Brittish Actors

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Sabu
Sabu
Sabu

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Sabu Dastagir (or Selar Shaik Sabu, depending on your resource) was born on January 27, 1924, in the little town of Mysore, India, which is nestled in the jungles of Karapur. The son of an elephant driver (mahout) in service for the Maharajah of his town, the young stable boy learned responsibility early in life when, at age 9, his father died and Sabu immediately became the ward of the royal elephant stables. As with many Hollywood success stories, good timing and dumb luck allowed the impoverished youth a chance for a better life. By sheer chance the timid 12-year-old orphan was discovered by a British location crew while searching for a youth to play the title role (an elephant driver!) in their upcoming feature Elephant Boy (1937). Quite taken aback by his earnest looks, engaging naturalness and adaptability to wild animals and their natural habitat, the studio handed the boy a film career on a sterling silver platter and was placed under exclusive contract by the mogul Alexander Korda himself.

Sabu and his older brother (as guardian) were whisked away to England to complete the picture and became subsequent wards of the British government. They were given excellent schooling in the process and Sabu quickly learned the English language in preparation for his upcoming films. Elephant Boy (1937) was an unqualified hit and the young actor was promptly placed front and center once again in the film Drums (1938) surrounded by an impressive British cast that included Raymond Massey and Valerie Hobson. With the parallel success of the Tarzan jungle movies in America, Hollywood starting taking a keen look at this refreshingly new boy talent when he first arrived in the U.S. for a publicity tour of the film. Again, his second film was given rave reviews, proving that Sabu would not be just a one-hit wonder.

His third film for Korda is considered one of the great true classics. In the Arabian fantasy-adventure The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Sabu plays Abu the Thief and is not only surrounded by superb actors — notably June DuprezJohn JustinRex Ingram (as the genie) and Conrad Veidt (as the evil Grand Vizier) — but exceptional writing and incredible special effects. Sabu’s name began stirring international ears. His last pairing with Korda was the excellent adaptation of Rudyard Kipling‘s classic book Jungle Book(1942) playing Mowgli, the boy raised by wolves, who must adapt to the ways of mankind after being returned to his mother. The movie was directed by Alexander’s brother Zoltan Korda.

Following this triumph, Sabu officially became the exotic commodity of Universal Pictures and he settled in America. Although initially rewarding monetarily, it proved to be undoing. Unfortunately (and too often typical), a haphazard assembly-line of empty-minded features were developed that hardly compared to the quality pictures in England under Korda. Saddled alongside the unexceptional Maria Montez and Jon Hall, his vehicles Arabian Nights (1942), White Savage (1943) and Cobra Woman (1944) were, for the most part, drivel but certainly did fit the bill as colorful, mindless entertainment.

Almost 20 years old by the time he became a citizen of the U.S. in 1944, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and earned WWII distinction in combat missions (Distinguished Service Cross, Air Medal, among others) as a tail gunner. By the time Sabu returned to Universal and filming, the charm of his youth had worn off and the boyish stereotype impossible to escape.

Post-war audiences developed new tastes, but Sabu had not choice but to trudge on with retreads of his former glory. Films such as Tangier (1946) again opposite Ms. Montez,Man-Eater of Kumaon (1948) and Song of India (1949) opposite lovely princess Gail Russell did little to advance his career. While filming the last-mentioned movie, Sabu met and married actress Marilyn Cooper who temporarily filled in for an ailing Ms. Russell on the set. The couple went on to have two children.

Sabu actually fared better back in England during the late 40s, starring in the crime drama The End of the River (1947) and appearing fourth-billed as a native general in the exquisitely photographed Black Narcissus (1947). Daring in subject matter, the film hadDeborah Kerr heading up a group of Anglican nuns who battle crude traditions, unexpected passions and stark raving madness while setting up a Himalayan order. By the mid-50s Sabu’s career was rapidly approaching extinction, seeking work wherever he could find it – in low-budget Europe productions, public appearances, etc. An attempt to conjure up a TV series for himself failed. His life was further aggravated by unpleasant civil and paternity suits brought about against him. His last two pictures were supporting roles in Rampage (1963), which starred Robert Mitchum, and A Tiger Walks (1964), a thoroughly routine Disney picture which was released posthumously.

Sabu died unexpectedly at age 39 of a heart attack on December 2, 1963, at his home in Southern California and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills. SonPaul Sabu developed into an accomplished songwriter and even formed a rock band called Sabu; daughter Jasmine Sabu, who died in 2001, was a noted horse trainer whose skill was utilized occasionally for films. Although he went the way of too many of our former stars, Sabu continues to enchant and excite newer generations with his unmatched athletic skills and magnetic charm in those early adventure fantasies of yesteryear.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Sabu
Sabu
Ross Kemp
Ross Kemp
Ross Kemp

IMDB entry:

Ross Kemp was born on July 21, 1964 in Barking, Essex, England. His mother, Jean, was a hairdresser and his father, John, was a policeman with the Metropolitan Police force. He has a brother named Darren who is a documentary producer for the BBC.

Ross attended Shenfield High School, where he is remembered as an excellent athlete. He wanted to be an actor from a young age and went on to study drama at the Webber Douglas Academy. He has rarely been out of work since leaving the academy in 1985, appearing on stage, in films, on television and in various adverts.

His first credited television appearance was in 1986, playing Graham Lodsworth in “Emmerdale Farm” (now “Emmerdale”). His most famous role to date was his award-winning portrayal of hardman Grant Mitchell in the popular BBC series “EastEnders”.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: TrixMD

Rex Harrison
Sir Rex Harrison
Sir Rex Harrison

“In an interview once, Rex Harrison referred to Alan Jay Lerner, the writer of ‘My Fair Lady’:’ I owe that man such a great deal’.   Few actors are so in debt.   ‘My Fair Lady’ cam to him when he was past middle age and transformed him from leading man to super-star.   He had even been a formidable light comedian but a fairish run of poor films had kept this Rolls Royce of actors going in only low gear.   He is a player of strong personal style, presumably achieved by much work but looking deceptively easy., the aristocratic elegant Englishman, with ingratiating hints of well-being and devilry.   He can play with real bite.   Noel Coward’s famous crack is not quite fair:’ If next to me, you were not the finest light-comedian in the world, you’d be good for only one thing: selling cars in Great Portland Street’.   It suggests that behind Harrison’s smooth surface bravado, there is not very much – which is intriguingly possible; ut it also suggests superb self-confidence and it was that deepened into arrogance, which made him such a marvellous Higgins.   To the extent that ‘My Fair Lady’ put him right to the forefront of actors, with roles to match, we all owe Alan Jay Lerner a great deal”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972).

 

TCM Overview:

Stagestruck from boyhood, suave British actor Rex Harrison joined the Liverpool Repertory Theatre at the age of 16, beginning a 66-year career that would culminate with his final performance on Broadway, May 11, 1990, three weeks prior to his death. Best known for his Tony- and Oscar-winning portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins in Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s “My Fair Lady”, he made his West End debut in “Getting George Married” (1930) and his Broadway debut in “Sweet Aloes” (1936), but it was a two year run on the London stage in Sir Terrence Rattigan’s “French Without Tears” that made him a star. Appearances in other sophisticated comedies, S N Behrman’s “No Time for Comedy” and Noel Coward’s “Design for Living” (both 1939), established him as what Coward himself called “the best light comedian in the world–after me.”

Harrison’s feature debut came in “The Great Game” (1930), and starring turns in movies like “Night Train to Munich”, (1940) “Major Barbara” (1941) and “Blithe Spirit” (1945) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, leading to a seven-year contract with 20th Century-Fox. He scored a major triumph as the King in “Anna and the King of Siam” (1946) and recorded another success with “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1947), but subsequent films performed poorly at the box office, although Preston Sturges’ “Unfaithfully Yours” (1948) later acquired a cult status. Actor and studio parted company by mutual agreement, and Harrison returned to Broadway, earning a Tony for his 1948 performance as King Henry VIII in Maxwell Anderson’s “Anne of the Thousand Days”. Continued acclaim followed for his work in T S Eliot’s “The Cocktail Party” and John van Druten’s “Bell, Book and Candle” (both 1950). He directed and starred in “The Love of Four Colonels” (1953) and a revival of “Bell, Book and Candle” (1954) and helmed “Nina” (1955), all for the London stage. He made his Broadway directing debut with “The Bright One” (1958).

Despite having, in his own words, a vocal range of “one-and-a-half notes”, Harrison talked his way through the numbers of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” (1956), directed for the stage by Moss Hart, and became the darling of the critics, playing the show for two years in New York and another in London. His waspish professor of phonetics was “crisp, lean, complacent and condescending until at last a real flare of human emotions burns the egotism away,” wrote Brooks Atkinson in THE NEW YORK TIMES, and the success of “My Fair Lady” once again brought Harrison important film offers. He earned his first Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Julius Caesar in “Cleopatra” (1963), stealing the picture from his more famous co-stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Reprising Higgins for the 1964 film version of “My Fair Lady” opposite Audrey Hepburn brought him a Best Actor Oscar and international fame, and “Dr. Dolittle” (1967) introduced him to a new generation of moviegoers as he shamelessly enjoyed himself playing the fanciful jungle gentleman who conversed with wildlife.

Harrison devoted most of his remaining years to his first love, the stage, taking parts in such diverse plays as Luigi Pirandello’s “Henry IV” and Rattigan’s “In Praise of Love” (both 1974). He co-starred with Claudette Colbert in a Broadway production of “The Kingfisher” (1978), and, after returning to Broadway in “My Fair Lady” (1981), garnered some of the best reviews of his career for a Broadway revival of “Heartbreak House” (1983), later captured for posterity in a 1985 Showtime cable special. Harrison portrayed Lord Grenham in London and Broadway productions of “Aren’t We All?” (1984-85) and Grand Duke Cyril Romanov in the NBC miniseries, “Anastasia: The Story of Anna” (1986). He last appeared on the London stage in “The Admirable Crichton” (1988) and bowed out in a Broadway revival of W Somerset Maugham’s “The Circle”, playing eight times a week just prior to his June 1990 death. The oft-married man dubbed ‘Sexy Rexy’ by Walter Winchell never wanted to be anything but an actor and never intended to retire. “He died with his boots on, no doubt about it,” said “The Circle” producer Elliot Martin.

 
Sir Rex Harrison
Rex Harrison
MacKenzie Crook
MacKenzie Crook
MacKenzie Crook

Despite being far from a household name, Mackenzie Crook continued to win over audiences on both sides of the Atlantic with his quirky comic turns in film and on television. Crook first became known in the U.K. as a stand-up comedian and popular television performer, most notably as the humorless and possibly deranged Gareth Keenan on Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s creation, “The Office” (BBC 2, 2001-03). As Ragetti, the formerly immortal pirate with an uncooperative wooden eyeball in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003) and its mega-successful sequel, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” (2006), Crook nearly stole every scene he was in. While a third appearance in the second “Pirates” film kept him working, acclaimed performances onstage in London and on Broadway in such productions as 2011’s “Jerusalem” garnered the actor a well deserved respectability. Exceptionally versatile and thoroughly committed to honing his craft, Crook’s unique attributes ensured him a robust career in virtually any medium he chose to work within.

Born Paul Crook in Maidstone, Kent, on Sept. 29, 1971, Crook wanted to become an actor, but finding the idea of drama school less than appealing, pursued a career in stand-up comedy as an alternate route into the business. He developed two popular characters – Mr. Bagwell, a heartless schoolteacher, and Charlie Cheese, a grimly desperate performer – and toured the U.K. comedy circuit for eight years. His talents caught the attention of the producers of the comedy series “The Eleven O’Clock Show” (BBC 4, 1998-2000), which also served as a launching pad for such talented English comic performers as Sascha Baron Cohen. In 2001, he parlayed his comic talents into another sketch show, “TV to Go” (BBC, 2001-02).

In 2001, he joined his fellow “Eleven O’ Clock Show” alum Ricky Gervais in his and Stephen Merchant’s acclaimed series “The Office,” where his “assistant to the regional manager” Gareth Keenan, with his insanely inflated self-importance and obsession with his lieutenant status in the Territorial Army, became one of the show’s most popular characters. Crook followed this with minor roles in several television series, as well as a small part as an usher in the film “Finding Neverland” (2004). Its star, Johnny Depp, had bonded with Crook during its making, and recommended the actor to play a small role as a comic relief pirate who serves under the spectral Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) in his next film, the Disney production “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003). That film went on to become a colossal worldwide hit, cementing Crook’s pop culture status by earning him an action figure in his character’s likeness.

Despite the success of “Pirates,” Crook continued to ply his trade in comedy on the small screen in his home country, most notably on the controversial animated series “Popetown” (BBC 3, 2005), about the long-suffering staff of a particularly troublesome pontiff. Crook also appeared as Launcelot Gobbo in Michael Radford’s film version of “The Merchant of Venice” (2004), starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons; as a weasel/henchman in Terry Gilliam’s ill-fated “The Brothers Grimm” (2005); and made an impression on critics and audiences alike as the fragile Billy Bibbitt in the 2004 West End stage production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” opposite Christian Slater.

In 2006, Crook returned as Ragetti in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” which proved even more of a box office juggernaut than its prequel. The character was revived for the visually stunning, but narratively muddy “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” (2007). He portrayed another less-than-savory character in the subterranean fable “City of Ember” (2008) then made his Broadway debut that same year in a revival of Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” Originally mounted at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2007, the production also starred Peter Sarsgaard and Kristin Scott Thomas. Back in theaters, albeit with limited release in the U.S., Crook was seen in an adaptation of pulp writer Robert E. Howard’s swashbuckling puritan avenger “Solomon Kane” (2009). He soon returned to Broadway, where he received a 2011 Tony nomination for his supporting role in the drama “Jerusalem,” another play brought to New York after it (and Crook) garnered stunning reviews for its lengthy U.K. run. Other film work included a turn in the medieval action-drama “Ironclad” (2011) in addition to voicing the character of Ernie the smuggler in Steven Spielberg’s computer-animated adaptation of the beloved European comic book series, “The Adventures of Tintin” (2011).

 
Martin Clunes
Martin Clunes
Martin Clunes
Martin Clunes
Martin Clunes

TCM overview:

Martin Clunes rose to the top of the U.K.’s comedy scene in the 1990s on the groundbreaking situation comedy “Men Behaving Badly” (ITV/BBC, 1992-99) and went on to equal his success as the title character of the network’s light drama “Doc Martin” (2004- ). A third-generation thespian, the London-born Clunes cut his teeth in the theater and on some short-lived sitcoms in the 1980s before beginning a running collaboration with comic mainstay Harry Enfield. In 1992, he and Enfield were paired on ITV’s comedy of ne’er-do-wells, “Men Behaving Badly,” and the show kicked into more ribald gear once picked up by the BBC in 1994, with Neil Morrissey taking over as his flatmate. It made Clunes a crossover star, expanding his CV with dramatic turns in telefilms such as “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (ITV, 2002) and periodic supporting parts, as with his turn as small-town doctor in the sleeper indie hit “Saving Grace” (2002). The film spawned two spin-off telefilms prefiguring his character, Doc Martin, as a London physician simplifying his life; he would reinvent the character as an inveterate curmudgeon for ITV in 2004 in what would become the long-running series franchised into international phenomenon. He kept his hand in series comedy with the well-regarded sitcom “William and Mary” (ITV, 2003-05) and the less successful outing “Reggie Perrin” (BBC, 2009-2010). From behaving badly to being one of his country’s better regarded personalities, Clunes made a career spinning ratings gold for U.K. broadcasters.

He was born Alexander Martin Clunes on Nov. 28, 1961 in Wimbledon, London, U.K., the son of two generations British stage mainstays. His father, Alec Clunes, was a renowned actor of Shakespearean fare and British film, while his mother, Daphne, was an aficionado of the craft who encouraged Martin to follow in his father’s footsteps and later sat on the board of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. The Clunes patriarch was often on the road for his work, and Martin and sister Amanda only found out years later that his father and mother were estranged when the former died of cancer in 1970. Martin was sent to boarding school at the Royal Russell School in Croydon, a traumatic period in which he suffered both physically and psychologically from the school’s draconian disciplinary codes. He honed his own burgeoning talents at The Arts Educational Schools in Chiswick, London, developing a sense of humor, he later said, to cope with school bullies. With the mentoring of his mother’s cousin Jeremy Brett, a prolific actor who later gained fame in the 1980s as Britain’s latest Sherlock Holmes, Martin decided try his hand at show business. Brett, he later said, even offered to pay for surgery to pin Clunes’ prominent ears back. With all this assistance, Clunes won his first paying job as a member of the repertory of the Mercury Theatre in Colchester and spent much of his early career as a stage actor.

He made his television debut in 1982 as a cocky young ally of the U.K.’s long-running sci-fi hero in a brief arc on “Dr. Who” (BBC, 1963-1989), and he would periodically return to the medium in ensuing years on short-lived situation comedies “No Place Like Home” (BBC, 1983) and “All at No. 20” (ITV, 1986-87). In 1987, he landed in auspicious company, doing a run of Shakespearean works for the English Shakespeare Company at London’s venerable Old Vic Theatre, and the next year snared a role opposite Edward Fox and Rex Harrison in a revival of the Brit comedy classic “The Admirable Crichton” at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. In 1990 he married fellow actor Lucy Aston. Television kept calling, often with series one-off roles, but that same year, Clunes kicked off what would become a prolific decade of television work when comedian Harry Enfield tapped him for the ensemble of his BBC sketch show, “Harry Enfield’s Television Programme” (1990-92) He and Enfield worked together again, alongside Jim Broadbent, on the short comedy series “Gone to the Dogs” for ITV in 1991, and again in the 1994 update of the sketch comedy series “Harry Enfield and Chums.” Also in 1991, he joined Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry for the second season of their the dimwits-in-high-places comedy “Jeeves and Wooster” (ITV, 1990-93), with Clunes doing a four-episode turn as upper-class twit Cyril “Barmy” Fotheringay Phipps.

Meanwhile, Enfield was contacted by TV producer Beryl Vertue about starring in a new sitcom for ITV based on Simon Nye’s novel about beer-swilling slackers, Men Behaving Badly. Enfield, taking the role of Dermot, lured Clunes along to play his roommate Gary, a desk jockey who after work indulges a rampant Peter Pan-complex by way of boozing, vegetating, ogling and sundry hijinks. After the first six-episode season, however, Enfield felt uncomfortable in a sitcom format and Dermot was written out in favor of a new flatmate, Tony, played by Neil Morrissey. The show rated poorly during its second season and, with Enfield no longer its tentpole, ITV decided to axe it. The BBC picked it up and gave it a later-evening time slot, loosing writers to create a racier show, and “MBB” found a groove, drawing bigger audiences and a raft of awards, including a Best Comedy Actor BAFTA win for Clunes in 1996 and nomination in 1997. He veered into more dramatic fare off-season, starring in the miniseries “Demob” (1993), the tale of two onetime musical comedians (Clunes and Griff Rhys-Jones) who, after service in World War II, go to extraordinary lengths to reestablish their careers in a much-changed Britain.

In 1994, he garnered the lead in the feature “Staggered,” and when two directors dropped off the project, Clunes stepped up and took the helm of the project. In the film, he played a man waking up naked in Scotland and embarking on an odyssey to traverse the length of Britain to make it to his wedding in London. With his own marriage to XXX crumbling, Clunes began a relationship with “Staggered” producer, Philippa Braithwaite, with the couple marrying in 1997 in the wake of his and Aston’s divorce. By this time, he became much in-demand for TV movies and as a feature film supporting player, including a small turn in the Oscar-winning “Shakespeare In Love” (1998) and picked up a voiceover job as the title cartoon dog on the children’s series “Kipper” (ITV, 1997). After “Men Behaving Badly” shuttered in 1999, Braithwaite produced a little film that would give birth to another long-lived, multi-layered project for the both of them. “Saving Grace,” co-scripted by Scottish-born comedian Craig Ferguson, starred Brenda Blethyn as a woman whose recently deceased husband leaves her with nothing but her green thumb, while her inept gardener (Ferguson) helps her raise a crop of marijuana in a small Cornwall town. Clunes took third billing as Dr. Martin Bamford, the town doctor, buddy of Ferguson and partaker of the weed.

One of the bankrollers of the film, Sky Pictures, expressed interest in doing a pseudo spin-off of the show starring Clunes, initially a prequel concept telling the story of how Dr. Bamford came to reside in the remote town. Braithwaite and Clunes’ Buffalo Pictures put in motion “Doc Martin” (Sky TV, 2001), which saw Clunes rendering the character as a successful London obstetrician whose life falls apart when he discovers his wife has cheated on him, prompting him to seek a kind of walkabout in a Cornwall town he visited as a child and finding a more blue-collar groove among its eccentric, simpler folk. He kept up his bona fides as comic leading man in whacky-caper ITV movies such as “Hunting Venus” (1999), which Clunes also directed, reuniting him with “MBB” co-star Morrissey; “Dirty Tricks” (2000) and “The Booze Cruise” (2003). He also tapped into more dramatic work, playing the swaggering agent of the king in an updated film adaptation of “Lorna Doone” (BBC/A&E, 2000); the eerily charming 1940s serial killer John George Haigh in “A is for Acid” (ITV, 2002); and the titular, big-hearted boarding school teacher in a remake of “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.”

He reprised his Doc Martin character for Sky in 2003 in “Doc Martin and the Legend of the Cloutie,” which saw the doc scheming to keep the area around the village pristine by convincing some citified land developers that the land they purchased is haunted. That year, he returned to series television for ITV’s “William and Mary,” with him playing an amiable but unsatisfied undertaker embarking on a rollercoaster of a relationship with a professional midwife (Julie Graham). “William and Mary” ran three seasons, but even before it concluded, Clunes, Braithwaite and writer-producer Dominic Minghella had taken the Doc Martin franchise to another level. ITV commissioned it as a series, and they began tinkering with the concept. When it debuted in 2004, the sympathetic, well-meant Dr. Martin had (presumably for copyright reasons) a new surname, Ellingham, and a radically altered disposition, reintroduced to the quirky fishing village as a surly, antisocial London surgeon who, having developed an aversion to blood, seeks work as a general practitioner. Even more of a fish-out-of-water tale, the show became a monumental hit, often topping 10 million viewers per episode, as it followed his alienation from and grudging acceptance by the local townsfolk.

The show proved such a phenomenon, its concept and storylines were licensed for adaptations for Greek, German, Spanish and French television, while PBS aired the original in the States. Yet after the third season, and in the wake of his mother’s death in 2007, Clunes decided to take a break from acting. He penned a book bespeaking his love of dogs, A Dog’s Life, in 2008, which culled memories of his own family’s pets and delved deeper into the history of dogs. He would eventually semi-adapt the book for a documentary for ITV. In 2009, “Doc Martin” resumed production to great fanfare. Though it became a rare long-running drama in the U.K., Clunes supplemented his schedule in 2009 with Simon Nye’s ballyhooed remake of the BBC classic comedy “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin” (1976-79), simply redubbed “Reggie Perrin.” He played the title character, a man in the midst of a midlife crisis who seeks respite in fantasy and plots to fake his own death. Though not well-rated, the show lasted two seasons on the BBC.

By Matthew Grimm

 
James Mason
James Mason
James Mason

Article from 2009 in “The Guardian” by David Thomson:

James Mason had good friends, and sometimes that is the measure of a man, especially in the picture business, where it’s all too easy to lose contact as golden opportunities fade away. Consider his situation in the late 1940s. After giving his youth and his early beauty to British pictures and theatre, he decided to go to Hollywood. There must have been people who told him he was too patrician, too intelligent, as well as too old to break through in America. But he made wonderful contacts. There was a chance of doing the Svengali-Trilby story (with Jane Wyman), and Mason longed to have Jean Renoir as its director because he could see that the Frenchman loved actors. Alas, that project fell through, but then Renoir offered Mason the role of the wounded veteran in his Indian picture, The River. I can’t do it, sighed Mason; I’m set to play the male lead in La Duchesse de Langeais – which was to be the comeback picture for Greta Garbo.

Historians still argue as to why that picture collapsed. Advancing into his 40s, Mason had reason to think of bad luck as he played Erwin Rommel in a couple of movies, Rupert of Hentzau in a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda and “Hendrik van der Zee” in the dotty but deliriously beautiful romance, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. In Britain, there were already superior figures in acting who marvelled over what was happening to “poor Jimmy Mason”. But as we come to celebrate today what would have been his 100th birthday, there are those who only wish there was more of Pandora, more Rommel and an entire picture about Rupert of Hentzau, the only interesting person in that whole Zenda nonsense.

In every decade, from the 1930s to the 80s, James Mason did some poor work in disappointing pictures, just as he missed out on mouth-watering opportunities. So, yes, it’s lamentable that he was to have been Prospero for Michael Powell, only for that Tempest to blow out. But don’t forget that their long friendship did lead somewhere: to Australia, for the quirky but vivid Age of Consent, where Mason was the film’s co-producer and he and Powell managed to discover the 18-year-old Helen Mirren to be the muse for the beachcomber painter Mason plays.

Yes, I know you can see Mason in these parts, but it’s just as evident that you hear him and, before we go any further, it’s vital to consider the unique and languid but impassioned voice of this man. Is it enough to say that he was a lad born in Huddersfield (the son of a wool merchant) who was sent to Cambridge to speak properly? Should we consider also his years on the Dublin stage as a prelude to his tragic figure in Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out – the film above all that promoted him from British pictures to a Hollywood player? Or is there not still something in Mason’s voice – aristocratic, but full of connoisseurship, too – that allowed the actor to become his true self just once, as the voice of Humbert Humbert in the film of Lolita? Humbert is not American. He is a scholar of comparative literature, as well as a judge of nymphets. He is a very bad man (if you like, or if you don’t like), but he may be the purest-spoken scoundrel in all the movies. For he has to deliver Nabokovian prose as if to say it was the most normal and sensible way of speaking the English language yet invented.

So Mason could be lord and nobleman, a very upper-class fellow – he did that from his Flaubert in the silly MGM production of Madame Bovary to Brutus in the same studio’s Julius Caesar, from Mr Jordan in Heaven Can Wait to the “prince of darkness” lawyer, Ed Concannon, in The Verdict. He could say something to another person so that one word seemed like a lash or a curare dart delivered in slow motion. This Mason was Mr Elocution, if you like, the personification of affectation and lingering insult or innuendo. But the same voice could burn with conviction – it does in Lolita, when he talks to his Lo, just as much as it did in A Star Is Born, with Judy Garland, in North By Northwest, with Eva Marie Saint, or in The Reckless Moment, with Joan Bennett, where he has the fine judgment to know that he is falling in love with the woman he is supposed to blackmail.

Pause over North By Northwest a moment. Why is it that, over the years, that crazed film calmly urges itself forward as maybe Hitch’s most entertaining picture? Well, of course, it’s the demented plot by Ernest Lehman, with the cornfields of Iowa leading to Mount Rushmore. And it’s also Cary Grant. But run the picture in your head a moment and isn’t it Mason’s voice you hear as Vandamm, the villain? Look at it again, if you doubt me – he’s the heart and head of the picture, and he is delighted to realise that North By Northwest is a frolic, a dance in mid-air, a fabulous absurdity. Of course, we love Grant and Saint and everyone else in it, but just look at Grant’s face and see the pleasure he feels at being placed beside so sublime a screen being as James Mason. (Time for a joke: in the year for which North By Northwest was eligible, 1959, Charlton Heston and Hugh Griffith won the acting Oscars for Ben-Hur.)

Mason never won an Oscar, though he was nominated three times – for A Star Is Born, The Verdict and Georgy Girl (the latter one of those pictures where he let his Yorkshire accent run riot and where, apparently, he took a deep shine to his co-star, Lynn Redgrave).

You might have thought that in a thousand words (so far), I’d have been able to mention all the worthwhile Mason films. But I haven’t even touched the Gainsborough period yet. In the war years (when Mason was a conscientious objector), he defined a new type in British pictures – the handsome, cruel mastermind who is irresistible to women. That is the Mason of The Man in Grey, a costume romance, where he dismantles Margaret Lockwood and Phyllis Calvert; The Wicked Lady, where he and Lockwood are highway robbers; and the cult classic, The Seventh Veil, where he is Ann Todd’s unkind guardian.

The same years include two other remarkable films: A Place of One’s Own, where he is the elderly husband, and The Upturned Glass – a film that Mason helped write – about a doctor fascinated with the psychology of murder. To say the least, that side of Mason – the mind that had ideas for films – was what made him most endearing to directors.

Once in America, he forged bonds with two of the least likely artists. First, he fell for Max Ophuls, effectively in exile, and did two films for him: Caught and The Reckless Moment. In the first, he is the doctor with a busy urban practice who takes in Barbara Bel Geddes as a secretary when she flees from her marriage to the tyrannical Robert Ryan. In The Reckless Moment, he plays a weak-willed villain, a man whose blackmail plans are thwarted by his own sentiments.

In both cases, Mason’s struggle to be decent and ordinary provides a foundation for the film. Equally, in every situation, Mason was the defender of Ophuls, a high-strung, stylistic perfectionist who was having a hard time in Hollywood.

A few years later, Mason became friends with another movie director, and an even more self-destructive man, Nicholas Ray. They wanted to do a story they had seen in the New Yorker about an idealistic teacher who is warped by his addiction to cortisone. The result, Bigger Than Life, is one of the great American films of the 50s, in which Ray’s dynamic use of colour and form is steadily attached to Mason’s tragic performance. In the slow reappraisal of American film by American critics, it’s worth saying that Caught, The Reckless Moment and Bigger Than Life (none of which was a hit) have now become standards by which other films are judged. In all these cases, the completion of the picture, as well as its initiation, owed a lot to the creative vision of an actor who was serving as an extra producer.

Is that all? By no means. To the end of his time (he died in 1984), Mason was doing intriguing small films such as Dr Fischer of Geneva and The Shooting Party. He was the star of works as different as The Deadly Affair, Mandingo, Cross of Iron and The Seagull (where he played Trigorin). He made Cry Terror! and The Decks Ran Red for that master of suspense, Andrew L Stone.

He was Sir Edward Carson to Peter Finch’s lead in The Trials of Oscar Wilde. He was toxic in The Pumpkin Eater and cool syrup in The Fall of the Roman Empire. He made every trashy costume seem as natural as a good suit and, for all his life, he seemed carried forward by the odd mixture of yearning and fatalism that prompted Humbert Humbert.

Graham Greene called it the marriage of sadness and pride. It is still there, to be treasured in something like 40 special films.

Odd Man Out (1947)

After making his name as the dashing, cruel-eyed star of wartime period costume pics, Mason did a 180-degree turn to play an made gunman staggering wounded through Belfast. Director Carol Reed assembles an arsenal of expressionist techniques to make this an early, and effective, British noir.

North By Northwest (1959)

Arguably Hitchcock’s finest, and maybe Mason’s, too – even though he didn’t have the lead role. Here he plays super-smooth microfilm smuggler Vandamm, egging on henchman Martin Landau to dispose of pesky Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint.

Lolita (1962)

Nabokov’s professorial paedophile terrified the life out of Hollywood’s star names, but Mason stepped up to play Humbert Humbert for Stanley Kubrick.(Both Laurence Olivier and David Niven turned it down.) Mason’s stuffed-shirt reticence, allied to his lasciviously clipped vowels, made him ideal for the role.

“The Times” obituary:

Mr James Mason, who died yesterday in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the age of 75, was a highly intelligent and creative cinema performer who appeared in more than 100 films. And though many of them were unworthy of his talent he could lift the poorest material just as he could enrich the best. He made a reputation in parts calling for moody and tyrannical introspection, notably as Ann Todd’s sadistic guardian in The Seventh Veil, before maturing into a versatile and dependable character player.

One of his best performances came under Sir Carol Reed’s direction in 1947, when he played a dying gunman on the run in Belfast in Odd Man Out. Soon afterwards, expressing his disenchantment with the British cinema, he left for Hollywood where, after a difficult start, he successfully built a new career.

James Mason was born in Huddersfield on May 15, 1909, the son of a textile merchant. He was educated at Marlborough and Peterhouse College, Cambridge where he took a first in architecture and got a taste for acting. His professional debut was at the Theatre Royal, Aldershot, in 1931 and two years later he made his first London appearance in Gallows Glorious at the Arts Theatre. He joined the Old Vic company and then the Gate Theatre in Dublin, where he played between 1934 and 1937.

He entered films in 1935, playing a reporter in Late Extra, but for several years most of his parts were in low budget “quota quickies”. In 1939, with two friends, Roy and Pamela Kelli-no, he set up his own film, I Met a Murderer, a crime story in which he was the killer of the title. He and Pamela Kellino were married two years later.

During the Second World War, he worked with ENSA and his film career finally took off through a series of costume melodramas which gave him the opportunity to create a memorable gallery of suave and vicious villains. The film that made him into a star was The Man in Grey, in which he took a whip to Margaret LockwoodFanny by GaslightThey Were Sisters, and The Wicked Lady, also with Margaret Lockwood, followed in similar vein.

The Seventh Veil proved to be the most successful of all and from 1944 to 1947 Mason was voted Britain’s top box-office star. Among those who admired his performance in The Seventh Veil was the veteran American director, D W Griffith. But Mason had become increasingly unhappy with the films he was bing offered, and with what he saw as a monopolistic stranglehold on the industry by J Arthur Rank; and at the peak of his popularity he departed for Hollywood.

It was to be some time before the move paid off. Mason’s outspokenness did not endear him to Hollywood and his choice of parts was not always happy. He appeared in two films for the emigre director, Max Ophuls, Caught and The Reckless Moment, and made a splendid Rommel in The Desert Fox; while his Brutus in the 1953 production of Julius Caesar helped to make it one of the best screen versions of Shakespeare.

But it was not until 1954 when he played opposite Judy Garland in George Cukor’s remake of A Star is Born that he managed a major performance, a harrowing study of a man’s tragic decline, for which he gained an Oscar nomination. He brought the same nervous intensity to the part of a drug addict in Bigger Than Life (1956), a film which he also produced.

The best of his later roles was Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick’s film of the Nabokov novel, Lolita, which appeared in 1962. To his portrayal of a middle-aged man’s infatuation with a 12-year-old girl, Mason brought a degree of sympathy, combined with wry humour, that few other actors could have managed. With Odd Man Out, it ranks as his outstanding screen achievement.

Three years earlier he had been a memorable villain in Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest and had given an engagingly tongue in cheek performance in an adaptation of the Jules Verne story, Journey to the Centre of the Earth. He maintained a prolific output through the 1960s and 1970s, making two and three films a year, though many were routine assignments easily, and perhaps best, forgotten.

There was still, however, much to relish. His Timonides in The Fall of the Roman Empire was a bright spot in an otherwise dreary epic and he had good supporting parts in The Pumpkin Eater and as Gentleman Brown in Conrad’s Lord Jim. He added to his stock of German officers inThe Blue Max (1966) and in the same year he was in Georgy Girl, a story of the “swinging sixties”, and a John Le Carre thriller, The Deadly Affair.

In 1969 he turned producer again for Age of Consent, directed in Australia by Michael Powell; but a long-cherished Powell project, The Tempest, with Mason as Prospero, proved abortive. The martinet Yorkshire father in Spring and Port Wine was a tailor-made part, there were more Germans in Cross of Iron and The Boys From Brazil and a well judged Mr Jordan in the fantasy, Heaven Can Wait. He was superb as the old tutor recalling his days in India in James Ivory’s Autobiography of a Princess.

Once he became established in films, Mason returned only occasionally to the stage. He was in an unsuccessful Broadway play, Bathsheba, in 1947, and during the 1950s played Angelo in Measure for Measure and Oedipus in Oedipus Rex at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario.

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Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy

TCM overview:

Despite decades on the British dramatic stage and in small, offbeat comedies, Bill Nighy remained one of England’s best kept secrets until scene-stealing supporting roles in a number of mainstream American hits led to his remarkable success after the age of 50. Following his series role on the widely acclaimed British serial “State of Play” (BBC One, 2003), Nighy had his international breakthrough with his casting as the villainous Viktor in the “Underworld” horror-action series and earned critical acclaim for the spark he injected into “Love Actually” (2003) with his role of an aging rock star. His lean, elegant stature immediately found a niche in witty blockbusters like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (2005), while his portrayal of the cephalopod Davy Jones in the second and third installments of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise (2006-07) introduced him to a wider audience. He delivered strong performances in historical dramas as well, namely “The Constant Gardner” (2005) and “Valkyrie” (2008), and displayed his lighter side in whimsical comedies like “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2012). Staying true to his roots as both a dramatic and comedic performer, Nighy managed to stay relevant to contemporary audiences on both sides of the Atlantic without sacrificing his stature as one of Britain’s finest performers.

William Nighy was born on Dec. 12, 1949 and grew up in Caterham, Surrey, just southwest of London, where his dad managed a garage and his mum worked as a psychiatric nurse. A restless, rock-n-roll-loving youth, he left school early and spent time traveling in France, taking on odd jobs while entertaining the notion of following in the footsteps of one his heroes, Ernest Hemingway, by becoming a writer. While his dreams of penning a great novel did not materialize, he did find a creative outlet in theater, urged to audition for a drama program by a girlfriend he was hoping to impress. He did more than impress her; he was actually accepted into the Guildford School of Drama and spent two years training there. By the mid-1970s, he was working regularly as a player and staffer at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, in addition to traveling with Van Load, a theater group he helped found which toured pubs, parking lots, prisons, and other places where the average public could have the chance to enjoy a live production. Nighy made his way onto the London stage, beginning what would be a long career with the National Theater and breaking into film with bit parts in the spy thriller “Eye of the Needle” (1981) and the family favorite “Little Lord Fauntleroy” (1980), among others. Nighy mostly stuck with theater and BBC radio dramas throughout the 1980s, appearing in “King Lear” at the National Theater and voicing radio adaptations of “Lord of the Rings” and the British sitcom, “Yes Minister.”

In 1989, Nighy raised his screen profile with a supporting role in Dwight Little’s adaptation of “Phantom of the Opera” (1989) and one in “Mack the Knife” (1989) co-starring Raul Julia and Richard Harris. He also appeared in Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” on the London stage in 1991, but by the following year, it was becoming clear that both the actor’s career and personal life were hampered by Nighy’s excessive drinking and drug habits. He became sober in 1992 and resumed his career with clear eyes and a starring role as an unscrupulous academic in a National Theater production of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia.” Nighy’s first major movie role, alongside Robin Williams in Bill Forsyth’s “Being Human” (1993), was only given limited release but the actor enjoyed considerable attention for back-to-back stage runs in Chekhov’s “The Seagull” and David Hare’s “Skylight,” which toured the U.K. following a successful run at London’s Vaudeville Theater. The newly sober actor’s career continued to blossom with a role in the children’s fantasy feature “Fairytale: A True Story” (1997), and in the hilarious “Still Crazy” (1998), where he played an aging rocker who reunites with his 1970s rock band to relive the glory days. His work in the latter film was so beloved, he earned theEvening Standard‘s Peter Sellers Award for his comedic performance as the band’s egotistical lead singer.

Nighy continued to endear himself to British comedy fans in Ade Edmondson’s “Guest House Paradiso” (1999), an adaptation of the slapstick BBC series “Bottom.” For his lead role as a psychiatrist in the National Theater production of “Blue/Orange,” Nighy won a nomination from the prestigious Olivier Awards and enjoyed an extended run of the play on the West End. He resumed his film career with another pair of offbeat comedies – Paddy Breathnach’s “Blow Dry” (2001) and Peter Cattaneo’s “Lucky Break” (2002), which earned Nighy a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the London Film Critics Circle for playing one in a troupe of prison inmates who stage a play to cover up an escape attempt. Supporting roles in “The Lawless Heart” (2001), about complicated dalliances in a small English town and the period drama “I Capture the Castle” (2002) still did not quite establish Nighy as a well-known presence on British screens, but he finally enjoyed that position with a recurring role on the British comedy series “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet” in 2002. The following year, he exploded into American commercial cinemas playing the nefarious vampire elder Viktor in the horror actioner “Underworld” (2003). He endeared himself to an entirely different demographic in the ensemble romantic comedy “Love Actually” (2003), stealing the show from a hunky young cast with his spot-on performance as another over-the-hill rocker hoping for a comeback.

Nighy earned a slew of recognition including a BAFTA Award for Supporting Actor for “Love Actually,” and went on to give delightfully offbeat supporting performances in “very British” comedies “Shaun of the Dead” (2004), starring Simon Pegg as a twenty-something slacker fighting off zombies, and the long awaited adaptation of Douglas Adams’ sci-fi classic “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (2005), where he portrayed planet designer Slartibartfast. Making an about-face from his string of outrageous comedies, Nighy offered an excellent dramatic performance as a greedy British official in “The Constant Gardener” (2005), director Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of the John le Carré novel about a diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) whose wife (Rachel Wiesz) is murdered after discovering corruption between the pharmaceutical industry and Kenyan government. The film was one of the best reviewed of the year and earned Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for best film. The same year, Nighy earned his own Golden Globe nod for “The Girl in the Café” (HBO, 2005), in which he starred as a shy civil servant who meets a mysterious woman (Kelly MacDonald) and develops a life-changing relationship with her. Nighy revived his evil vampire leader in the bloody, over-the-top sequel “Underworld: Evolution” (2006), then earned his first Golden Globe win for starring as an executive whose personal life is a mess after he loses his wife in the BBC television movie, “Gideon’s Daughter” (2006).

The actor lent his velvety voice to the sewer-set animated film “Flushed Away” (2006) and continued to entertain family audiences as undead pirate Davy Jones in the box office record breaker “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” (2006). The fifty-something actor also made his Broadway debut in David Hare’s “The Vertical Hour,” for which he earned rave reviews, and had a supporting role in the highly acclaimed psychological drama “Notes on a Scandal” (2006) the same year. In the third blockbuster of the series, Nighy appeared as Davy Jones in “Pirates of the Caribbean 3” (2007) and followed up with an solemn but sympathetic portrayal of Freidrich Olbricht, a German general who conspired to kill Adolph Hitler, in Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie” (2008). From sharing the spotlight with star Tom Cruise, Nighy took front and center in the sequel “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” (2009), one of the better reviewed films of the series and one that found an enthusiastic reception at the box office.

Despite his success with giant Hollywood films, Nighy remained loyal to British cinema and returned to the U.K. sound stage for “Pirate Radio” (2009), Richard Curtis’ comedic chronicle of the underground radio movement that flourished in the U.K. in the 1960s. He went on to star as a hit man who falls for an intended victim (Emily Blunt) in the comedy “Wild Target” (2009) and also delivered the World War II drama “1939” (2009) and the live action/3-D animation hybrid “G-Force” (2009) the same year. Meanwhile, Nighy was the latest British actor to join the “Harry Potter” series, playing Rufus Scrimgeour, the new Minister of Magic, in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 1” (2010). After voicing Rattlesnake Jake in the animated “Rango” (2011) and Grandsanta in “Arthur Christmas” (2011), Nighy returned to his native country to star in “Page Eight” (BBC, 2011), playing a long-time MI5 officer trying to expose the fact that the Prime Minister (Ralph Fiennes) covered the torturing of prisoners overseas that ultimately cost British lives. Nighy’s performance was hailed with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a miniseries or TV movie. He went on to play Hephaestus, a Greek god stripped of his powers for siding with Hades (Ralph Fiennes) in “Wrath of the Titans” (2012), and followed that with a turn as a rebel leader in the panned remake of “Total Recall” (2012). Showing his lighter side, Nighy was a retiree who had lost most of his savings and seeks respite alongside a group of fellow pensioners – including Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Tom Wilkinson – at “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2012).

In 2013, Nighy appeared in CGI form as a literally gigantic leader in the fantasy film “Jack the Giant Slayer,” featuring fellow U.K. actors Ewan McGregor and Nicholas Hoult. Later in the year, he reunited yet again with “Love Actually” director Richard Curtis as a time-traveling patriarch in the romantic comedy “About Time,” and he worked with another frequent collaborator, Edgar Wright, in a voice role for his apocalyptic comedy “The World’s End.”