says Martin with a smile. “But that’s what makes life interesting, doesn’t it?”