At forty-five, Sebastian Whitmore had everything he had ever desired. The position of president at Pinewood Studios. A luxurious townhouse in Mayfair. A sleek Aston Martin and a circle of famous friends. Yet at the height of his career, he shocked everyone by abandoning the film industry, selling all his possessions, and vanishing from the world of cinema forever.
“I could have worked in film for the rest of my life,” Sebastian tells me. “I dont think I was unhappier than any other successful producer in London. If you looked at my life from the outside, you’d call me lucky. But I could never say that about myself.”
He arrived in Kathmandu almost by accidenta twelve-year-overdue holiday led him to explore the ancient monasteries of Asia. Nepal was just one stop on his list. Sitting in a dimly lit tea house, Sebastian handed a few quid to a ragged child. A fellow traveller leaned over and said, “If you truly want to help them, go to the rubbish heaps on the outskirts.” Something compelled him to follow that advice.
“What I saw knocked the breath from me,” Sebastian recalls. “Dozens of children picking through filth just to survive another day. The stench was so thick, you could chew it. Like most people, I thought charities handled thisbut there I stood, utterly alone. No social workers, no aid. Either I did something, or nothing changed. I couldve walked away and pretended Id never seen it. But for the first time, I felt like I was meant to be there.”
That same day, he rented two rooms in a small boarding house and arranged medical care for a pair of siblings. “To feed and shelter a child here costs just thirty pounds a month,” Sebastian says. “I felt ashamed it was that simple.”
On the flight back to London, he couldnt shake the thought that this might be his true callingthough he couldnt fathom why. “I worried it was a midlife crisis. And Id seen how ugly those get in Soho,” he admits.
For the next year, he split his timethree weeks in London, one in Kathmandu. “I kept waiting for a sign,” he says. “Then one day, one of the most sought-after actors in the industry called me. We had negotiations the next morning. His private jet served the wrong champagne. He screamed down the phone, word for word: My life shouldnt be this hard! Meanwhile, I was staring at children starving to death on a rubbish heap. If there was ever a sign my life in film was just a façadethat was it. I knew I had to leave.”
Everyone tried to talk him out of it. Still, he sold everythingenough to support two hundred children for eight years. He spent those years founding the Himalayan Childrens Trust, providing shelter, schooling, and medicine.
Sebastian has lived in Nepal for a decade now. The number of children in his care has grown to two thousand. He no longer funds it aloneformer colleagues and strangers now donate. Hes never had children of his own. “Never married, never felt the need. Being single in the film world was too easy,” he says. “There were wonderful women in London, but I couldnt imagine settling down with any of them. Now Ive got more than enough children to look after. In ten years, theyll care for me. Ill be their grandfather.”
His weekends in London had been spent sailing the Thames and playing snooker at his club. Now the former studio president spends his days knee-deep in refuse. “Ive never once thought of going back. The freedom I felt leaving corporate lifeits incomparable.” When I ask the inevitable questiondoes he miss his old life?he pauses. “Just the boat. There was something about the water… an unexplainable sense of liberty.”
