British Actors Archives - Page 71 of 129

Delphi Lawrence

Delphi Lawrence

Delphi Lawrence was born in 1926 in Herfordshire. She made many films in England during the 1950’s including “The Feminine Touch” with Belinda Lee in 1956, “Just My Luck” with Norman Wisdom and “Son of Robin Hood”. In the 1960’s she went to Hollywood and made such movies as “The Last Challenge” with Glenn Ford and Angie Dickinson in 1967. She died in New York in 2002.

IMDB entry:

Delphi Lawrence was born on March 23, 1932 in Hertfordshire, England. She was an actress, known for Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), Murder on Approval (1955) and Element of Doubt (1961). She died on April 11, 2002 in Northport, Long Island, New York, US In the film Wild for Kicks (1960), despite having several lines of dialogue and performing a task crucial to the plot, both her name and that of her character, Greta, are missing from the film’s closing credits! She was nominated for a 1974 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Actress in a Principal Role for her performance in “Separate Tables”, at the Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Anglo-Hungarian leading lady of British B-films in the 1950’s and 60’s. Initially trained as a concert pianist.

Bruce Seton was born in 1909 in Simla, India. He began his acting career in 1939 in the film “Blue Smoke”. He is best known for his portryal of Inspector Fabian in the 1950’s British television series “Fabian of the Yard”. He died in 1969.

IMDB entry:
Tall, serious-looking British character actor, formerly a graduate of Edinburgh Academy and Sandhurst. He was a member of the Black Watch, but resigned his commission in 1932 to join the chorus of the Drury Lane Theatre as a specialty dancer. He later turned to films, usually acting in small supporting roles in which he invariably projected an air of confidence and authority. He rejoined the British Army in 1939 for wartime service. His one noteworthy screen success after 1945 was as the titular star of Patrol Car (1954), playing real-life detective Robert Fabian. In 1963, upon the death of his brother, Sir Alexander Hay Seton, he became the eleventh Baronet of Abercorn. Along with other actors, Bruce Seton was one of the founder members of the Lord’s Taverners in 1950, Britain’s premier youth cricket and disability sports charity association.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

John Gregson. IMDB

John Gregson was one of the most popular actors in British cinema in the 1950’s. He was born in Liverpool in 1919. His first film was “London Belongs to Me” in 1948. His best known 1950’s films include “Treasure Island” in 1950, “The Lavender Hill Mob”, “The Holly and the Ivy”, “Genevieve”, “The Titfield Thunderbolt” and “Jacqueline”, “Rooney”. His leading role status waned in the 1960’s although he starred in a very popular television series “Gideon’s Day”. He continued his career on television and would have developed into a popular character actor but sadly died of a heaart attack at the age of 55 leaving a widow and six children.

IMDB entry:

One Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;

A former telephone engineer who dabbled in amateur dramatics, John Gregson served aboard a minesweeper with the Royal Navy during World War II. After demobilisation, he joined the Liverpool Old Vic, making his stage debut in ‘The Knight of the Burning Pestle’. Freshly married, he moved to London and acted alongside Robert Donat andMargaret Leighton in ‘A Sleeping Clergyman’ at the West End Criterion Theatre in 1947. During the same period, he was also cast in his first movie, the romantic period melodrama Saraband (1948), though his scenes ended up being cut. Undeterred, Gregson established himself as a popular favorite in subsequent Ealing comedies and later as a long term contractee with the Rank Organisation.

His screen personae tended to be men of integrity: regular guys who don’t necessarily finish on top, introspective, somewhat diffident, and often troubled.

His most fondly remembered role was that of vintage car enthusiast Alan McKim, in the idiosyncratic (and typically British) comedy Genevieve(1953). Ironically, while he is featured in almost every scene behind the wheel, Gregson couldn’t drive a car when filming began – and proved to be a slow learner.

For the remainder of the decade,he became somewhat typecast in traditional ‘stiff upper lip’ military roles.

As film opportunities began to diminish, he turned more and more towards television, enjoying his greatest popularity as titular star of the police drama series Gideon C.I.D. (1964).

Until his untimely death at the age of 55, Gregson alternated television work with acting on stage, as well as doing voice-overs and appearing in commercials for Hamlet cigars.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.MowisJohn Gregson was educated at St Francis Xavier School in Liverpool. He had a successful film and television career.

He played Commander Gideon of Gideon C.I.D. (1964) ) on television. He died from a heart attack aged 55 in January 1975, just one day before John Slater (Sergeant Stone of Z Cars (1962)). He left a widow and six children.

5967970 CONFLICT OF WINGS, (aka FUSS OVER FEATHERS), John Gregson, 1954; Everett Collection.

Although Stephanie Beecham has starred in movies, notably opposite Marlon Brando in “The Nightcomers” and Ava Gardner in “Tam Lin”, she is best known for her roles in some iconic television series. She was born in Barnet in 1947. She began her acting career with roles on television in “The Saint” with Roger Moore and “Jason King”. Her major roles on TV were as Rose in the series “Tenko”, in “Connie” in 1985, in Hollywood in “The Colbys” and then back in the UK in “Bad Girls” with Amanda Barrie. She has two daughters from her marriage to John McEnery.

TCM overview:

A British stage actress who migrated to the USA to play the bitchy Sable Coolly on “Dynasty II: The Cloys” (ABC, 1985-87), Stephanie Beacham has often been cast in roles that vary between nasty vixens and cool, take-charge women. The London native began her career on stage in Liverpool in 1964 where she was a founding member of the Everyman Theatre. She debuted there in “The Servant of Two Masters” and as the First Witch in “Macbeth”. By 1970, Beacham was working on the London stage in “The Basement” and later appeared opposite Ian McKellen in “Venice Preserved” (1985) and Jeremy Irons in “The Rover” (1988). She belatedly made her Broadway debut in 1996 in a production of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”.

Beacham debuted in films in 1969’s “The Games” as an Olympic hopeful opposite Michael Crawford. She subsequently appeared as a swinger alongside Ava Gardner in Roddy McDowell’s “The Devil’s Widow” (1971). More recently, she was a nemesis to Shelly Long in the pallid comedy “Troop Beverly Hills” (1989). Beacham has feared better on the small screen, She reprised her role as the bitch-goddess Sable on “Dynasty” for the 1988-89 season. She switched to comedy in the title role of “Sister Kate” (NBC, 1989-90), a nun more familiar with work in the high echelons of power now assigned to run an orphanage. Beacham had the recurring role of Luke Perry’s mother on Fox’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” and later played the very able Dr. Westphalen for two seasons (1993-95) on NBC’s “seaQuest DSV”.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Stephanie Beecham TCM Overview

Setephanie Beacham has starred in movies, notably opposite Marlon Brando in “The Nightcomers” and Ava Gardner in “Tam Lin”, she is best known for her roles in some iconic television series. She was born in Barnet in 1947.

She began her acting career with roles on television in “The Saint” with Roger Moore and “Jason King”. Her major roles on TV were as Rose in the series “Tenko”, in “Connie” in 1985, in Hollywood in “The Colbys” and then back in the UK in “Bad Girls” with Amanda Barrie. She has two daughters from her marriage to John McEnery.

TCM overview:

By 1970, Beacham was working on the London stage in “The Basement” and later appeared opposite Ian McKellen in “Venice Preserved” (1985) and Jeremy Irons in “The Rover” (1988). She belatedly made her Broadway debut in 1996 in a production of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”.

Beacham has feared better on the small screen, She reprised her role as the bitch-goddess Sable on “Dynasty” for the 1988-89 season. She switched to comedy in the title role of “Sister Kate” (NBC, 1989-90), a nun more familiar with work in the high echelons of power now assigned to run an orphanage.

Beacham had the recurring role of Luke Perry’s mother on Fox’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” and later played the very able Dr. Westphalen for two seasons (1993-95) on NBC’s “seaQuest DSV”. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Michael Legge. IMDB.

Michael Legge gave wonderful performances in two films associated with Limerick, “Angela’s Ashes”in 1999 and “Cowboys and Angels” in 2003.

He was born in Newry, Co. Down in 1978. Has also starred in the popular television series “Shameless”.

IMDB entry:

Michael Legge was born on December 11, 1978 in Newry, Co. Down, Northern Ireland. He is an actor and director, known for Angela’s Ashes (1999), Cowboys & Angels (2003) andWhatever Happened to Harold Smith? (1999).

Lost close to thirty pounds to play Frank in Angela’s Ashes (1999). While at school, he appeared in a variety of plays, both modern and classic. He is a ten-year veteran of theater in his Northern Ireland hometown.

Frank McCourt‘s novel “Angela’s Ashes” had been his mom’s, aunt’s, and grandmother’s favorite book. He appeared as Older Frank in the film version of the novel.

Was encouraged to act at school by drama teacher Sean Hollywood, who was respected and renowned throughout Ireland for his talent-scouting of young actors in the Newry district. TCM Overview:

Lanky, dark-haired, freckle-faced Michael Legge came to moviegoers’ attention as the older incarnation of narrator Frank McCourt in the “Angela’s Ashes” (1999), the film adaptation of McCourt’s Pulitzer-winning memoir. A native of Newry in Northern Ireland, Legge was already a veteran stage and TV performer when he won that role over some 15,000 aspirants.

As a child, he came to the attention of drama teacher Sean Hollywood who encouraged the youngster. Work in local theater followed as did a featured role in the 1996 British television drama “The Precious Blood”. 1999 proved to be a banner year for Legge as he landed pivotal roles in three features. In addition to his finely wrought portrayal of McCourt in “Angela’s Ashes”,

he demonstrated his versatility as a teenager who discovers the hideaway of three feral youths during an unnamed conflict in the intense, Swedish-made “Straydogs” and displayed his comic gifts and natural charm as a disco-loving teen in 1977 Sheffield in “Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?”.The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

David Baxt made his debut in”Twilight’s Last Gleaming” in 1977 which starred Burt Lancaster. His other films include “Yanks” and “Silver Dream Racer”.

Maureen Delany was a wonderful Irish actress who enlivened mamy British films of the 1940’s. She was born in Kilkennyin 1888.Her film debut came in 1924 in “Land of Her Fathers”. Her cinema highlights include “Odd Man Out” in 1947, “The Mark of Cain”, “Captain Boycott”and her final film “The Doctor’s Dilemma” with Dirk Bogarde in 1958. She died in 1961.

“Wikipedia” entry:

She was born in Kilkenny, daughter of Dr. Barry Delany, who died when she was three months old. She was educated in Galway and originally intended to train for the opera, as she had a fine singing voice. However, she was accepted into the Abbey School of Acting by Lennox Robinson. She made her debut on the stage in Edward McNulty’s comedy The Lord Mayor in 1914.^[

She quickly gained a reputation as a noted comic actress and singer. She became identified with Maisie Madigan in Juno and the Paycock and Bessie Burgess in The Plough and the Stars (both by Sean O’Casey), as well as the Widow Quin in Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.

Dictionary of Irish biography:

Delany, Maureen (c.1888–1961), actress, was born in Kilkenny, daughter of Dr Barry Delany, medical officer to the Kilkenny mental home, and his Kerry-born wife (née Nagle). Her father died when she was three months old. She was educated at the Dominican College in Galway and originally intended to train for opera as she had a fine singing voice, inherited from her father. However, she was accepted to the Abbey School of Acting, then run by Lennox Robinson (qv) and J. M. Kerrigan (1885–1964). After training she made her debut on 13 March 1914 as the mayoress in Edward McNulty’s comedy ‘The lord mayor’, and was commended by the Evening Mail. She quickly became a staple of the Abbey company and as early as 1916, the inveterate playgoer Joseph Holloway (qv) was praising her acting as ‘delightfully explosive’ (Holloway, 189). He was a constant admirer and in 1920, commenting on ‘The golden apple’ by Lady Gregory (qv), he noted that Delany’s ‘comic art and figure grow apace . . . there was a whimsical drollery about all she did’ (Holloway, 207). Delany was by this stage a noted comic actress and singer and among the best loved of the Abbey players. Lady Gregory found her rendition of ‘Oft in the stilly night’ in ‘Aristotle’s bellows’ in March 1921, very fine. Sean O’Casey (qv) was also an admirer and Delany gave vent to her full comic potential to become identified with two of his most noted character parts – Maisie Madigan in ‘Juno and the Paycock’ and Bessie Burgess in ‘The plough and the stars’. O’Casey even introduced a song for Maisie Madigan at her request. After the riotous opening of ‘The plough and the stars’ in February 1926, the Irish Times reported that a member of the audience had deliberately struck Delany in the face, but the actors themselves denied this.

Another part which Dublin theatregoers considered she made her own was the Widow Quin in ‘The playboy of the western world’ by J. M. Synge (qv). However, the critic Hugh Hunt (qv), assessing her career, noted that she played all her famous character parts in the same manner: ‘Large, warm-hearted, with a permanent twinkle in her eye . . . Maureen was not a great actress, but she was a superb performer. For over twenty years she was to play herself on the stage without varying her characterisation by a twitch of her eyebrow, to the utter delight of her public’ (Hunt, 118). The Dublin audience’s appreciation probably prevented her development and froze her mannerisms; the American critic George Jean Nathan, writing on the Abbey’s 1937 American tour, called the company ‘a caricature of its former self . . . [it] is obviously unable to control its fundamentally talented but personally over-cocky actress, Maureen Delany, and to prevent her from indulging in an outrageous overplaying, winking, snorting, and mugging that wreck any serious play she is in’ (Newsweek, 27 Dec. 1937). Her Times obituary noted that the Dublin audience often began to laugh even before she spoke.

In 1940 she appeared as a housekeeper in ‘Where stars walk’, the earliest comedy of Micheál MacLíammóir (qv), at the Gate, and thereafter appeared in numerous Gate productions. She had few film appearances but was part of the talented cast of mainly Irish actors in Carol Reed’s thriller Odd man out (1947), set in Belfast. In the late 1940s she moved to London, where she appeared in small character roles, getting mainly good reviews although The Timesnoted of her performance in Noel Coward’s ‘Waiting in the wings’ at the Duke of York’s Theatre, September 1960, that she could not help overacting. She died in her room at a London Hotel on 27 March 1961 and was predeceased by her husband Peter O’Neill, whom she married about 1947; there were no children

Briony McRoberts was born in Welwyn Garden City in 1957. Her career highlights include “Malice Aforethought” in 1979 and the series “Take the High Road”. She was married to the actor David Robb. Sadly she died in 2013. Her obituary from “The Stage” can be found here.

Anthony Hayward’s “Independent” obituary:

The actress Briony Mc Roberts spent two decades taking character roles on television before making her biggest impact as the super-bitch Sam Hagen in Take the High Road, the Scottish soap opera screened nationally by ITV.

The glamorous Sam arrived in the fictional village of Glendarroch in 1991 as a dynamic business executive and eventually bought the estate, becoming the lady laird.

In 1994, the serial’s title was shortened to High Road, following the vogue of the times – five years earlier, Emmerdale Farm had become Emmerdale. The Scottish Television soap also followed its Yorkshire counterpart in featuring more raunchy storylines.

As the glamorous Sam, who could be thoroughly ruthless in her business dealings, McRoberts brought steamy passion to the community on the banks of Loch Lomond. The character had a string of affairs – starting with Davie Sneddon (Derek Lord), the local “JR”, because he had information useful to her business interests – and she even bedded a teenage boy (played by Gary Hollywood, above).

In 2000, when McRoberts left the serial, Sam hit the bottle after being jilted by a lover, then disappeared. Early the following year, news reached Glendarroch that her body had been found on a rubbish tip and she had lived her last days destitute. The actress made only a handful of television appearances after leaving High Road.

Briony McRoberts was born in Hertfordshire in 1957 but, aged six, moved to Richmond-upon-Thames following the death of her mother and her father’s remarriage.

As a child, she studied drama at the Professional Children’s School, in Teddington. This led to her screen debut, uncredited, at the age of 12 with a small role in the 1969 film fantasy Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, directed by James Hill, who had made Born Free three years earlier and had a particular talent for getting the best out of child actors.

As an adult, McRoberts made her first television appearance as Anna, one of the children fostered by the failed romantic played by Ian Carmichael in the sitcom Bachelor Father (1970-71), and other roles soon followed.

She was seen as Wendy Darling in a live-action television musical version of Peter Pan (1976), starring Mia Farrow and Danny Kaye; as Esther Bronte in The Crezz (1976), with Joss Ackland and Elspet Gray as her parents; as Charlotte, a student, in the final series of the sitcom Sink or Swim (1982); and as Caroline, secretary to the Whitehall-based spycatcher played by Alec McCowen, in Mr Palfrey of Westminster (1984-85). In 1990, McRoberts briefly acted Janine Butcher’s counsellor, Carol Nickleson, in EastEnders.

She was also in the film The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) as the glamorous Margo Fassbender, who is kidnapped with her physicist father by Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), out of a psychiatric hospital and intent on killing Clouseau (Peter Sellers), who has driven him to the edge.

McRoberts met the actor David Robb when they were both in a disastrous 1975 production of the William Douglas-Home play Betsy at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. They married three years later.

On the West End stage, she acted at the Shaftesbury Theatre in the musicals Maggie (1978), alongside Anna Neagle, and Peter Pan (1980), again as Wendy Darling, then appeared at the Aldwych in Charley’s Aunt (1983). Her last television appearance was in a 2005 episode of The Bill.

McRoberts’s final acting role was alongside her husband and actress friend Joanna Lumley in a production of Walter Scott’s epic poem “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” at the Borders Book Festival in June.

She and Robb – who played Dr Clarkson, the Crawley family GP, in Downton Abbey and has been a volunteer for the Samaritans for a quarter of a century – ran the Edinburgh marathon every year from 2004 to raise money for Leukaemia Research.

McRoberts was killed after being hit by a London underground train. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances and her agent stated that it was believed the actress had committed suicide.

Anthony Hayward

The above “Independent” obituary can be accessed online here.

Lois Daine was born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1941. She made her cinema debut in “Hell Is A City” with Stanley Baker in 1960. Other films inckude “Cash On Demand” and “Linda”. Her son is the actor Aran Bell from her marriage to the late great Tom Bell.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Delphi Lawrence

Bruce Seton

John Gregson

John Gregson. IMDB

Stephanie Beacham

Stephanie Beecham TCM Overview

Michael Legge

Michael Legge. IMDB.

David Baxt

Maureen Delany

Dictionary of Irish biography:

Briony McRoberts

Lois Daine

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