Antony Hamilton Smith was born on May 4, 1952 in Liverpool, England and was orphaned at just two weeks old. He was quickly adopted by a highly decorated Australian Squadron commander who fought in World War II and his wife, an English nurse. When he was three years old his father retired and they moved to South Australia (where his adoptive father was from), where he would grow up.
At age 10 he began attending a high end independent school where he began studying dance and ballet and was a star athlete, playing Australian rules football, cricket, basketball and other sports.
At the age of 15, he won a scholarship at the Australian Ballet School. After leaving school, he began a career as a professional dancer with The Australian Ballet Company where he toured Europe and the Soviet Union for two years.
In 1973, at 21, he was on tour in Europe with the Australian ballet when he was discovered by a Russian photojournalist and photographer, who approached him. After this Antony decided to quit dancing and pursue modeling and use it as a way to travel the world and it gave him more freedom and independence than dance did. He quickly got signed to a modeling agency in London, where he would book jobs frequently and became a very busy model, modeling in Asia, Europe, America and Africa. He quickly became a favorite model of photographers Bruce Weber and Richard Avedon, and booked designer campaigns with Gianni Versace, and was a frequent model used in Vogue and GQ.
While modeling he began taking acting lessons, and in 1984 he booked his first acting gig, as the lead in a tv movie called “Samson and Delilah”, but his breakout would come months later when he was offered the lead role for the series “Cover Up”, as the replacement for his real life friend Jon-Erik Hexum after he died. Hamilton had bad feelings about taking the role but ended up accepting it. The producers were skeptical of casting Hamilton, as he was gay and they knew if that came out it would be the death of the show and his career, so they made sure to cover that up and let him know he can never come out. He understood this already when he decided to become an actor. The shows ratings kept declining after Jon-Erik died and it was canceled.
Antony was in talks to be the new James Bond but was ultimately dropped from the running by producers because he was gay, with the role going to Timothy Dalton instead. After this he did numerous small roles and guest spots on tv, before landing a lead role on the “Mission:Impossible” reboot in 1988. It lasted two seasons and was canceled.
On March 29, 1995 he died of AIDS related pneumonia in Los Angeles at the age of 42.