British Actors Archives - Page 95 of 128

Emily Watson

Emily Watson was born in London in 1967. She was nominated for an Oscar for her breakthrough performance in “Breaking the Waves” in 1995. Her movies since then have included “The Boxer”, “Hilary and Jackie”, “Red Dragon”, “Gosford Park”, and “Oranges and Sunshine”.

TCM Overview:

Right from the beginning, when she made her feature debut in Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” (1996), actress Emily Watson found herself an international star. Watson came out of nowhere to charm the audiences at the Cannes Film Festival that year, resulting in a slew of awards and nominations, including a nod for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. She proved that her sudden acclaim was no fluke when two years later, she turned in another Oscar-nominated performance in “Hilary and Jackie” (1998). From there, Watson was in constant demand, though she took great strides to avoid the trappings of celebrity by taking roles in serious dramas like “Angela’s Ashes” (1999), quirky, offbeat films like “Trixie” (2000), or talky ensemble pieces like “Gosford Park” (2001). She did dabble in the occasional Hollywood film – most notably playing the blind target of a serial killer in “Red Dragon” (2002) and the love interest of Adam Sandler in “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002). But Watson remained grounded with challenging roles in films like “Synecdoche, New York” (2008), which indulged her creative impulses, rather than increased her profile or bank account.

Raised by her creatively involved parents – her father was an architect and her mother was a teacher – Watson was born on Jan. 14, 1967 in London, England. She was a precocious child who slogged through War and Peace before reaching puberty and studying Sanskrit and meditation alongside traditional subjects at the St. James Independent School for Girls. She moved on to study English literature at Bristol University, but left after two years when she discovered acting and began learning the craft at the London Drama Studio while living off of a career development loan from the bank. A year later, she was living hand-to-mouth while doing bit parts for the Royal Shakespeare Company, delving into such challenging roles as a spear-carrier, while also meeting her future husband, screenwriter Jack Waters. She did, however, appear in productions of “All’s Well That Ends Well,” “The Taming of the Shrew” (1992) and “The Children’s Hour” (1994). Meanwhile, she made one of her first appearances on television with a role in “Summer Day’s Dream” (BBC, 1994).

Though she was resigned to being a struggling actress, Watson suddenly emerged onto the international stage with an Oscar-nominated performance in Lars Von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” (1996). Bleak to the point of almost being depressing, “Breaking the Waves” cast her as Bess, a simple and deeply spiritual woman who engages in numerous affairs with other men at the behest of her paralyzed husband (Stellan Skarsgard), who was injured in a freak oil rig accident and believes that her sexual encounters will heal their broken relationship. Originally, Von Trier wanted Helena Bonham Carter to play Bess, but the actress bowed out before shooting began due to the explicit nudity required of her. The then-unknown Watson filled the void and earned rave reviews after the film’s debut at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival. Over the course of its festival run and international release, Watson was named Best Actress by both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics, while earning nods at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards.

Building off of her sudden success, Watson began landing a wide variety of roles in both her native England and in America. After playing the headstrong Maggie Tulliver in the British television production of “The Mill on the Floss” (1997), she starred opposite a puffy Christian Bale in “Metroland” (1997), a comedic drama about an unconventional couple in 1970s-era London. Watson was next cast in “The Boxer” (1997), playing an Irish lass whose former lover (Daniel Day-Lewis) – an IRA member recently released from a 14-year prison term – returns home to pick up where he left off with her and his boxing career. The following year, she offered a showy tour-de-force as the eccentric cellist Jacqueline du Pre in the biopic “Hilary and Jackie” (1998), whose musical genius led her to international stardom, though not without damaging the relationship she had with her older, less-talented sister, Hilary (Rachel Griffiths). But the sisters try to reach reconciliation when Jackie reveals she has multiple sclerosis. Though the film itself failed to live up to the material, Watson scored another triumph, earning her second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

In just a few years, Watson had become one of the rare preeminent British actresses who had achieved international fame. She next starred in the sad, but ultimately hopeful adaptation of Frank McCourt’s best-selling memoir, “Angela’s Ashes” (1999), in which she delivered a strong performance as the hard-luck mother of an Irish brood living in squalor because of her alcoholic husband (Robert Carlyle). In the caper comedy “Trixie” (2000), she was a bumbling casino security guard who unwittingly stumbles upon a scam perpetrated by an assorted cast of corrupt characters. Watson followed by joining the talented ensemble cast for Robert Altman’s award-winning upstairs-downstairs comedy of manners, “Gosford Park” (2001), playing Elsie, a housemaid and sometimes lover to upstairs denizen, Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon). Continuing to appear in the unlikeliest of places, she starred opposite Adam Sandler in Paul Thomas Anderson’s well-received romantic comedy, “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002). Watson next co-starred in the Hannibal Lector thriller “Red Dragon” (2002), playing a blind woman who becomes the target of a serial killer nicknamed The Tooth Fairy (Ralph Fiennes).

After being seen in the science fiction actioner, “Equilibrium” (2002), Watson returned to the stage, where she was nominated for Best Actress by the Laurence Olivier Theatre Awards for her performance in “Uncle Vanya” (2002) at the Donmar Warehouse. In a rare small screen role, she starred in “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers” (HBO, 2004), playing actress Anne Howe, the first wife of the difficult, but brilliant actor Peter Sellers (Geoffrey Rush). Turning to animation, she voiced Victoria Everglot in “Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride” (2005), which she followed with a turn as an unhappy woman who indulges in an affair with another man (Rupert Everett), resulting in a tragic turn of events, in the compelling thriller “Separate Lies” (2005). In “The Proposition” (2006), she was the fragile wife of a captain (Ray Winstone) trying to tame the wild outback of 1880s Australia. She next played the sister of an eccentric young woman (Renée Zellweger) eschewing love and marriage in “Miss Potter” (2006).

Despite her auspicious beginnings, Watson settled down in smaller films that allowed her to continue working while maintaining a lower public profile. She co-starred in the German-Dutch co-production, “Crusade: A March Through Time” (2007), a time-traveling children’s fantasy that bounced between the 13th and 21st centuries. Continuing to appear in more children’s fare, she next co-starred in “The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep” (2007), a sparkling fantasy about a young boy (Alex Etel) who discovers and befriends a creature that grows into the Loch Ness Monster. She returned to adult drama with “Synecdoche, New York” (2008), a gloomy psychological drama from the quirky, twisted mind of writer-turned-first time director Charlie Kaufman, which starred Philip Seymour Hoffman as an ill and depressed theater director whose obsession with building a model of New York City reaches epic proportions. Watson next co-starred in “Fireflies of the Garden” (2009), a drama about love and commitment in the face of tragedy, which she followed with the unusual “Cold Souls” (2009), an existential comedy about a famous American actor (Paul Giamatti, playing himself) who deals with burdens of his every day life.

The following year, Watson played Ralph Fiennes’ wife for a small part in the Ricky Gervais-Stephen Merchant comedy-drama “Cemetery Junction” (2010) before starring in the docudrama “Oranges and Sunshine” (2010). Watson’s performance as Margaret Humphreys, a social worker who exposed Britain’s scandalous deportation of poor children to Australia decades earlier, once again earned her critical accolades, including a Satellite Award for Best Actress. She next appeared on television as Janet Leach, the titular “Appropriate Adult” (ITV, 2011) in the two-part U.K. miniseries about one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers, Fred West (Dominic West) and the woman (Watson) assigned to make sure he understood questions put to him during police interrogation. She ended the year with a supporting turn in director Steven Spielberg’s epic drama “War Horse” (2011) as the mother of a young man (Jeremy Irvine) whose remarkable bond with his horse is interrupted after the steed is sold to the cavalry during World War I.

The above TCM overview can be accessed online here.

Christopher Cazenove was born in 1943 in Winchester, Hampshire. He starred in some very popular period dramas on television in the 1970’s including “The Regiment” and “The Duchess of Duke Street”. In the 1980’s he went to Hollywood to feature in “Dynasty” joining fellow Britons Joan Collins and Kate O’Mara. Recently he had featured in the popular court room series “Judge John Deed” on the BBC with Martin Shaw. His many films included “Royal Flash” in 1975, “East of Elephant Rock” in 1977 and “Eye of the Needle” in 1981. He died in 2010.

His “Guardian” obituary by David McKittrick:

The life of Christopher Cazenove was in some ways almost as full of incident as his acting career, encompassing as it did a difficult relationship with his father, a stop-start marriage and the tragic death of a beloved son. The actor resisted the advice of his father, a brigadier in the Coldstream Guards, to pursue a military career and instead chose a life in drama. One irony lay in the fact that his big acting breakthrough came when he portrayed a dashing soldier in The Regiment, an early 1970s TV drama series. A second irony was that he believed this role helped shape his subsequent career.

Although he achieved a certain fame in the 1980s for his role as Ben Carrington, a scheming businessman in the glossy American soap Dynasty, he spent much of his career depicting Englishmen from aristocratic and often military backgrounds. His good looks, his charm and his upper-crust air – he went to Eton – meant he was often cast in upper-middle-class roles, often in costume dramas set around the beginning of the 20th century.

He once said ruefully: “When I started out, I had a game plan to end up with the Royal Shakespeare Company or the National Theatre. But The Regiment really put the kibosh on that. After that I was perceived as a total toff and too commercial. Perhaps that’s why I have never been offered a job at the RSC – or maybe it’s because they think I’m awful.”

But if he never reached the highest echelons of his craft he was much in demand in the theatre, on television and occasionally in films. A typical role in later life saw him playing Professor Henry Higgins on stage in My Fair Lady.

His versatility was such that he could play both the sophisticated hero and the low-down scoundrel. In Dynasty, which made him a household name in the mid-1980s, he played “a real cad.” He observed: “Playing a nasty gives one a much better chance – nasty characters are so much more interesting than wimps.”

He enthused of Dynasty: “I’ve always adored the series. Way over the top it may be, but it’s wonderful escapism and great fun.” He also marvelled at the money, which was way beyond anything available over here.

He credited Joan Collins with helping him gain entrance into the US movie scene. “Before Joan made such an enormous impact in Dynasty, a true Brit accent wasn’t a particular advantage in Hollywood,” he said. “I know, because I spent three years trying to break in as a foreigner, with scarcely any luck at all.”

Cazenove described himself as a rule-breaker at Eton. His worst memory was being caned: “All six prefects were there to witness the beating,” he recalled. “I’ll never forget the humiliation of bending over to touch my toes while this boy gave me six of the best.”

He worked as a nanny, a teacher, a cinema attendant and a chauffeur in France before training as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school. In 1973 he married Angharad Rees, who like him was well-known for playing period parts. Her role in the popular series Poldark made her a major television figure.

Although their marriage lasted two decades, it included lengthy periods of separation. In a number of frank interviews after their divorce, Cazenove looked back: “I enjoyed being married very much. We still love each other very much – we just find it difficult to live together. We are very good friends and I think we probably have the best of all possible worlds now. I don’t regret anything.”

The couple’s post-divorce relationship was so good that friends hoped they might get together again, but Cazenove said: “I know there are people just dying for us to get married again, but it’s not going to happen.”

The great tragedy for the couple came in 1999, five years after their divorce, when their eldest son Linford died in a car accident. He had just completed his education and was intent on a career in the theatre.

Cazenove said of his death: “If he had to go, he went at an incredibly good time, if I can put it that way. He was on such a high. He had just got his master’s degree at Cambridge University and was so happy, so excited, at forming his own theatre company.

“I don’t think I have suppressed any feelings of anger or bitterness. I have let it go. Many tears have been shed and are still being shed. That’s the way it should be.”

Cazenove’s companion for almost a decade before his death was his partner Isabel Davis. She and members of his family, including his surviving son Rhys, were at his hospital bedside when he died of the blood disorder septicaemia.

A statement from the family and Davis said: “All who knew and loved him will be devastated by the loss of this incredible man who touched so many lives.”

David McKittrick

The “Guardian” obituary can be accessed here.

Anthony Quayle

Anthony Quayle was born in 1913 in Southport, Lancashire. His acting career was interrupted by war service. From 1948 until 1956 he directed at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.

He acted and directed extensively on stage. He had too an impressive film career including such movies as Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man” which he made in the U.S. in 1956, “Woman in a Dressing Gown” and “Ice Cold in Alex” and “Anne of a Thousand Days” in 1970. He had a very popular TV series in the late sixties in Britain called “The Strange Affair”. He died in 1989.

TCM Overview:

Distinguished stage actor who had a non-speaking part in “Pygmalion” (1938) and made his screen debut proper in Olivier’s “Hamlet” (1948), playing Marcellus. Quayle subsequently turned in memorable supporting roles in films ranging from the period drama, “Anne of the Thousand Days” (1969), to Woody Allen’s farcical “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)” (1972).

Jack Merivale was a tall, dark and very handsome actor who featured in many films of the 1940’s and 50’s. He was born in 1917 in Toronto, Canada. He made his debut in a small role in the classic James Whale film “The Invisible Man” in 1933. He went on to feature in “A Night to Remember”, “The Battle of the River Plate” and “Arabesque” in 1966. His first wife was the actress Jan Sterling. He was a longtime partner of Vivien Leigh until her death in 1967 and he was married to Dinah Sheridan at the time of his death in 1990.

IMDB entry:

John Merivale was born on December 1, 1917 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as John Herman Merivale. He was an actor, known for Arabesque (1966), A Night to Remember(1958) and Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959). He was married to Dinah Sheridan andJan Sterling. He died on February 6, 1990 in London, England.

In 1970, he was given ten years to live because of a previously undiagnosed hereditary kidney condition. He fell into a relationship with long-time friend actress Dinah Sheridan, who learned how to administer kidney dialysis at home. They married in 1986 and John died four years later, having stretched his life from ten to twenty years.

Became the lover and longtime companion of actress Vivien Leigh following her divorce from Laurence Olivier in 1960. He also became her dedicated caretaker in her final years as manic depression and prolonged illnesses grew severe. He was by her side when she died of tuberculosis in 1967.

Stepbrother of Sally Pearson.

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Los Angeles obituary in 1990.

LONDON — John Merivale, who played distinguished English gentlemen in such movies as “A Night to Remember,” “King Rat” and “Arabesque” in the 1950s and ‘60s, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 72.

Merivale, the son of Philip Merivale, a leading man in films, had appeared on stage, film and television. He died in his sleep in London’s Charing Cross Hospital, his family said. Cause of death was pneumonia following a long illness resulting from renal failure, a hereditary illness that killed his father.

Handsome, tall, courteous and charming, he was born into a theatrical family in Toronto. His mother was actress Viva Birkett. His father later married actress Gladys Cooper.

Merivale, who lived with Vivien Leigh until her death in 1967, was educated at Rugby, a prestigious private school, and at Oxford University. His Oxford stay was cut short, partly because of his father’s financial problems after an investment in a disastrous Shakespearean production.

Merivale entered the movies in 1933; his first role was as a newspaper vendor.

In 1938, he appeared on stage in London and met Leigh, soon to become Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind” and the future wife of Sir Laurence Olivier. In 1940, Merivale appeared in a short-run New York production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” produced and financed by her and Olivier.

Merivale made much of his early acting career in the United States. He appeared in Cecil Beaton’s New York production of Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan” in 1946 and in Rex Harrison’s New York production of “Anne of a Thousand Days” in 1948.

He married actress Jane Sterling in 1941. After their divorce in 1948, he returned to England, appearing in London stage comedies like “The Reluctant Debutante” while making a name for himself in movies.

One of his best-remembered movie roles was in “A Night to Remember” (1958), about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. He played a husband who sees his family safely into the crowded lifeboats, then goes down with the liner.

During the 1950s, while continuing with his stage and movie work, Merivale made a successful career in television, appearing in “The Third Man” series, “The Gentle Goddess,” “The Verdict is Yours” and other shows.

Merivale and Miss Leigh began a discreet affair after her separation from Olivier. She and Olivier were divorced in 1960, and she and Merivale lived together. The couple announced wedding plans in 1961 but never followed through.

Miss Leigh and Merivale acted together in London and on a world tour in 1958 in the play “Duel of Angels.” They also appeared in John Gielgud’s Broadway staging of “Ivanov” in 1965.

In 1986, Merivale married his second wife, actress Dinah Sheridan, who survives him

Lee Ingleby was born in Burnley in 1976. He played Stan Shunpike in “Harry Potter and the Prisioner of Azkaban”. He is well known for his portrayal of Detective John Bachus in the BBC series “George Gently”.

Anne Reid was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1935. She achived national fame in the UK for her performance as Val wife to Ken Barlow in “CoronationStreet” who was electrocuted by her hairdryer. Her film debut was in 1958 in “Passport to Shame”. She has had a steady career as a character actress but in the past ten years she has become very prolific in major roles both on television and in film e.g the film “The Mother” with Daniel Craig in 2003.

“MailOnline” article:

Anne Reid was the envy of older women everywhere when she played Daniel Craig’s lover in The Mother. She also starred in Coronation Street, and more recently as Mrs Thackeray the cook in Upstairs Downstairs. Now 75 and an MBE, she has one son and lives in central London.

I was born in Newcastle in May 1935, but my family moved to Redcar when the war started and this is me, aged eight, at White House School.

My nursery school was called John Emmerson Batty – wonderful name, wasn’t it? Then came White House primary, where my lasting memory was performing, as Juliet, the last act of Romeo And Juliet with a girl called June Laverick, who went on to become a well-known actress.

All my family were journalists – and indeed, so was my late husband, Peter Eckersley. My grandfather wrote a column in the Bolton Echo; my uncle was on the Manchester Evening News. My father, Colin, was a special correspondent in the Middle East for the Daily Telegraph and my three brothers followed the tradition.

When I was 11 my life changed completely. My mother flew out to join my father abroad and I was sent away to boarding school – to Penrhos College in North Wales.

I don’t remember being unduly worried at all. I must have been quite a strong character, but it must have been horrendously hard for my mother to leave me behind.

She left before term began so couldn’t even accompany me to school. My tin trunk and I were put on a train by one of my brothers and off I chugged towards the unknown.

Happily I adored Penrhos, and the odd thing was that we had a brother-school nearby called Rydal, where William Roache went – something I found out only when I joined the cast of Coronation Street.

I was so happy at school and I made it my home as I no longer had a family home in England. I saw my parents only once a year during the summer.

I either flew to the Middle East or spent time with them in London. When that happened they lived at the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square.

Strangely enough, the flat I live in now is not far from the hotel. I was very average at school. I passed my exams, but I don’t think I shone. The school offered elocution lessons with a Miss Monica Beardsworth, and my father had me enrolled to iron out my North East accent. That’s how I discovered acting.

I never got into the school plays, but the elocution lessons opened another door because, as part of the training, I started doing bits of plays with my teacher.

I remember when I was about 12, learning the lines of a play and thinking, ‘I know how to make this interesting. I know how to act. I can do this better than other people.’ You do know when an inner talent gives you that ease. It’s not a remarkable thing – just a knack that has given me a very nice life.

In the end Miss Beardsworth wrote to my parents saying, ‘I think Anne is talented and she should take up acting. I’d like to get the forms and send her to RADA.’

My grandmother had been on the stage in variety choruses, so my father agreed with the idea at once. And that’s how it all happened. Not everyone at the school agreed with the diagnosis.

My French teacher, Miss Clark, was astonished when I told her, aged 12, that I was going to be an actress.

She said, ‘Oh no. You’ll never make an actress. You’re not the type.’ I don’t think she was being intentionally unkind, but these things stick in your mind, don’t they? She obviously thought I wasn’t flamboyant enough.

People, at that time, imagined that an actress should be vivid and flamboyant, but I don’t believe acting is about that. It’s about being a blank canvas and being able to play lots of different characters.

I always wanted that diversity, and the great thing is that, since I did The Mother, my life has changed dramatically. I’ve had such variety, from Ladies Of Letters to playing Barbara Cartland in the story of her life.

It was a wrench to leave Penrhos at 16. I loved it so much. I was in the school choir and we always had choir picnics in the mountains of Snowdonia.

For a long time after I left, I used to dream I was back at school. I was very content there and it was traumatic to be thrust out into the world. Though I had travelled a lot, I was still very naive – a schoolgirl in high heels and earrings.

I did enjoy RADA, but I wish I’d been more worldly-wise. I didn’t make the most of it and I didn’t even know what an agent was. I didn’t know anything about the business and hadn’t even been to the theatre much. It took me a long time to grow up.

I don’t know if I have quite managed it, even now. I always played the character parts at drama school – the sort of roles I play now, but of course that doesn’t really equip you to find jobs when you come out. I didn’t know how to play a juvenile lead.

I was a stage manager for a long time and worked in repertory theatre, but gradually things began to happen. My first TV job was doing sketches with Benny Hill.

My parents came back to England in 1960, just before I went into Coronation Street playing Valerie Tatlock.

My father enjoyed that enormously – he loved the fact that I was famous. It was only after he died that I left the Street. Then I married, became pregnant and gave up acting for about 12 years, and started again in 1986. Since then everything has turned out wonderfully well.

Yvonne Swann Marchlands starts on Thursday, ITV1 at 9pm.

The above “Mail Online” article can be accessed online here.

Barbara Everest was born in Southfields, London in 1890. She made her film debut in the silent movie “The Man Without A Soul” in 1916. In 1943 she continued her career in Hollywood where she made “Mission to Moscow”, “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman and Angela Lansbury and “The Valley of Decision”. By 1947 she was back in Britain and she continued acting until 1965 when she made her final film “Rotten to the Core”. She died in 1968.

TCM Overview:

Barbara Everest was an actress who had a successful Hollywood career. In her early acting career, Everest appeared in such films as “Love in Exile” (1936), “Jump For Glory” (1937) and the drama “Commandos Strike at Dawn” (1942) with Paul Muni. She also appeared in the Anthony Collins drama “Forever and a Day” (1943) and “Mission to Moscow” (1943) with Walter Huston. She continued to work steadily in film throughout the forties, appearing in “The Phantom of the Opera” (1943) with Nelson Eddy, the Charles Boyer adaptation “Gaslight” (1944) and the Orson Welles dramatic adaptation “Jane Eyre” (1944). She also appeared in the thriller “The Uninvited” (1944) with Ray Milland and the drama “The Valley of Decision” (1945) with Greer Garson. Film continued to be her passion as she played roles in the dramatic adaptation “Frieda” (1947) with David Farrar, “The Safecracker” (1958) with Ray Milland and “El Cid” (1961). She also appeared in the Macdonald Carey adaptation “These Are the D*mned” (1962). Everest more recently acted in “Rotten to the Core” (1965). Everest passed away in February 1968 at the age of 78.

The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.

Donald Sinden was born in 1923 in Plymouth, Devon. He made his first stage appearance in Brighton in 1941. He began his film career in “Portrait from Life” in 1948. His other films include “Mogambo” opposite Grace Kelly 1953, “The Cruel Sea”, “Mad Aboiut Men” with Glynis Johns and in 1959, “The Captain#s Table” with Peggy Cummins. He was still acting in his med-eighties on television in “Judge John Deed”. “Midsomer Murders” and “Marple”. He died in 2014.

IMDB entry:

The son of a country chemist, the British actor Donald Sinden intended to pursue a career in architecture but was spotted in an amateur theatrical production and asked to join a company that entertained the troops during World War II (Sinden was rejected for naval service because of asthma). Following a brief training at drama school, he established himself in theater, particularly as a Shakespearean actor. Having made his film debut in The Cruel Sea (1953), Sinden became a leading man in British films during the 1950s and then moved onto character roles later in his career. While his film appearances became less frequent, he worked steadily in theater (with the Royal Shakespeare Company, primarily) and in television, notably as the unperturbable butler in “Two’s Company” (1975) and as a miserable in-law in “Never the Twain” (1981).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Lyn Hammond

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

His “Guardian” obituary:

“To hear him in full spate is not unlike being shot between the eyes by the world’s largest plum,” said the journalist John Preston of Donald Sinden, who has died aged 90. The remark was applicable to the actor’s vocal delivery both on stage and off. No review was ever penned without “fruity” appearing somewhere near “voice” in the text. Judi Dench, who played a notable Beatrice to his Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing in 1976, said he had “a Christmas pudding of a voice, soaked in brandy”; while the director Peter Hall, who played a very big part in his career, likened it to a bassoon that could be terribly tragic, terribly moving – and extremely funny. Physically, too, Sinden was both imposing and endlessly, sometimes outrageously, inventive. In all, Michael Billington averred, he was a critic’s dream, because he always gave you so much to write about.

He became nationally renowned as a Rank contract artist in the 1950s, appearing in notable films such as The Cruel Sea (1953) with Jack Hawkins, Mogambo (1953), directed by John Ford, with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner, and Doctor in the House (1954) and Doctor at Large (1957), with Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice, and from the 1960s in TV sitcoms. Nonetheless, Sinden was unashamedly theatrical. He rarely went on stage without an item of historical significance: a pair of Henry Irving’s boots, Fred Terry’s eye-glass or John Martin Harvey‘s hat. He lived and breathed the traditions of his trade, and bent the technique he sought out from his elders – he learned about listening and timing, for instance, from Baliol Holloway – to the service of both tragic and comic gods.

He was a notable Shakespearean at Stratford-upon-Avon either side of his early film stint, playing a booming, militaristic King Lear (“Let me not stay a jot for dinner … dinner, ho, dinner!” has never sounded so heartfelt) in the same season as Benedick and, soon after, less successfully, a blacked-up Othello. He characteristically said that Lear became nice and easy after three acts, whereas Othello started quietly and just got harder and harder. Like one of his heroes, David Garrick, he believed that tragedy was easier than comedy: “The expertise you need for farce,” he said, “is far greater than for Shakespeare, though with him there has to be greater intellectual awareness.”

Sinden on the back foot, exposed and flummoxed in comedy, was one of the sights of the age; his great jowls would sag in a mask of stricken gravity, his eyes fixed wide open, and he would rake the stalls with baleful stares, reducing his audience to a state of gleeful hysteria.

The second of three children, he was born in Plymouth, the son of Alfred, a chemist, and Mabel (nee Fuller), and grew up in Ditchling, East Sussex. He suffered from asthma from an early age and attended a series of private schools before going to Hassocks primary. He failed the 11-plus, went on to Burgess Hill secondary and, at the age of 15, was apprenticed in carpentry and attended evening classes in draughting, with aspirations to become an architect and surveyor.His workplace was in nearby Brighton, where he fell into amateur dramatics and was given a chance by the director of the Theatre Royal, Charles F Smith, who invited him to join his Mobile Entertainments Southern Area company, with his first professional appearance coming in 1942. His asthma kept him out of wartime action, and he continued with MESA and in joinery. Smith, who had seen Irving act, introduced him to the leaders of his new profession – John Martin Harvey, Irene Vanbrugh, Marie Tempest – and the critic James Agate.

In the 1944 volume of his diaries published as The Selective Ego, Agate records how he muttered, “Stick to your fretwork, young man,” before asking “Don Sinden” to recite Wolsey’s farewell from Henry VIII and finding evidence of promise: “Enough height, an attractive head, something of the look of young [Henry] Ainley, a good resonant voice, vowels not common, manner modest yet firm.” Later that year, after four years of modern comedies and one-night stands for the forces, Sinden embarked on two terms of training at the Webber Douglas School, before making his regional debut at the Leicester Rep, moving on to the Stratford-upon-Avon Memorial theatre in 1946 for two seasons; his roles included Dumaine in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice and Paris (also understudying Romeo) in Peter Brook’s Romeo and Juliet.

His contract with Rank followed seasons at the Old Vic in both London and Bristol. By 1960 Sinden was anxious to resume his place on the stage. He was an ideal Captain Hook (doubled with Mr Darling) in Peter Pan opposite Julia Lockwood at the old Scala, but Hall, he said, “rescued” him at the RSC, where he played Mr Price in Henry Livings’s surreal comedy Eh? and the Duke of York in the legendary Wars of the Roses history play cycle at Stratford and the Aldwych in London for two years, and shown on BBC television in 1965.

In the latter, Peggy Ashcroft as the “she-wolf” Queen Margaret wiped his face with a rag soaked in the blood of his murdered son, and their brutish stand-off, ending in York’s torture and death, was a highlight of the cycle. Still he maintained a wider public profile in the popular television comedy series Our Man at St Mark’s (1964-66), where he succeeded Leslie Phillips as a country vicar kept in check by Joan Hickson’s sarcastically overbearing housekeeper.

He consolidated his RSC status, and was made an associate of the company, with his Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse, a feast of frippery and (“Stap me vitals”) asides. Sinden based his makeup on that of Danny La Rue, but went even further with the rouge, the ribbons, the giant poodle wig and the flutter of silk kerchiefs.

He was in full sail, and added three more great performances in the 1969-70 season: a comically puritanical, granite-featured Malvolio (his model was the Graham Sutherland portrait of Somerset Maugham) opposite Dench’s exquisite Viola in Twelfth Night; a four-square Henry VIII based on Holbein; and another knockout fop, Sir William Harcourt Courtly, in Boucicault’s London Assurance, directed by Ronald Eyre.

In between, he somehow threaded long West End runs in two hit farces: Terence Frisby’s There’s a Girl in My Soup (1966), in which he executed a celebrated piece of “business”, breaking two eggs (he played a celebrity chef) while seducing Jill Melford’s “dolly bird”; and Ray Cooney and John Chapman’s Not Now, Darling (1968), weaving a web of deceit and adultery in a fantastic double act with another great farceur, Bernard Cribbins.

Still refusing to erect barriers between the subsidised and commercial stages – at a time when others were busy doing so – he played in Terence Rattigan’s In Praise of Love (originally After Lydia) opposite Joan Greenwood at the Duchess theatre in 1973 and in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (“The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone”) at Chichester in 1975.

His last hurrah at the RSC was that wonderful Much Ado (directed, as was their Twelfth Night, by John Barton), he and Dench dicing with love and the onset of middle age in the last-chance saloon of a colonial Indian sunset. Sinden’s technique of embracing the audience in his confidence while building a complex character was breathtaking. His Benedick, the best I have seen, was hilarious and heart-breaking, vain, masculine, silly and romantically efflorescent.

He segued into his second big television series, Two’s Company (1975-79), playing a Jeevesian butler to Elaine Stritch‘s acerbic, best-selling American author who had moved to London. Bill McIlwraith’s scripts capitalised on both actors’ gifts for laconic comedy, rife with misunderstanding and affronted dignity; the result was high-calibre warfare between two proud thoroughbreds.

Another compelling sitcom partnership, full of barely concealed or absolutely open outrage, came with Windsor Davies in Never the Twain (1981-91). The rivalry between the two antique dealers was in no way assuaged by the love and marriage of their respective offspring.

His West End appearances in the 80s included an overage matinee idol in Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, an overage Uncle Vanya at the Haymarket (one role, perhaps, that proved beyond his considerable range) and Sir Peter Teazle in A School for Scandal. But he struck gold twice in this decade: first, as Dick Willey MP, a lascivious Home Office minister, in Ray Cooney’s Two Into One (1984) at the Shaftesbury, raking the house with his trademark battery of stricken oiellades when caught with his trousers, as it were, down; then as Sir Percy Blakeney in Nicholas Hytner’s sumptuous 1985 revival of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which transferred from Chichester to the Haymarket.

These monstrous star performances, the one a fond farewell to the old Aldwych farce traditions (aided and abetted by the brilliant Michael Williams, the RSC Fool to his Lear), the other an extravagant adieu to the Victorian stage, still revealed Sinden at the peak of his powers.

In the 90s, he played an outdated view of Oscar Wilde as a martyred music-hall act in Diversions and Delights, a retread of Dick Willey in Cooney’s less delirious sequel Out of Order, and a somewhat tackily lecherous old Duke of Altair (one of Laurence Olivier’s most dashing, moonstruck roles) in Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed at Chichester.

He fared better with Hall, yet again, as a definitive, baffled Mr Hardcastle, the country squire who is mistaken for an innkeeper in She Stoops to Conquer (“I no longer know me own house!”) and as a growling, highly political Polonius to Stephen Dillane’s taciturn Hamlet, the inaugural production at the newly named Gielgud theatre (formerly the Globe). His last West End appearance came in Ronald Harwood’s Quartet at the Albery (now the Noël Coward) in 1999, playing an operatic has-been in an old folk’s home, stalking the stage with Ralph Richardson’s walking stick.

In later years, he toured abroad, indefatigably and heroically, in both the RSC’s The Hollow Crown, John Barton’s entertainment about English monarchs, and his own compilation of poetry and reminiscences. He served on many committees, notably the Arts Council and the Theatre Museum, and was a highly visible and participatory member of the Garrick Club. His television work continued, notably as the father of the ex-wife of Judge John Deed (2001-07): of his own full-of-himself character he said, “He cannot understand why the series is not called Judge Joseph Channing.”

Sinden was made CBE in 1979, but his “old actor laddie” public persona, exuding an air of fulsome ingratiation, made him a sitting target for Spitting Image, the television satire show, where his florid, fawning puppet yearned for further recognition. The knighthood duly arrived in 1997.

His appetite for absorbing, and preferably relating, theatrical anecdotes was unquenchable, and he produced two delightful volumes of autobiography, A Touch of the Memoirs (1982) – which contains a lovely account of a Sussex childhood – and Laughter in the Second Act (1985), an invaluable, idiosyncratic document in the history of the RSC and the West End. He was a great lover of architecture, the countryside and its churches, producing The English Country Church (1988) alongside two other collections, The Everyman Book of Theatrical Anecdotes (1987) and The Last Word (1994), featuring put-downs, final utterances and epitaphs.

Sinden married the actor Diana Mahony in 1948 and they were inseparable until her death in 2004. Their first son, the actor Jeremy, died in 1996. He is survived by their second son, Marc, also an actor, as well as a director and producer, and by his brother Leon, another actor.

• Donald Alfred Sinden, actor, born 9 October 1923; died 11 September 2014

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be access online here.

John Nettles. IMDB.

John Nettles is well known for two long-running television series in the UK, “Bergerac” which ran from 1981 until 1991 and concerned the live of Detective Jim Bergerac on the island of Jersey and “Midsome Murders” which he starred in from 1995 until 2011. He was born in St Austell, Cornwall and he studied at the University of Southampton. His films include “All Men Are Mortal” in 1995.

IMDB entry:

John Nettles has been a familiar face on British and International television screens for over thirty years.

From his early beginnings in the UK hit comedy The Liver Birds (1969), he became a household name overnight playing the Jersey detective “Jim Bergerac”. The series,Bergerac (1981), was a huge hit in Britain and was exported to many countries across the world including France, Spain and Greece, gaining him thousands of fans.

His new found fame as Bergerac gave him almost film-star-like fame and fortune, not to mention thousands of female admirers! Despite Bergerac (1981) being mothballed in the early 1990s, the series still has a considerable fan base and lingering popularity abroad, especially in Jersey, where images of John Nettles are still used for advertising tourist attractions and other services on the island. Nettles’ polished Shakesperean performances have won him critical acclaim and many consider him to rival fellow British stalwarts of theatre such as Patrick Stewart and SirIan McKellen.

English actor John Nettles who plays the character of Jim Bergerac in the television drama series ‘Bergerac’, pictured on location during filming in the United Kingdom on 25th March 1981. (Photo by Larry Ellis Collection/Getty Images)

Oddly enough, however, he has never really ventured onto the big screen and has seemed happy to stick to stage and television throughout his successful career. Most recently he has enjoying continued success playing the straightforward DCI Tom Barnaby in ITV’s _”Midsomer Murders” (1997). He is on record as wanting to create a TV detective without any of the usual tics, and consequently Tom Barnaby is a happy family man, who just happens to live in the most murderous part of an otherwise stereotypically idyllic English countryside.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: A J Lewis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Emily Watson

Christopher Cazenove

Anthony Quayle

Anthony Quayle

John Merivale

Los Angeles obituary in 1990.

Lee Ingleby

Anne Reid

Barbara Everest

Donald Sinden

John Nettles

John Nettles. IMDB.

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