Home   |   News   |   Sitemap   |   Search   |   Contact Us   |   Request a Quote

Toronto's Minders

It's more brains than muscle, say the gentle giants who shadow the stars and suits

You've seen them. Those guys with the wired thingees in their ears. Those no-neck guys in bad suits shadowing celebs. If Gianni Versace had one, perhaps he'd be alive today. At least that's what some specialists contend.

Bodyguards needn't be 6 foot 6 and weigh 300 pounds - although if they are 5 foot 2 and weigh 70 pounds, the neighbourhood bully is going to walk all over them.

Some actors like Sly Stallone and Wesley Snipes actually prefer them on the diminutive side, so as not to be dwarfed by their protectors. It's an Alan Ladd thing.

Some stars, like Madonna, use female bodyguards to be less conspicuous. Then again, Madonna actually pays one to run backwards so he can watch her back as she jogs.

It can be a seductive scenario, Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner romanced in The Bodyguard, despite Costner being saddled with Steve McQueen's hair.

Princess Stephanie of Monaco married her bodyguard, Daniel Ducret, only to dump him after he was discovered guarding a stripper's body too closely.

Tongues wagged and The Donald was not amused when Marla Maples Trump romped on the beach in the early a.m. with bodyguard Spencer Wagner.

On occasion, paparazzi could use bodyguards. Robert De Niro and Alec Baldwin were sued - unsuccessfully - for having punched out their photog pursuers.

Paparazzo David Allen is suing Brad Pitt, alleging Pitt's bodyguards roughed him up and stole his film after he got a picture of the actor at the wrap party for The Devils Own.

We're polite in Toronto. We don't swarm stars. American celebrities have to be reassured that no harm will come to them should their limo break down near the Four Seasons Hotel. That they are unlikely to be mobbed or robbed.
Debbie Lightheart, who heads Toronto-based Star Security, estimates that she is the only woman who owns and runs a security systems company in Canada.

Her clientele ranges from Raptors to Marilyn Manson. Star works the Toronto International Film Festival, Canadian Music Awards, Juno Awards and HMV. They do crowd control at concerts for Sting and Robert Plant and ZZ Top.

During the film festival, she and her staff can be required to babysit everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Tom Hanks. One of her staff is currently on tour with The Tragically Hip.

Lightheart has been in the business for 22 years and has 75 people in her employ, 35 percent of whom are women. She certainly doesn't fit the bodyguard stereotype. She's no incredible hunk, she's only 5-foot2.

It's not muscle power, she emphasizes, it's brain power."Mick Jagger's bodyguards are as old as he is. They know how to get him in and out of a crowd. David Bowie's security is an ex-Green Beret, he's smaller than any of my guys. He's slight." Although celebs do trot out the big guys for the crowds.

"I started at 19," Lightheart explains, "I went out with a 6-foot 9 inch giant. He did security at the concerts so I hung out with the boys. They let me do the bottle check at the CNE for five years. He eventually became a teacher and I worked for Peer Security for 17years." She got her own business 5 years ago.

"I hadn't seen him for 15 years. He recently called me up and said, "You won't believe this. I own the company we worked for."

The going rate for protection, Lightheart says"for a 24 hour period, it varies from $20 to $50 an hour. Usually the flat rate is $300 a day."

"When Mick Jagger was at the Four Seasons, you'd work the floor so their security guy could go to sleep. We're there 24 hours a day. Madonna had some interesting people going in and out of her room." She won't name names, discretion is part of the job.

For the photo shoot at Tower Records Lightheart's staff was immaculate in black and white. They range in ages from 20 to 30. They are big, but articulate and well mannered. Gentle giants. Every mother would love one for a son.

They've been with her an average of 10 years and they usually come from the nightclub circuit, which they claim is more dangerous than security because of the liquor and drugs.

"I was thinking of taking a bodyguard course in the U.S. and doing corporate security," volunteered Paul Laroque, 6-foot-1, 215 pounds, for corporations like Microsoft. It's a lot easier to do and you make up to $80,000.00 a year. We probably make $40,000.00. It's not a lot for the risk and the responsibility."
But there are the perks, like hanging out with Tarantino, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino and Matt Dillon during film festival, as John Detro did. But you can't be star struck. "I wanted to ask Al Pacino for his autograph," Detro confessed. But he didn't.

Paul Gladston is a freelance security consultant and weapons trainer who was in the British military for 12 years (parachute unit). He was bodyguard for Geena Davis when she was here last winter filming Long Kiss Good-night. Gladston said his main duty was to protect her from overzealous fans and autograph hunters. Perhaps she should have hired Gladston to protect her from director/husband Renny Harlin, who had her do all those ridiculous stunts. Gladden also has a lot of corporate clients: "Fortune 500, corporate executives, diplomats."

"In Canada, you can't make a living being a bodyguard. One, either they don't need one, or two, they can't afford it." " A well trained bodyguard makes between $50,000 and $75,000 U.S. a year. He's not a 6-foot-3, 250 pound gorilla. I'm 5-foot-10, 195 pounds. I was looking after 6-foot-1 inch Geena Davis. "It's not muscle power, it's gray matter - 50 to 75 percent of the work is liasing and planning with the police or personal assistants. You collaborate on how to screen phone calls and visitors. Who has the keys to and who is allowed in their rooms."

The qualifications are stiff, " Background, schooling, the ability of the individual to think. He must be presentable and articulate," says Gladston. "The last thing an executive wants in a high-powered meeting is a gorilla. You have to be a chameleon so it's not immediately identifiable that the executive has a bodyguard.

What about taking a bullet ?

"That's the $64 million question," he admits. "You detect, deter, react. If you're doing a job, you wouldn't get a client into that situation." As for his closest call: "There have been some really heated situations in shareholders meetings." He's not armed. "In Canada, you can not carry a firearm. If I were in the States, I would have to have visas and I'm usually in and out. Sometimes I wear body armor, but it's not obvious. Sometimes you put your client in it." Would he have put Verse in armor ? "Hindsight is always 20/20," he allows. "Someone who has extreme wealth or high profile, his existence is always a threat because he has something the killer wants: one, wealth, two fame - "I'm the guy who shot John Lennon." "You'd be surprised how many high-profile people have no security. These people will try to lead a normal life. They don't admit they have enormous wealth or that their kids have to have drivers to take them to school, their wife has to have a car take her to shop. "it's almost an admission of failure but it's a trapping of success."

"There are a great number of things to do in your personal life to make yourself less of a target. I sit down and give security briefs with the wife, kids,staff, driver. How to answer the door , how to check your mail.

"Particularly with corporations getting involved with market in Third World countries, an environment where you are picked off as wealthy executives. They immediately have a price on their head, whether it is robbery or kidnapping. I do kidnap and ransom consulting." He'll even train clients in weaponry. "But it's like buying a dog and barking yourself."