British Actors Archives - Page 55 of 137

Malcolm Roberts

Malcolm Roberts was a very popular British singer who was born in Manchester in 1944. He had a huge hit with the song “Love Is All” in 1969. Sadly he died of a heart attack at the age of 58 in 2003.

Alan Clayson’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

In 1968 Malcolm Roberts, who has died of a heart attack aged 58, reached eight in the British charts with the singalong May I Have The Next Dream With You. His next single, Love Is All, did nearly as well, and he even found himself ranked just below John Lennon in the New Musical Express’s 1969 male vocalist popularity poll.

May I Have The Next Dream With You’s success was part of a late 1960s schmaltz boom. There was Engelbert Humperdinck’s Release Me and The Last Waltz, the work of artists such as Vince Hill, Petula Clark and Harry Secombe, and even the briefly resurgent “Cavalier of Song” from the 1940s, Donald Peers.

This counter revolution of “decent” music may have been tacitly applauded by the cautious programmers of the BBC’s then new Radio 1 and Radio 2, with their largely middle-of-the-road playlists. Roberts debuted on a November 1968 Top Of The Pops top-heavy with the likes of Humperdinck, Des O’Connor and Barry Ryan.

Roberts was born and raised in Manchester. After art college, he enrolled at the city’s School of Music and Drama. Following graduation he played trumpet in the National Youth Orchestra, and made headway as an actor, including a Coronation Street bit-part. By the mid-1960s, he had landed leading roles in the West End musical Maggie May and a touring production of West Side Story.

Focusing on singing, he gained an RCA recording contract in 1966, and penetrated the top 50 in 1967 with Time Alone Will Tell (the Italian ballad, Non Pensare A Me). Projected as an English answer to Las Vegas’s Jack Jones, Roberts released an album, and then transferred to the independent label, Major-Minor (then a rarity). May I Have The Next Dream With You followed.

Love Is All, by Les Reed and Barry Mason – Humperdinck’s main songwriting team – was a winner for Roberts at a 1969 Rio de Janeiro song festival. It lingered in the Brazilian charts for more than six months. Attendance of tens of thousands at Roberts’s Rio shows were not unusual.

But the days of Roberts’s hits in Britain were over. In the ensuing decade the “all-round entertainer” emerged. Record releases became adjuncts to variety earnings – although Amanee (1972) sold well in Spain and South America, and a cover of Charles Aznavour’s She was a turntable hit in Germany. He also formed songwriting partnerships with Sammy Cahn, Les Reed and Lynsey de Paul, coming up with Contact (1979) recorded by soul shouter Edwin Starr, incidental music for ITV’s dramatisation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and One Love, a contender for Britain’s Eurovision Song Contest entry in 1992.

Recently he had taken more parts in West End shows, done some artist management and successfully played the 1960s nostalgia circuit. He seemed delighted that he was so warmly remembered at Brighton’s Summer 60s 2000 extravaganza – where The Essential Malcolm Roberts CD did brisk business. He is survived by his son from his former marriage, and his partner Susie.

· Malcolm Roberts, singer and songwriter, born March 31 1944; died February 8 2003

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

Peter Duncan made his TV debut in an episode of “Doomwatch” in 1971. His movies include “Stardust” and “The Old Curiosity Shop” in 1975.

IMDB entry:

Peter Duncan was born on May 3, 1954 in London, England. He is an actor and director, known for Flash Gordon (1980), Demolition Dad (2006) and The Lifetaker (1975). He has been married to Ann since 1980. They have four children. Attempted to cross the Irish Sea in a modified Volkswagen Beetle, but had to be rescued by the British Coastguard after it started sinking. In July 2004 he was appointed Britain’s Chief Scout. Has four children, Lucy (b. 1985), Katie (b. 1987), Georgia (b. 1989) and Aurthur (b. 1991) Has become the United Kingdom’s Chief Scout – the ninth since the tradition began following in the footsteps of the Scout’s founder Lord Baden-Powell. [July 2004] On election to the position of the UK’s Chief Scout: “Scouting is alive and well in 21-century Britain. I can think of no better organisation to provide a creative and challenging framework for the positive development of young men and women. Getting involved in scouting as an adult is about having fun and adventure mixed in with a real sense of purpose. Being a leader gives people the chance to contribute to the positive development of tomorrow’s adults.”

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Alan Rothwell was born in Oldham, Lancashire. He played in “Coronation Street” as ‘David Barlow’ from 1960 until 1968. Other roles include ‘Nicholas Black’ in “Brookside”.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Alan Rothwell (born 9 February 1937) is an English actor and television presenter. He was born in Oldham, Lancashire. He first came to fame in 1960, playing the character David Barlow in the then new ITV soap opera Coronation Street. He remained in this role in 1968, and the character was killed off two years later. He also featured as a regular character in all 26 episodes of the 1961-1962 British spy series Top Secret in the role of “Mike”.Rothwell then became known as a presenter to a generation of children, appearing on the children’s television programmes Picture Box from 1969 to 1990 and Hickory House from 1973 to 1978. He returned to soap operas in 1985, this time as the heroin addict Nicholas Black in Brookside.

Beautiful Morag Hood was born in Glasgow in 1942. She began her career as a TV presenter and was one of the first people to interview for TV, the Beatles in 1963. She had a celebrated stage career including a breathtaking ‘Stella’ in “A Streetcar Named Desire” in London in 1974 with Claire Bloom and Martin Shaw. Two years earlier she played ‘Natasha’ in the television adaptation of “War and Peace” with Anthony Hopkins as ‘Pierre’. She died in London in 2002.

Her obituary from “The Scotsman”:

TWO months ago, Morag Hood was visited in the London hospice where she spent her final months by her close friend, the actor Sian Phillips. Morag was not expected to live for many more days. Indeed, the medical team caring for her was convinced she was drifting into a coma. Suddenly, Phillips reported, Morag opened her eyes and said softly: “I think that was the dress rehearsal.”

It was a remark that was typical of Morag Hood, who was a remarkable actress but an even more remarkable woman. She had beaten cancer once – more than a decade ago – and when it cruelly returned she faced it with grace and immense courage, surrounded by loving family and an army of friends from film, theatre, television and rock music – Sting and his wife, Trudi Styler, were devoted to her.

A generation of men grew up besotted with the blonde actress with doll-like proportions and porcelain skin. Her luminous performance in the Seventies TV version of War and Peace had a hypnotic effect on half the male population. She had won the part of Natasha after more than 1,000 hopefuls were auditioned for it and she turned in a wonderful interpretation, although she had no formal acting training.

Morag’s father was master of works for the company that owned most of Glasgow’s cinemas and theatres, so she was enchanted by the world of make-believe from an early age. In her teens, she also hosted, with Paul Young, a weekly current affairs programme, Roundup, on STV

The youthful Anthony Hopkins was her leading man in the Tolstoy, although over the years she acted with everyone from John Gielgud and Paul Scofield to Hollywood’s Robert Duvall. She also worked extensively at the National Theatre and was a favourite with directors such as Peter Hall, Bill Bryden and Michael Bogdanov.

Her diminutive stature and exquisite bone structure were deceiving. For she was a powerful actor with enormous presence, both on stage and screen, a sort of steel magnolia. In the Nineties, for instance, she gave a brittle-as-glass performance as the menopausal wife of a serial philanderer (Trevor Eve) in Andrea Newman’s gripping TV serial, A Sense of Guilt. And, despite the fact that the symptoms of her final illness had already begun to manifest themselves, one of her finest stage performances was in Torben Betts’s dark drama, A Listening Heaven, at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre in 2001. It won her a nomination in last year’s prestigious Barclays Theatre Awards for Best Actress.

She had last been seen at the Royal Lyceum in the world premiere of Stewart Conn’s Clay Bull in 1998, but returned from her north London home the following year to play Robert Duvall’s wife in the film A Shot For Glory. It was a thrill to play opposite a big movie star, she said, but she felt doubly blessed because her character was so well written.

A graduate of Glasgow University, where she read English, French and Economics, Morag loved words and was a champion of new writing. She premiered three plays by the Young Turk of Scottish theatre, David Greig. She was in The Architect and the original production of The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Soviet Union. In 2000, she played in his trilogy, Victoria, at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Barbican Theatre.

Acting was her passion, but she was also a dedicated gardener, creating new gardens for friends such as the actors Leslie Phillips and his wife, Angela Scoular, when “resting”.

She approached a part in a TV soap with as much energy and commitment as she did a classic play. The last time I interviewed her, she had just filmed an episode of the TV series Heartbeat, in which she ended up murdered on page 36 of the script. “She was a very interesting woman, so I was sorry she had to come to a sticky end,” she said.

I first interviewed her when she was playing Brian Cox’s wife in The Master Builder in the acclaimed 1993 Edinburgh Royal Lyceum production. She told me then that she was revelling in her middle years. Unlike many actors who bemoan the dearth of roles for women of a certain age, Morag believed she only began to flourish as a performer when she chalked up her half century. As a talented writer, she felt theatre, film and especially television, should reflect older women’s lives.

To this end, in recent years she was juggling at least four projects. She was working on a film script based on the family story of her actor friend Jane Gurnett and a major documentary with Elaine C Smith. The author of several well-received documentaries, including one on forgotten women artists such as the Glasgow Girls, Morag lectured about the life of Charlotte Bront, another of her TV “subjects”.

The role of Scottish women like Dr Elsie Inglis at the Front during the First World War had fascinated her since she played a nurse in Bill Bryden’s epic, The Big Picnic, in Glasgow, and she researched the period in depth for a proposed docu-drama. Everything she wrote was about hidden lives, she once remarked. “It’s stuff that has been neglected in the past that I like pulling into the present.”

Although she never married or had children, Morag had three long love affairs. “They were true marriages,” she said. She also found her own spiritual path and often spent time on an ashram in India.

I was privileged to count Morag Hood as my friend and my abiding memory of her will be of lots of giggles and of juddering around the Edinburgh Fringe together in her battered Fiat Panda, which we always managed to find again. No mean feat, because she famously once parked one of her crumbling cars somewhere, but could never ever remember where she had left it.

The “Scotsman” obituary can be accessed online here.

Tall, laconic Chips Rafferty was the first male Australian actor to break through on an international level. He was born in Broken Hill, New South Wales in 1909. He made his film debut in 1938 in “Ants in his Pants”. He is particularly associated with the movies “The Overlanders” and “Eureka Stockade”. He died suddenly in 1971 at the age of 62.

IMDB entry:

Years before Jack Thompson arrived on the scene, Chips Rafferty was regarded by many as the personification of the stereotypically rugged, straightforward and laconic Aussie male. Tall and thin, though not particularly striking in appearance, Rafferty was a tailor-made star for the austere, modestly-budgeted dramas made ‘down under’ in the 1940’s and 50’s. His most individual aspect was in not being remotely reminiscent of any other leading contemporary British or American actor. In his youth, Chips had learned boxing and the art of horsemanship. He also displayed an affinity for painting watercolours. By the time, he entered the film industry as an extra with Cinesound Studios in 1939, John William Pilbean Goffage (nicknamed ‘Chips’ since schooldays) had already seen a great deal of life as a sheep-shearer, drover, roo hunter, gold prospector and cellarman in a wine bar. One of his more exotic activities also included that of a ‘false teeth packer’. On the side, he wrote poems and short stories, which he sold to several Sydney publications. His first stint on the stage was as assistant and comic foil to a magician.

After his inauspicious screen debut in 1939, Chips came to the attention of film makerCharles Chauvel, who assigned him a rather more roguish-sounding surname, and proceeded to cast him as a heroic ‘digger’ in his patriotic wartime drama 40,000 Horsemen (1941). The resulting box-office success, both at home and abroad, led Chauvel to repeat the exercise with The Fighting Rats of Tobruk (1944). After wartime duties with the RAAF, Chips managed to persuade British director Harry Watt to star him in the pivotal role of tough cattle drover Dan McAlpine in The Overlanders (1946). This defined the Rafferty screen personae to such an extent, that he continued to play variations on the theme pretty much throughout the remainder of his career.

Under contract to Ealing, Chips had a brief sojourn in England opposite Googie Withers inThe Loves of Joanna Godden (1947), followed by an integral part in Massacre Hill (1949) . In the early 50’s, he co-founded – and invested much of his own money in – a short-lived production company, Southern International (in conjunction with the director Lee Robinson). They turned out a few unambitious adventure films, like Return of the Plainsman (1953) and King of the Coral Sea (1953), with Chips as the nominal star. For the most part, lucrative film work was to be found only in Hollywood: in feature films, like Kangaroo (1952), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and The Sundowners (1960); or as guest star in television episodes, ranging from Gunsmoke (1955) to Tarzan (1966). He remained for many years, Australia’s most popular actor, an archetypal anti-establishmentarian, irreverent in humour, honest and uncomplicated. His penultimate performance as an outback cop in Wake in Fright (1971) is often cited as one of his best.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Great article on Chips Rafferty in the Australian Screen website, can be accessed here.

New york times obituary in 1971

SYDNEY, Australia, May 28 —Chips Rafferty, Australia’s best‐known film actor, died in a street here of a heart attack last night. He was 62 years old.

Mr. Rafferty, whose real name was John Goff age, took his screen name when his first film role in 1938 called for an Irishman. It was his improve ment on the producer’s sugges tion of Slabs O’Flaherty.

His height of 6 feet 6 inches earned him slapstick comedy roles in Australia’s fledgling film industry. It was not until he was given leave from war service in the Royal Australian Air Force to play in Australian wartime morale boosters such as “Forty Thousand Horsemen” (about the Australian cavalry in the Middle East in World War I) and “Rats of Tobruk” (about the siege of Australian troops in World War II) that he created his most durable role — the lanky, drawling “Dinkum.”

Mr. Rafferty played varia tions on this theme in most of his succeeding roles. He was an Australian coastwatcher in the American film, “The Wack iest Ship in the Army,” and a British sailor in Marlon Bran do’s “Mutiny on the Bounty.”

An actor also on Australian and American television series, Mr. Rafferty had his own film company in Australia, Southern International, Ltd. He became a Member of the Order of the British Empire in Queen Eliza beth’s New Year’s honors list.

Mr. Rafferty starred in “The Overlenders,” a British‐Austra lian film seen here in 1946 that was based on the experience of Australian cattlemen who drove their herds across that contin ent in 1942 to keep them from the Japanese invaders.

Bosley Crowther, in a review in The New York Times, wrote: “In the role of the rugged boss drover, Chips Rafferty, an ex perienced Australian star (he was seen in “40,000 Horsemen”) does a cool and masterful job. His face is lean, his voice is gravelly, he sits a horse with magnificent know‐how and he can crack a bull‐whip at a herd of cattle with the lash of a palm tree in a gale.”

Mr. Rafferty also starred in “Massacre Hill,” an Australian made outdoor drama, seen here in 1950. He later appeared in “Kangaroo” and “The Desert Rats

Christopher Quinten is perhaps best known for his role as’Brian Tilsey’ in “Coronation Street”. In the U.S. he has featured in the movie “RoboCop 2”. Back in the U.K. he has featured in the series “Doctors”.

Christopher Fulford seems to have been featured in every major British television drama series over the past 25 years. Among his appearances are “A Touch of Frost”, “Inspector Morse”, “Judge John Deed”, “Waking the Dead”, “The Brief” and “Whitechapel”. He made his film debut in “The Ploughman’s Lunch” in 1983. His other movies include “Wetherby” and “A Prayer For the Dying”. He was born in London in 1955.

IMDB entry:

Fair haired British character actor Christopher Fulford has been a recognizable face on British TV and film for over 20 years in a variety of roles. Most recently he’s appeared in the BBC series Servants (2003) as the master butler and in Courtroom drama The Brief(2004). He’s appeared in many character driven roles on TV, usually in crime dramas such as A Touch of Frost (1992), Inspector Morse (1987), Silent Witness (1996), and Wire in the Blood (2002). Memorably he appeared as a suspected child murderer in Cracker(1993), a film which had a brilliant twist in the finale. He’s also appeared in many films, such as Jack the Ripper (1988), Resurrected (1989), Hotel (2001) and Eye See You(2002).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tom Allen

Alison Leggatt was born in 1904 in Kensington, London. Her first major film role was in David Lean’s “This Happy Breed” as ‘Aunt Sylvia’ in 1944. Other roles include “Waterloo Road”, “The Card” and “Far From the Madding Crowd” in 1967. She died in 1990.

IMDB entry:

Alison Leggatt was born on February 7, 1904 in Kensington, London, England as Alison Joy Leggatt. She was an actress, known for Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), This Happy Breed (1944) and The Day of the Triffids (1963). She died on July 15, 1990 in London.e and screen character actress who made her reputation in plays by John Osborne and Harold Pinter. Born into a wealthy family, she started acting against the wishes of her parents. In films, she was often cast as upper-crust ladies, kindly wives, disapproving mothers-in-law, landladies or housekeepers.

Ben Whishaw was born in 1980 in Clifton. He has starred on television in “Criminal Justice” and “The Hours”. On film he starred in the remake of “Brideshead Revisited” and as the new ‘Q’ in James Bond movie “Skyfall”.

TCM overview:

A veteran of the stage and former member of the esteemed Bancroft Players Youth Theatre, British actor Ben Whishaw quickly gained a reputation as one of England’s most talented young performers. Whishaw garnered considerable attention for his stage work with London’s Royal National Theatre and the Old Vic, prior to appearing in such U.K.-produced films as Matthew Vaughn’s “Layer Cake” (2004) and the Brian Jones rock-n-roll biopic “Stoned” (2005). Soon after, he made his belated entry into Hollywood as the star of the critically lauded period thriller “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” (2007). Considered one of the U.K.’s most promising new stars, Whishaw continued to win acclaim for leading roles in feature productions like “Brideshead Revisited” (2008) and “Bright Star” (2009). Although he remained a presence on such British TV projects as “The Hour” (BBC, 2011- ), the young actor was soon taking part in major feature blockbusters, including “Cloud Atlas” (2012) and the James Bond film “Skyfall” (2012), in which he played tech wizard Q opposite his “Layer Cake” co-star, Daniel Craig. Still at the dawn of his already impressive career, options for the immensely talented and astute Whishaw appeared limitless.

Born on Oct. 20, 1980 in Hitchen, Hertfordshire, England, Ben Whishaw trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, alma mater of such stage luminaries as Patrick Stewart and Peter O’Toole. Prior to attending RADA, however, Whishaw landed important supporting roles in two 1999 U.K. films. The first was “The Trench,” a modestly produced, but powerful character piece set on the horrific battlefields of World War I. Incidentally, the film also starred a young actor named Daniel Craig, who would go on to international fame as the sixth James Bond in 2006. Whishaw’s second 1999 film, the French drama “Mauvaise passé,” was another well-received character study about a gigolo/escort visiting London. Directed by Michel Blanc, “Mauvaise Passe” paired Whishaw with French actor Daniel Auteuil and became a solid hit with the arthouse crowds.

It was in the theater, however, where Whishaw truly made his name. In 2003, Whishaw made his West End debut at London’s Royal National Theatre in their two-part, six-hour stage adaptation of “His Dark Materials,” based on the works of famed British fantasy novelist, Phillip Pullman. A year later, the 23-year-old Whishaw won the most effusive praise of his young career by playing the title role of “Hamlet” at the legendary Old Vic Theatre. Under the aegis of legendary stage director Trevor Nunn, Whishaw electrified audiences in this “all-youth” production of the Shakespearean classic.

Soon after graduating from RADA, Whishaw landed a handful of semi-substantial roles, with his best known being Jamie Foreman’s nephew, Sidney, in director Matthew Vaughn’s British comedic crime caper “Layer Cake” (2004). Though Whishaw’s role was relatively small, it was the sort of eye-catching showcase performance many young actors killed for. Indeed (not to mention, ironically,) it was Sidney’s willingness to do precisely that, which puts him in conflict with the film’s lead character, XXXX, played by Whishaw’s “Trench” co-star, Daniel Craig. The success of “Layer Cake” won Whishaw a plum supporting role in the sublime British comedy series, “Nathan Barley.” An ITV-produced sitcom about a cynical, loathsome media maven named Nathan Barley (Nicholas Burns), the show skewered the rapid rise of the internet and digital media. Though the program lasted only one season, critics adored it and were especially amused by Whishaw’s turn as the odd Pingu, one of Nathan Barley’s close circle of friends.

On the movie front, the winter of 2007 saw Whishaw’s career take off as never before. That year, Wishaw was cast in his first lead role in the thriller, “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.” Based on the award-winning mystery by German author Patrick Süskind, “Perfume” was the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an orphaned misfit turned serial killer. Set in 18th Century France, the monstrous Grenouille was a respected maker of perfumes by day; a killer of women by night. Born with an uncanny and rare sense of smell, Grenouille’s obsession to capture the aromas, scents, and olfactory “essences” of his victims, formed the backbone of this most unusual murder mystery. With physicality an important component to his role, Whishaw’s performance benefited greatly from his stage training. It also gave the young actor confidence to hold his own with his esteemed co-stars, Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman. Released in Europe in September 2006, the film was a tremendous success and was well on its way to earning $100 million even before its scheduled U.S. release in early January 2007.

Already touted as one of the most promising young actors in the U.K., Whishaw journeyed to the States to join Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger in their roles as various incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Hayne’s acclaimed biographical collage “I’m Not There” (2007). Returning to home, he earned kudos for his portrayal of the flamboyant Lord Sebastian Flyte in an interpretation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” (2008), as he did for his turn as poet John Keats in writer-director Jane Campion’s period romance “Bright Star” (2009). In a smaller contribution, the young actor appeared briefly as the spirit Ariel in Julie Taymor’s stylistic interpretation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” (2010), starring Helen Mirren as the sorceress Prospera. In a pair of television endeavors over the next two years, he played an ambitious television reporter embroiled in a conspiracy on the British Cold War era series “The Hour” (BBC2, 2011- ) then assumed the role of the titular monarch in an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Richard II” (BBC2, 2012).

As the year came to a close, Whishaw appeared in the two biggest film productions of his young career, beginning with a key role in the highly anticipated epic sci-fi drama “Cloud Atlas” (2012). An exploration of the interconnectivity of the human race spanning Earth’s past, present and future, “Cloud Atlas” boasted an all-star ensemble that included Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Susan Sarandon and the directorial team of Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. A month later, Whishaw became the latest – and by far the youngest – science geek to provide hi-tech gadgetry to an unappreciative James Bond (Daniel Craig) in the 23rd 007 adventure “Skyfall” (2012).

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Malcolm Roberts

Peter Duncan

Alan Rothwell

Morag Hood

Chips Rafferty

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

New york times obituary in 1971

Christopher Quinten

Christopher Fulford

Alison Leggatt

Ben Whishaw

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