John Standing: ‘My dad left me and my brother  just £60 each’

Sir John Ronald Leon, 4th Baronet, better known as John Standing, has been appearing on stage, TV and the big screen for more than 60 years. His latest film, The Great Escaper, based on the true story of a Second World War Royal Navy veteran who broke out of his nursing home to attend the 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations in Normandy in 2014, stars Michael Caine, whom he also appeared with in The Eagle Has Landed in 1976. The scion of an acting dynasty — “I come from nothing but rogues and vagabonds” — Standing’s maternal grandfather, Sir Guy Standing, was a Hollywood star in the 1930s and his mother, Kay Hammond, starred in Blithe Spirit in the West End during the Second World