AFTER years of sleeping rough in Brighton, reformed drug addict Stephen Smith is having his breathtaking life story turned into a big-screen movie. James Morrison reports.

WHEN the producer of the original Star Wars film first read the drug-addled life story of a Brighton street sleeper, he was deeply shocked.

But as he turned its final haunting pages, Gary Kurtz just knew he would have to make the book into a movie.

The Hollywood mogul, whose other credits include American Graffiti and Return to Oz, was never one to overlook a good story idea.

And while his personal taste had generally veered more towards fantasy than social realism, Addict by Stephen Smith certainly fitted the bill.

To Stephen, the response his painful memories elicited from Gary was astonishing.

Now a successful 56-year-old businessman living near Munich in Germany, Stephen told the Argus: "I'm not a writer, and I never want to write another book.

"But the years of amphetamine addiction I went through were so horrific that I had to put them on paper.

"The book was published about 18 months ago, and since then it's sold 41,000 copies in the UK, and has been published in 15 countries, including China and India.

"I wanted to get it published in America, so someone suggested I send it to Gary Kurtz, because he was interested in new material.

"So I did so by courier, but little did I know that he had already bought it from Waterstones and read it.

"When I found out, I asked him if he had enjoyed it. He said: 'No, I didn't enjoy it at all'. But he added: 'It's a horror story, and it needs to be told on film'."

To anyone reading the extraordinary semi-autobiography for the first time, "horror story" might seem something of an understatement.

In it, Stephen tells how he descended from riches to rags through a blurred cycle of drug abuse and petty crime.

Born of a wealthy Jewish family in London, Stephen was brought up largely by his nanny, an eccentric who repeatedly read him the same Robin Hood story night after night.

When this woman, to whom he had become attached, was sacked by his parents, a traumatised Stephen, now aged 12, set about playing truant from school.

It wasn't long before he began drinking wine heavily, and setting off on his bike to rob the rich - though he never quite got around to giving to the poor.

After eventually being caught, he was sent to an asylum, at his father's behest, where he claims he was sexually abused and given his first amphetamine tablet by a doctor.

Later, during a drug-crazed ten-year marriage to a Maltese girl, he adopted a playboy lifestyle, masterminding robberies and other major crimes.

Then one day the bubble burst, and Stephen lost everything.

He found himself wandering the streets as a vagrant, often spending days at a time in skips at Whitehawk, Brighton.

Soon nothing else mattered to him except his next fix, whether it be a tablet or a commandeered bottle of methylated spirit.

Only after a chance meeting with a young German girl, who was on holiday in London, did he see the light.

Stowing away across the Channel with only a slip of paper bearing her address, he somehow reached her and, after lengthy treatment for his addiction, found himself falling in love.

Today, Stephen lives with his wife, Hannelore 44, and their two sons, Julian, 13, and Oliver, 14, in Bavaria, where he works with recovering addicts.

But however painful the memories of his former life, he felt he had to immortalise them as a warning to others.

And crucial to his reconstruction was the depiction of parts of Brighton as a haven for street sleepers.

He explained: "I used to doss a lot in Whitehawk.

He adds: "Brighton has quite a lot of poignant memories for me.

"I remember sleeping under the Palace Pier, and being arrested when I ate a whole meal there once and then revealed I had no money."

Since Stephen wrote Addict, several prospective producers have shown an interest in making it into a film.

But Stephen has always insisted any big screen version of the book should be just as harrowing as the reality of addiction.

He says: "Like the book, this film will be called Addict, and I want it to show drugs in all their true horror."

After some searching, Stephen found in Gary Kurtz exactly the same sense of priorities.

Gary, now working from the London-based offices of Catalyst TV explains his involvement.

He says: "I retired from the Hollywood scene because I got really fed up with the development process.

"Since then, I've spent two or three years working with my own writing, but in the last couple of years I've been getting together with European writers.

"When I read this book I decided it was a very, very good evocation of the kind of lifestyle it depicted.

"Now we are working on a screenplay and interviewing directors, with a view to starting filming, partly in Brighton, towards the end of the year."

With a provisional budget of anything between £3 million and £6 million, Addict the movie will hardly be a blockbuster.

But then, it's not intended to be.

Gary explains: "We haven't finalised any of the cast yet, but we don't want movie star names in this, because it would diminish the message.

"And we are determined this will be an all British production with a British cast and crew."

In an effort to make the finished film of Addict as authentic as possible, Stephen and Gary are offering Argus readers the chance to sign up as extras.

And they would also like a man and woman with local accents in their 20s to play two small parts.

To get involved, send an SAE to Stephen Smith, c/o 2 Blake Close, Galley Common, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 9RQ.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.