British Actors Archives - Page 63 of 137

David Tennant

David Tennant was born in 1971 in West Lothian, Scotland. He is best known for his performance as “Dr Who”. He also played ‘Barty Crouch Jnr’ in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” in 2005. His other movies include “The Decoy Bride”.

TCM overview:

To much of the world’s television viewing audience, David Tennant was the tenth and arguably most popular incarnation of England’s iconic science fiction hero “Doctor Who” (BBC One 1963-1989, 2005- ), who took audiences by storm with the venerable science fiction television series’ revival in 2005. But the Scottish actor’s c.v. also included a lengthy, award-winning string of performances in classical and modern theater as well as numerous turns in British television dramas and comedies. But it was his vigorous and frequently amusing turn as the Doctor that not only restored much of the charm and appeal of the long-running series, which had been mothballed for nearly two decades prior to 2005, but also vaulted him to international fame. Unlike many of the other actors who played the Doctor during its five decade run, Tennant was successful in finding substantive work outside of the show, including appearances in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005) and such highly praised small screen efforts as “Recovery” (BBC One 2007) and “Broadchurch” (ITV 2013- ).

Born David John McDonald on April 18, 1971 in the Scottish town of Bathgate, David Tennant was the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Alexander McDonald, and Essdale Helen McLeod, whose father, Archibald McLeod, was a champion footballer for Scotland in the 1930s. His fascination for acting developed at a very early age and was inspired in part by “Doctor Who,” of which he was a devoted fan. Tennant began acting in school productions during his time in primary and secondary schools, and soon added Saturday classes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama to his training. He was admitted to the Academy at the age of 16, the same year he made his screen debut in an anti-smoking film produced by the Glasgow Health Board. At his time, he adopted the stage name of “David Tennant,” inspired by Pet Shop Boys singer Neil Tennant, because an actor named David McDonald was already registered with the Equity union. He graduated from the Academy with a Bachelor of Arts in acting and landed his first professional role in a production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” for the agitprop 7:84 Theatre Company. Roles on television soon followed, most notably his 1993 turn as a transsexual barmaid well loved by the patrons of her pub on the comedy “Rab C. Nesbitt” (BBC Two 1988-1999, 2008- ). The following year, Tennant earned his breakthrough role as a young bipolar patient/DJ at a hospital radio station on “Takin’ Over the Asylum” (BBC Scotland 1994).

A critically acclaimed appearance in a 1995 production of Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw” at the Royal National Theater in London underscored Tennant’s growing reputation as a stage star on the rise, which he soon cemented by joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1996. By 2003, he had netted Olivier and Ian Charleson Award nominations for performances in “The Comedy of Errors” and Kenneth Lonergan’s “Lobby Hero,” which translated into regular work as a guest star on episodic television. These efforts included appearances on the revived “Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)” (BBC One 2000-2001) and the well-praised television version of “People Like Us (BBC Two 1999-2000). In 2004 and 2005, Tennant received critical praise for his comic performances in the BBC’s adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s “He Knew He Was Right” (2004) and the musical series “Blackpool” (BBC One 2004), as well as supporting turns in more dramatic fare like the live broadcast of “The Quatermass Experiment” (BBC Four 2005) and in “Casanova” (BBC Three 2005) as the legendary lover in his younger days. The last production was written by Russell T. Davies, who cast Tennant as the tenth incarnation of the Time Lord in his revival of “Doctor Who” that same year.

Tennant replaced Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor in the second season of the new “Doctor Who” and quickly became one of the most popular actors to personify the role in the course of its five-decade history. His Doctor combined the whimsy and eccentricity of Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor with flashes of the steely reserve seen in Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor, but was also shot through with streaks of loneliness and romantic longing that made him positively Byronic at times. Tennant was also a devotee of the series, which imbued both his performance and his promotional appearances outside the show with an infective enthusiasm that won him numerous fans. He participated in numerous related and spin-off projects, from audio plays by Big Finish Productions to the BBC’s charity holiday specials and “The Sarah Jane Adventures” (CBBC 2007-2011), which starred former Baker companion Elisabeth Sladen reprising her turn as the intrepid Sarah Jane Smith. For his performances on “Doctor Who,” Tennant won three National Television Awards and a BAFTA Cyrmu (BAFTA in Wales), but more importantly, his performance was crucial in reviving a moribund franchise and making it relevant to modern audiences. Fans would later name him the best Doctor in the history of the series by its official house organ, Doctor Who Magazine.

While appearing as the Doctor, Tennant also remained busy with numerous other projects, most notably as the villainous Barty Crouch, Jr. in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (2005) and a 2005 production of “Look Back in Anger.” In 2008, he won rave reviews for his performance as Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was subsequently filmed as a BBC Two production the following year; his work as a charming psychopath in “Secret Smile” (ITV 2005) and as a brain injury victim in “Recovery,” also drew critical acclaim. These, along with turns in numerous episodic television series, promotional appearances, recordings for audio books and radio plays and even television advertisements, made Tennant one of the busiest and most in-demand performers in the United Kingdom between 2005 and 2009. At the end of that four-year period, Tennant decided to part ways with the Doctor with a quartet of four special episodes, culminating in “The End of Time” (BBC One 2010), which was seen by over 10 million viewers. While his final episodes aired, Tennant filmed a pilot for an American series, “Rex is Not Your Lawyer” (NBC 2009), about a panic-stricken Chicago lawyer who coached his clients while representing themselves. Though it received considerable media attention, the pilot was not picked up for broadcast.

Tennant worked steadily in the post-Doctor years, picking up a Best Actor nomination from the Royal Television Society Programme Awards as a photographer raising five children after the death of his partner in “Single Father” (BBC One 2010) while enjoying critical praise for appearances in “United” (BBC Two 2011) and the semi-improvised “True Love” (BBC One 2012). His fame as the Doctor won him opportunities in the States, but these efforts, including a remake of the 1985 horror film “Fright Night” (2012) and an audition to play Hannibal Lecter in NBC’s “Hannibal” (2013- ), received either a lukewarm response or failed to come to fruition, save for his spirited vocal performance as Charles Darwin in the Aardman Animation film “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” (2012). The U.K. remained his most diverse showcase, as evidenced by his antagonistic police detective hunting a child murderer in “Broadchurch” and his gifted barrister in “The Escape Artist” (BBC One 2013). That same year, two different factors of Tennant’s vast fan base were thrilled to hear that 2013 would not only see the actor reprise the Doctor for “The Day of the Doctor” (BBC One, 2013), a 75-minute special celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Doctor Who” by teaming the Tenth Doctor with his successor, Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith, but also a return to the Royal Shakespeare Company in a production of “Richard II.” In 2014, Tennant made his debut on American TV by starring in “Gracepoint” (Fox 2014), a limited-run American adaptation of “Broadchurch,” which had garnered both strong ratings and solid reviews when it was broadcast on U.S. television in the summer of 2013.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Keith Michell was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1926. He began his career on the stage in 1947 and by 1951, was acting in London. His film career began in 1957 in “Dangerous Exile” with Belinda Lee and Louis Jourdan followed by “True As A Turtle” with June Thorburn. Throughout the 1960;s be became a very popular actor in musicals in the West End. In 1970 he had a huge success on television in “The Six Wives of Henry the 8th”. In the 1980’s and 90’s he had a recurring role on the popular television series “Murder She Wrote” with Angela Lansbury.

IMDB entry:

Keith Michell, the Emmy Award-winning Australian television and movie actor best known for portraying King Henry VIII , was born on December 1, 1928 in Adelaide, South Australia and brought up a little less than 150 miles away in Warnertown, which is near Port Pirie. He taught art until he made his debut on the Adelaide stage in 1947, following that up with his first appearance in London in 1951.

Michell was a member of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company. From 1974 to 1977, he was the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. He has starred in several musicals, including the first London production of Man of La Mancha (1972).

In addition to his theatrical work, he appeared extensively in film and television in Australia and the UK, most notably as King Henry VIII in the six-part 1970 BBC seriesThe Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), for which he won an Emmy Award. A movie version was made in 1972. On US television, he appeared as a regular on Murder, She Wrote(1984).

In addition to acting, he wrote a musical adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” called “Pete McGynty and the Dreamtime”. He also paints and illustrates books, as well as written and illustrated cookbooks.

Michell married the Anglo-Czech actress Jeanette Sterke in 1957. They have a son, actorPaul Michell, and a daughter, actress Helena Michell. A theater in Port Pirie, the Keith Mitchell Theatre-Northern Festival Centre, has been named in his honor.

Keith Michell died in 2015.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Obituary in “The Telegraph” in 2015.

Keith Michell, the Australian-born actor and director who has died aged 89, was celebrated for his many imposing stage and screen performances as Henry VIII.

Michell came to monopolise one of British history’s favourite subjects for dramatisation. Such was the charm of this burly, sturdy, square-set, square-jawed, mellifluous upstart from the Antipodes that when he revived Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII at the Chichester Festival in 1991 he could with justice claim to have made the part of the much-married monarch his own for a quarter of a century.

Even recent high profile performances by Damian Lewis, in Wolf Hall, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, in The Tudors, have failed to dispossess him of the character entirely.

Michell’s first Henry appeared in a West End comedy imported from Paris, Jean Canolle’s The King’s Mare (Garrick, 1966). The famous BBC television series, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, followed in 1972, and later that year its feature film spin-off Henry VIII and His Six Wives (played by Frances Cuka, Charlotte Rampling, Jane Asher, Jenny Bos, Lynne Frederick and Barbara Leigh-Hunt). Some two decades’ later he revived Shakespeare’s play. And in 1996 he played Henry a final time in the television film The Prince and the Pauper (he was by this time 67).

Often visually reminiscent of Holbein’s portrait and always aurally imposing, Michell’s Henry did not please all tastes. Rarely a subtle player, Michell could seem on the screen both mannered and larger than life, though on television the close-ups of the costumes and the air of historical authenticity counted as much as the acting.

Nevertheless the bluffness and the bluster of the screen performances did not wholly obscure the human being beneath the surface. Michell was, however, a more effective performer on the stage for which his Old Vic and Stratford-on-Avon training fitted him. In fact, he possessed the rare theatrical attribute of being as accomplished in classical tragedy as in musical comedy.

When he was appointed artistic director of the Chichester Festival in the mid-1970s in succession to men like Sir Laurence Oliver who, as its founding-director, had prepared his new National Theatre Company at the Sussex theatre, and Sir John Clements, an actor-manager of long experience, there were murmurs of doubt.

In the event, Michell acquitted himself well, not only as an administrator but also as an innovator. He introduced the startled playgoers of southern England to the ancient Greeks, the French neo-Romantics. He even brought forward Topol, the popular Israeli from the Broadway musical comedy Fiddler on the Roof, to play Shakespeare’s Othello, with himself as Iago. The policy did Michell great credit. For he proved his dramatic point by raising the festival’s sights.

Keith Joseph Michell was born on December 1 1926 in Adelaide, Australia, and educated at Port Pirie High School, Adelaide Teachers’ College, Adelaide School of Arts and Crafts and Adelaide University. He taught art before he took up acting professionally.

He made his first theatrical appearance at the Playbox Theatre, Adelaide, in Lover’s Leap in 1947. Then he sailed for England for stage training at the Old Vic Theatre School.

After a stint with the Young Vic Theatre Company, as Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, he appeared in the West End as Charles II in the musical And So To Bed (New Theatre, 1951). He joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, under Anthony Quayle, for its 1952-53 Australian tour. He then returned to Stratford-on-Avon for the next three seasons.

Keith Michell with his wife Jeanette Sterke in 1957

For the newly-established English Stage Company at the Royal Court in 1956 he took the title role in Don Juan, before joining the Old Vic as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Antony in Antony and Cleopatra and Aaron in Titus Andronicus. He had a notable success in the two leading roles of Nestor/Oscar in Peter Brook’s production of the musical comedy Irma La Douce (Lyric, 1958) and led the Broadway transfer two years’ later.

After returning to England to play the Vicomte de Valmont in John Barton’s The Art of Seduction (Aldwych, 1962) he joined Olivier’s first Chichester Festival Theatre Company for the opening productions of The Chances and The Broken Heart. He played the Count in Anouilh’s The Rehearsal on Broadway (1963) before further tours of Australia and New Zealand.

Back in the West End, in 1964 he had a long run as Robert Browning in the musical comedy Robert and Elizabeth (Lyric). After Henry VIII in The King’s Mare opposite Glynis Johns , he played Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha (Piccadilly, 1968); and after appearing in Abelard and Heloise with Diana Rigg in the West End and New York, he took on Hamlet for Sam Wanamaker at the Globe.

During his tenure as Chichester’s artistic director (1974-77) he also directed and acted in many of his own productions. In London, his many well-remembered appearances include playing opposite Geraldine McEwan in Jerome Kilty’s Dear Love (Comedy, 1973), playing Sherlock Holmes in The Crucifer of Blood (Haymarket, 1979), and enjoying musical parts in On the Twentieth Century (Her Majesty’s, 1980) and The Captain Beaky Christmas Show (Lyric, 1981-82) . In 1980 his version of Jeremy Lloyd’s song Captain Beaky reached No 5 in the UK charts.

Michell being presented to the Queen in 1972

For Melbourne Theatre Company he adapted, in 1981, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt as Pete McGynty and the Dreamtime (1981) and the following year opened the Keith Michell Theatre at Port Pirie, Adelaide, with a one man show. In the mid-1980s he toured the UK in Amadeus and America with La Cage aux Folles and Aspects of Love.

Apart from Henry VIII, his other television credits included My Brother Tom (1986) and Captain James Cook (1988); his film appearances included Dangerous Exile (1958), The Hell Fire Club (1961), Seven Seas to Calais (1962), House of Cards (1968) and The Executioner (1970).

Keith Michell married, in 1957, the Czech-born actress Jeannette Sterke. She survives him along with their son and daughter.

Keith Michell, born December 1 1926, died November 20 2015

George A. Cooper is a very profilic British actor with a long list of credits on film and television. He was born in 1925 in Leeds. His movie debut was in 1946 in “Men of Two Worlds”. His movies include The Secret Place” in 1957, “Miracle in Soho” and “Violent Playground”. George A. Cooper died in 2018.

“Loose Cannon” page website:

George Cooper was born in Leeds in 1925, As a youth he decided he wanted to be an electrical engineer. He soon changed his mind and his next planned career was as an architect which also fell by the side as he realised his true yearning was to be an actor. However the war intervened and he was called up for National Service and became a Royal Artillery Surveyor, being posted in Dulally India where he became involved in the armies concert party.

After the war he joined the Theatre Workshop in Manchester run by Joan Littlewood where he stopped for almost 6 years whilst gradually moving into television and adding the “A” to his stage name due to confusion with another George Cooper.

During the 1960’s he become one of the most familiar character actors on television and his filmography includes almost all of the major shows of the day such as Coronation Street, The Adventures of Robin Hood, An Age of Kings, Danger Man, Z Cars, Softly Softly, The Avengers and Man in a Suitcase.

In the following decade he continued in the same stead but also managed to appear in many classic sitcoms such as Steptoe & Son, Bless this House, Rising Damp, Sykes and a well remembered role as the job advisor in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em who attempted to get Frank Spencer employment, the only time in a TV studio George admits to having an attack of the giggles. He also starred in the TV adaptation of Billy Liar in which he had previously starred in the West End.

Once again in the 1980’s George was again very busy in serials such as Juliet Bravo, When The Boat Comes In, CATS Eyes and Taggart before settling down in the role he is probably best remembered as Mr Griffiths, caretaker of Grange Hill, where his experience helped many of the young child actors, much to George’s delight.

Now retired, George remains a very friendly man and enjoyed sharing his experiences with the Loose Cannon team on your behalf.

The above page on the “Loose Cannon” website can be accessed here.

Kenneth Nelson was born in North Carolina in 1930. His most prominent movie role was in “The Boys in the Band” in 1970. He relocated to the UK and was featured in such movies as “Hellraiser” in 1987 and “Nightbreed”. He died in 1993.

Jonathan Cecil & Anna Sharkey’s obituary in “The Independent”:

KENNETH NELSON was a most versatile and accomplished actor, equally at home in drama, musicals and light comedy.

Born in North Carolina, in 1930, Nelson made his first Broadway appearance in Seventeen (1951). Nine years later he created the part of Matt in the long-running musical The Fantasticks. Perhaps his most celebrated performance was as Michael the host in Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (1968), which he recreated in London in 1969 and for the film version in 1970.

In 1971 Nelson settled permanently in England, appearing notably in Showboat, Alan Strachan’s compilation Cole (1974), David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Annie and for four years in the West End, then on tour, as the megalomaniac director in 42nd Street. He also made many television appearances, his gifts too often squandered as a ‘useful American type’.

As a performer Nelson will be remembered for his dark-eyed, vital, faun-like charm and his sympathetic, open-vowelled, old-world American voice. He could show a tough mordant streak as in the Crowley and Mamet plays: he also had a fine sense of comedy. In regional productions of Come Blow Your Horn and The Seven-Year Itch, he brought the same kind of subtle, light touch to Neil Simon’s and George Axelrod’s work as Richard Briers and Paul Eddington have brought to Alan Ayckbourn’s. In Cole he gave the most haunting rendition of that long and difficult ballad ‘Begin the Beguine’ since Cole Porter’s personal favourite, the sophisticated cabaret singer Hutch.

A dedicated Anglophile with a remarkable period sense, Nelson embraced his adopted country wholeheartedly: creating country gardens, and appreciating animals and interior design. He was exceedingly generous as a host and in his praise of friends: especially missed will be his congratulatory telephone calls after watching television performances, always to the point and delightfully effusive: ‘Darling, the camera loved you . . .’

During his last, dreadfully debilitating illness he never lost this enthusiasm, still sharing gossip and theatre memories with those whom he called his ‘close ones’, almost literally to the end, when he was cared for by his devoted sister Naomi Burns, as he had been throughout the last two months. Despite his painfully wasted appearance, visiting him was not in any way distressing. As popular with the hospital nursing staff as he had been with colleagues, he brought an almost backstage atmosphere to his room. Eyes lighting up his characteristic wide smile, he showed a most unegotistical eagerness for news from outside.

Kenny Nelson came into our lives just over 20 years ago. He was a warm-hearted, cultivated companion and an exceptional actor. He had a style and finesse not often found on today’s stage but he was by no means old-fashioned in approaching the avant-garde.

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

Dominic Guard is best known for his roles in “The Go-Between” in 1971 and “Picnic at Hanging Rock” in 1976.

“Wikipedia”

As a 14-year-old he played Leo, the title character who has his momentous 13-year-old birthday in The Go-Between (1970),^[1] a performance for which he won a BAFTA award in 1971 as Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. The film won the main prize at the Cannnes film festival.

He later appeared in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), in Absolution (1978) alongside Richard Burton and Billy Connolly,^[2] in Gandhi (1982), and in P.D. James‘ An Unsuitable Job for a Woman alongside his cousin Pippa Guard.^[3] He appeared in a guest role as Olvir in the 1983 Doctor Who story Terminus.

In 1978 Guard voiced the role of Pippin in an animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. On stage he played Christopher in a 1982 production of “The Jeweller’s Shop” by Karol Wotjyla, later Pope John Paul II, at the Westminster Theatre, London. He continued acting regularly until 2000.

He is now a fully accredited child psychotherapist living in London. He has authored more than ten works for children,^[4] including “Little Box of Mermaid Treasures”, “Pirate Fun”, “The Dragon Master’s Tale”, and “Secrets of the Fairy Ring”. He is the father of two children with the actress Sharon Duce.

Vanessa Redgrave is generally regarded as one of the great actors of her generation. She was born in London in 1937. Her parents were the actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Her late brother and sister were Corin and Lynn Redgrave. Her children the late Natasha Richardson and Joely Richardson are/were actors as is her husband Franco Nero. She has alternated her career between stage and sscreen and between the U.K. and the U.S. She made her movie debut in 1958 in “Behind the Mask” and came to international fame in 1965 in the movie “Morgan. A Suitable Case for Treatment”. Subsequent films include “Blow Up”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, “Agatha”, “Camelot”, “Julia” and “The Pledge”.

TCM overview:

From her start on the London stage in the 1960s, Vanessa Redgrave went on to become one of the most internationally respected actresses of stage and screen, with the Oscar, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Tony awards to prove it. Redgrave was trained in the classical tradition but made her mark essaying non-conforming free-thinkers like modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan in “Isadora” (1968) and a 19th century American feminist in “The Bostonians” (1984), while earning her share of controversy for her outspoken activism through decades of international politics and human rights issues. Redgrave brought the same passion for her convictions to her acting work. Despite her ability to carry a film with a bold lead character, Redgrave spent a considerable amount of her screen career as a versatile supporting player in art house fare like the controversial “Julia” (1977); biopics like “Wilde” (1997) and “The Gathering Storm” (HBO, 2002); period dramas such as “Howard’s End” (1992) and “Atonement” (2007); and American independent films like “Little Odessa” (1994) and “The Pledge” (2001). She also made a few successful forays into Hollywood blockbuster territory with supporting roles in “Mission: Impossible” (1996) and “Deep Impact” (1998) while her stage career continued unabated. As the center of a family acting dynasty that went back several generations and would produce further generations of performers, Redgrave held an esteemed position in entertainment history for her own high level of work and that which she generated in her collaborators.

Born in London, England on Jan. 30, 1937, Redgrave was born into an acting empire as the daughter of legendary stage and screen performer Michael Redgrave, best known for Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938), and actress Rachel Kempson. The sibling of two equally notable actors, Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave, she entered London’s School of Speech and Drama in 1954 and made her professional debut four years later in “A Touch of the Sun,” co-starring her famous father. Redgrave became one of the British stage’s shining lights during the 1960s with productions of “As You Like It” and “The Seagull,” as well as her run in the title role of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1966) marking her greatest stage achievement of the period. She was unable to follow the play to Broadway or appear in its movie adaptation due to her own film career. Redgrave became a movie star thanks to the 1966 comedy “Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment” in which she played the long-suffering ex-wife of an eccentric young man (David Warner). She earned nominations from the Oscars, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and the Cannes Film Festival for her performance and followed it up by playing another hip Londoner in Michelangelo Antonioni’s stylish “Blow-Up” (1966). Both pictures helped solidify Redgrave’s screen persona as a modern, intelligent woman whose cool and impassive exterior masked a range of conflicting emotions and passions.

Redgrave’s next feature was “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1968), a BAFTA-nominated historical drama by Tony Richardson, who was Redgrave’s husband and the father of her two daughters. That union collapsed in 1967 amidst much-publicized allegations of his affair with French actress Jeanne Moreau. That same year, Redgrave crossed the Atlantic to star as Guinevere in the film version of the hit Broadway musical “Camelot” (1967). Her Lancelot was up-and-coming Italian actor Franco Nero, and their onscreen romance translated into an off-screen relationship that produced a son, future director and screenwriter Carlo Nero. Redgrave was perfectly cast and earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of iconoclastic modern dance innovator Isadora Duncan in the biopic “Isadora” (1968). As her fame grew, so did her reputation as a fierce political campaigner for liberal and world causes. A socialist by her own description, she was arrested during anti-military and nuclear proliferation protests, and led marches against the Vietnam War in the United States. She also ran four times for a seat in the British Parliament as a candidate for the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, which advocated the dissolution of capitalism and the British monarchy.

The actress’ star dimmed a bit during the 1970s, and her difficulty finding substantial work on screen led to supporting parts or leads in more artistic and independent-minded productions. She was top-billed in the historic drama “Mary, Queen of Scots” (1971) and earned an Oscar nod for portrayal of Scotland’s last Roman Catholic leader, but her subsequent appearances found smaller and more select audiences. She played a mentally unstable nun whose passion for a local priest (Oliver Reed) leads to a horrific witch hunt in Ken Russell’s shocking “The Devils” (1971), and essayed the tragic Andromache opposite Katharine Hepburn in the U.S.-Greek production of “The Trojan Women” (1971). Returning to film in 1974 as one of the all-star suspects in Sidney Lumet’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” she also played a patient of Sigmund Freud whose plight attracts the attention of Sherlock Holmes in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” (1976). That same year, she made her Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsen’s “The Lady from the Sea.”

In 1977, Redgrave was cast in the pivotal title role in “Julia” (1977), based on playwright Lillian Hellman’s own friendship with a woman who later enlists her in a fight against the growing tide of Nazism in Europe. Redgrave won the Best Actress Oscar for her impassioned performance, but the award ceremony was tainted by protests over her acceptance speech, which cited her refusal to cave in the face of threats from what she described as “Zionist hoodlums.” Redgrave was an open supporter of the Palestinian cause, and her portrayal of a Jew in the film generated anger from the Jewish Defense League who openly protested the Oscars due to her nomination. They were also upset about the 1977 documentary “The Palestinian,” which she narrated and produced. Despite criticism from Jewish groups, Redgrave won the Oscar for “Julia” in 1977 and went on to earn an Emmy for her performance as a concentration camp survivor in the 1980 television movie “Playing for Time.” There was no denying, however, that the controversy had a chilling effect on her career.

For much of the next decade, Redgrave experienced her share of box office failures like “Agatha” (1979), but she maintained the respect and interest of art house fans with roles including that of a lesbian suffragette in “The Bostonians” (1984), which earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, and “Wetherby” (1985), which marked the directorial debut of playwright David Hare. “Prick Up Your Ears” (1987) brought her a New York Film Critics Award for her turn as Peggy Ramsay, agent to playwright Joe Orton (Gary Oldman). Television also offered her exceptional roles, including that of transsexual tennis player Renee Richards in 1986’s “Second Serve” and the Joan Crawford role in a remake of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” opposite sister Lynne in 1991. She also appeared on Broadway for the first time in over a decade in a 1988 production of Tennessee Williams’ “Orpheus Descending,” which was filmed for broadcast on TNT in 1990.

Redgrave settled into a string of small but high profile roles like the period costume drama “Howards End” (1992), which earned the actress another Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination and “Little Odessa” (1994), where she played the seriously ill mother of a Russian mobster (Tim Roth). Tom Cruise and Brian De Palma handpicked her to play arms dealer “Max” in “Mission: Impossible” (1996), and she shone as Oscar Wilde’s mother in “Wilde” (1997) as well as in a rare lead as Virginia Woolf’s reflective heroine, “Mrs. Dalloway” in 1997. Save for the latter, these supporting turns allowed Redgrave the fluidity to focus on other aspects of her career, including stage performances and her role as a United Nations Special Representative of the Arts, for which she mounted festivals in Kosovo and other war-torn regions. She and brother Corin also established the Moving Theater, which staged a production of the long-lost Tennessee Williams play “Not About Nightingales” in 1998.

Balancing turns in big budget productions with stellar performances in quieter independent films, Redgrave continued to work steadily after reaching her 60th birthday. She played the female head of a mob family in the campy TV miniseries “Bella Mafia” (1997) and appeared in the sci-fi disaster film “Deep Impact” (1998) while taking supporting roles in dramas “Girl, Interrupted” (2000), Sean Penn’s “The Pledge” (2001) and “A Rumor of Angels” (2000). Her turn as a sixties-era lesbian who loses her long-time partner in the tragic “1961” episode of HBO’s “If These Walls Could Talk 2” earned her a Golden Globe and an award for Excellence in Media from GLAAD. She followed this with an Emmy-nominated turn as Clementine Churchill, wife of famed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in “The Gathering Storm” in 2002. In 2003, she received her first Tony Award for a Broadway production of “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Her political voice still as strong as ever, during this period Redgrave and brother Corin launched the Party for Peace and Progress, which stumped against the U.S. and U.K.’s involvement in Iraq, as well as for the rights of political dissidents and refugees.

In 2005, Redgrave returned to American television in a recurring role on the controversial series, “Nip/Tuck” (FX, 2003-2010) as the mother of Julia McNamara, played by her own daughter, Joely Richardson. She also co-starred with daughter Natasha in the well-regarded Merchant/Ivory production “The White Countess,” and enjoyed substantial parts in a string of critically lauded features, including “Venus” (2006), “Evening” (2007), and “Atonement” (2007), which was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Consistently active in theater, Redgrave was awarded the Ibsen Centennial Award in 2006 for her efforts in plays by the acclaimed author, but she was nominated for a Tony for portraying author Joan Didion in the one-woman play “The Year of Magical Thinking” (2007). In March 2009, Redgrave found herself in the news for the most unfortunate of circumstances when her eldest daughter and frequent collaborator, Natasha Richardson, suffered critical head injuries in a skiing accident while on vacation in Canada. Redgrave, her daughter Joely, her own sister Lynn, and Richardson’s husband of over a decade, actor Liam Neeson, kept a bedside vigil at the New York hospital where Natasha was transferred after the head injury two days before. On March 18, 2009, Redgrave lost her daughter after she was taken off life support following confirmation that she was officially brain dead. She was just 45. A little over a year later, Redgrave also lost both of her siblings within less than a month of each other, with Corin Redgrave dying in London on April 6, 2010 and younger sister Lynn passing on May 2, 2010 after a battle with breast cancer.

In spite of these tragedies, Redgrave continued to work as hard as ever, appearing in no fewer than five projects that year, including the films “Letters to Juliet” (2010) and “The Whistleblower” (2010). She then lent her imperious voice to a vehicular version of Her Majesty the Queen for the Disney/Pixar sequel “Cars 2” (2011) and played the all-too human Queen Elizabeth I in director Roland Emmerich’s fictionalized examination of who actually penned the works attributed to William Shakespeare in “Anonymous” (2011). Near the end of that year, Redgrave portrayed Volumnia, the influential mother of banished Roman general “Coriolanus” (2011). Helmed by first-time director Ralph Fiennes, who also starred in the title role, the film was a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s epic tragedy of the same name.

The TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Norman Wisdom was one of Britain’s most popular film comedians. His popularity in the 1950’s and early 1960’s was amazing. He also achieved huge popular appeal in South America and in Albania where he was the only Western film actor whoswe movies were shown. His films included “Trouble in Store”, “Up In the World”, “A Stitch in Time” and in the U.S. “The Night They Raided Minskys”. He died in 2010 at the age of 95.in the Isle of Man

Stephen Dixon’s “Guardian” obituary:

Engulfed by helpless, gurgling mirth, Norman Wisdom would subside to the ground as if suddenly rendered boneless: it needed someone only to look at him to make him fall down. Often, the person looking at him – and sternly, at that – was Jerry Desmonde, doyen of variety straight men, who represented the figure of authority in many of Wisdom’s hugely successful film farces of the 1950s and 1960s.

Wisdom, who has died aged 95, was almost the last in a great tradition of knockabout, slapstick clowns, a performer who relied less on words than on an acrobatic physical dexterity to gain his laughs. He was usually derided or ignored by the serious critics, but in his day he was adored by the public, and because of its nature his craft travelled well – he was immensely popular in many other countries, including Albania, where he was known as Pitkin, after the character he played in many of his films.

If he had a penchant for tearjerking ballads and crude pathos, this merely reinforces a feeling that his career was somehow spent out of its correct time. He properly belonged to the earlier era of the music halls, an appropriate setting for his combination of agile body-comedy and sometimes mawkish sentimentality.

He was born in Marylebone, London, in conditions of desperate poverty. As a boy he often had to walk to school barefoot, and when his mother left the family home he and his brother were disowned by their father. He was placed in a children’s home, from which he ran away when he was 11, and he started work as an errand boy at a grocer’s when he was 13.

When the second world war broke out, Wisdom joined the army and served in India. He made his first appearance as an entertainer with a comedy boxing routine at an army concert, and developed his musical skills when he joined the Royal Corps of Signals as a bandsman in 1943.

After the war his variety debut came at the old Collins Music Hall on Islington Green, north London, in 1945, and he started touring Britain in pantomime and summer shows. In 1948 he made his first West Endappearance, on a variety bill at the London Casino, and became famous virtually overnight. “A star is born!” announced the Daily Mail, and the following week Wisdom went straight to the top of the bill at the Golders Green Hippodrome, north London.

His next date was a summer show with the magician David Nixon, and for this appearance he meticulously worked out the characterisation for which he became famous: variously known as Norman or The Gump or Pitkin – an enthusiastic, puppyish little man with a too-tight tweed jacket and crooked cap. Attired as such, and complete with the later familiar jerky gait and propensity for sudden collapses, he played a volunteer who came out of the audience to help – and, of course, reduce to a shambles – Nixon’s magic act.

After further successes in the West End and elsewhere, he made his first Royal Variety Performance appearance in 1952, and his film debut, Trouble in Store, the year after. He also topped what was then known as the hit parade with a song from the film, Don’t Laugh at Me ‘Cos I’m a Fool, the title conveying his tendencies towards toe-curling pathos. It was surely this meld of slapstick and tearfulness that prompted the grand master of the genre, Charlie Chaplin, to embrace Wisdom as his “favourite clown”.

A string of money-making films followed, including One Good Turn (1954), The Square Peg (1958) and The Bulldog Breed (1960). As well as his nemesis, the supercilious Desmonde, these films often featured another authority figure in Edward Chapman as his boss, the more down-to-earth Mr Grimsdale. As with those of George Formby and Old Mother Riley before him, his films were much more popular with the public than with the critics, whose comments generally ran along the lines of: “Norman Wisdom up to his usual predictable antics.”

Less notable, in commercial terms, were his stage appearances. Where’s Charley? at the Palace, London, in 1958 went down quite well, but The Roar of the Greasepaint – the Smell of the Crowd was a tremendous flop that never reached London after a Manchester tryout in 1963.

Wisdom went to Broadway for the Tony-nominated musical comedy Walking Happy in 1966, and then to Hollywood. He brought depth to his portrayal of a vaudeville star in The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), which also featured Jason Robards, Britt Ekland and Bert Lahr. “So easily does Wisdom dominate his many scenes, other cast members suffer by comparison,” wrote Variety. It became apparent that Wisdom was valiantly trying to change his image.

This was vital for professional survival. Comedians whose stock-in-trade is childlike innocence – even those as great as Stan Laurel and Harry Langdon – or adolescent awkwardness, such as Jerry Lewis, generally encounter career problems in middle age. The clowning that seemed so enchanting becomes almost sinister when the face gets jowly and the hair recedes. Wisdom’s way of dealing with it – though it now seems brave – was utterly disastrous. In 1969 he made a fairly sophisticated sex comedy, What’s Good for the Goose, in which he did a bedroom scene with Sally Geeson. His public was not ready for the little Gump in bed with a woman, and Wisdom’s career as a top film comedian was over.

He continued to tour his one-man stage show very successfully, and had one startling dramatic success in 1981 when he appeared in Going Gently on BBC2. In this harrowing play, set in the cancer ward of a London hospital, he portrayed a retired salesman unable to come to terms with terminal illness. For once the pathos was unforced, and Wisdom triumphed in a difficult role, winning a Bafta award.

He also tried television in a number of sitcoms, but the medium was not his forte. While he toured South Africa and Australia with some success, his appearances in Britain became more infrequent. Extremely wealthy, he spent much of the 1980s in seclusion on the Isle of Man, rather than do the usual round of TV game and chat shows, though he made something of a return to prominence in the 1990s, looking hale and trim. He appeared as Billy Ingleton in several episodes of Last of the Summer Wine between 1995 and 2004, and in 2004 again even turned up in Coronation Street as pensioner Ernie Crabb.

In 1992 he had played a retired burglar in a film thriller, Double X, which sank almost without trace, but, more tellingly, the following year he was the subject of a South Bank Show in which he explained the secrets of pratfalls, backward tumbles and stair-falls. Those of us who had always admired him felt privileged to see a master of his craft allowing a glimpse of the astonishing skill and body control that had gone into something that seemed so effortless and artless.

Wisdom was knighted in 2000, an honour many felt long overdue considering his contribution to the British film industry: at the height of his fame his films made more money than the James Bond series. He announced his retirement from show business on his 90th birthday, in 2005.

Two years later he went into residential care at a nursing home on the Isle of Man, and in early 2008 a poignant BBC television documentary portrayed a clown in extreme old age – still chirpy, but obviously suffering from dementia. It was said that his memory loss was so severe that he no longer recognised himself in his own films.

He was divorced from his second wife, the former dancer Freda Simpson, in 1969, and is survived by their children, Nicholas and Jacqueline.

• Norman Wisdom, comedian and actor, born 4 February 1915; died 4 October 2010

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

David Sumner was born in England in 1933. He made his film debut in 1961 in “Touch of Death”. His movies include “The Wild and the Willing”, “The Wild Affair” and “The Long Duel”.

Anton Dolin was a British ballet dance who has acted in some films. He was born in 1904 in Sussex. He was principal dancer with Serge Diaghilev’s Baller Russee in 1924. His films include “Invitation to the Waltz” and “Never Let Me Go”. He died in 1983.

“New York Times” obituary:

Sir Anton Dolin, whose early career in Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes led him to become the first internationally acclaimed British male ballet star and who was a founding member of major ballet companies in Britain and the United States, died Friday in Paris.

Friends in New York said he had died of a heart attack in the American Hospital after becoming ill on his way to stage a ballet for the Ballet The^atre de Nancy. He was 79 years old and lived in London.

As a choreographer, teacher, coach and lecturer, Sir Anton continued in later years to be a familiar figure on the American ballet scene.

On Nov. 10, he took part in the Houston Ballet’s gala honoring the defunct Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. On Sept. 3, at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Lee, Mass., he performed in a one- man show about Diaghilev, the famed impresario who had launched his career. Authority on the Classics

In 1939, Sir Anton became a charter member of Ballet Theater, now American Ballet Theater. Although he had first attracted attention for his athletic and acrobatic prowess in avant-garde Diaghilev ballets such as ”Le Train Bleu,” he gained considerable experience in the 19th-century classics in later years.

It was as an authority on the classics that Ballet Theater engaged him in 1940 as ballet master, choreographer and premier danseur. Sir Anton staged Ballet Theater’s productions of ”Giselle” and ”Swan Lake” in the company’s debut season.

One of his most famous stagings was ”Pas de Quatre,” a look back at 19th- century Romantic ballet in his own choreography for dancers portraying four celebrated ballerinas. Later he choreographed a modern counterpart for male dancers in his virtuoso showpiece ”Variations for Four.”

As a dancer, Sir Anton repeatedly found himself the male star in ballet companies that were launched under his auspices or in which he played an influential role. When British ballet was in its infancy, Dame Ninette de Valois asked him to dance in her productions for the Camargo Society, which he helped form in 1930. When she founded what is now the Royal Ballet, Sir Anton and Dame Alicia Markova were its stars.

The two young Diaghilev alumni formed one of the great partnerships of classical ballet. In 1935, both dancers left the Vic-Wells Ballet to form their own company, the Markova-Dolin Ballet, which continued until 1938. From 1945 to 1948 they headed a touring unit.

In 1949, they established a new British troupe, which became London’s Festival Ballet in 1950. As its artistic director and principal dancer until 1961, Sir Anton promoted an eclectic repertory and touring policy that made Festival Ballet the popular British company it is today. He was knighted in 1981. A Native of Sussex

Sir Anton was of Irish descent and was born on July 27, 1904, in Sussex, England. His real name was Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey- Kay. His friends called him Pat. A child actor who studied ballet in Brighton and then in London with the Russian ballerina Serafima Astafieva, the young dancer first adopted the pseudonym Patrikeyev.

After dancing in the corps de ballet in Diaghilev’s 1921 London production of ”The Sleeping Princess,” he changed his name to Dolin. He became a soloist with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1924. Leaving the company in 1925, he rejoined it for its final years in 1928 and 1929.

”He does possess a true style,” Diaghilev wrote to his secretary, Boris Kochno, in 1924.

In 1980, Ninette de Valois defined that style as follows: ”In the mid- 1920’s, his dancing brought a spark of virility to the male classical dance picture. It was Bronislava Nijinska who first brought out his particular virtuoso form of attack; it had nothing in common with the purer form of accepted classical virtuosity.”

Sir Anton became known as an excellent partner in the many companies in which he was a guest artist. A witty raconteur, he was the author of six books, including several memoirs.

The above “New York Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

David Tennant

Keith Michell

Obituary in “The Telegraph” in 2015.

George A. Cooper

Kenneth Nelson

Dominic Guard

Vanessa Redgrave

Norman Wisdom

David Sumner

Anton Dolin

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