British Actors Archives

Joyce Redman

Joyce Redman was born in Co. Mayo in 1918. She was trained in acting in Londan at RADA. She had great success on the stage in the West End in such plays as “Claudia” and “Shadow and Substance”. In 1949 she was on Broadway in the very popular play about Anne Boylen, “Anne of a 1,000 Days” with Rex Harrison. She was nominated twice for an Academy Award for “Tom Jones” and “Othello”. She is the aunt of Amanda Redman. She died in 2012. Her “Telegraph” obituary can be accessed here.

Joyce Redman obituary in “The Independent” in 2012.

Her “Independent” obituary:

Joyce Redman was a talented and versatile actress who was equally at ease on stage, in films or on the small screen, during a career that lasted more than 60 years. She will probably be best remembered for her role in Tom Jones (1963), Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the novel by Henry Fielding. Here she played the servant Mrs Waters, opposite Albert Finney in the title role. In a deliciously sensual three-minute scene of amour gourmand, the pair sit facing one another at a tavern table and devour their way through a foreplay of soup, lobster, chicken, oysters and fruit before scuttling off to bed.Finney later said about the scene, “Joyce and I had done theatre together. We just played it for fun. It was filmed early in the morning and it took hours. They kept bringing more food – trying us out on different dishes. They’d say things like, ‘Bring more oysters. She’s very good on oysters.’ We weren’t sure the audience would get it at all. It seems they did.” The film won Oscars for best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Score. Redman was nominated as Best Supporting Actress.

Joyce Redman was born in 1915 in Newcastle in Ireland to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. One of four girls, she grew up on Bartra Island in Killala Bay, Co Mayo. Following private home education and training at Rada, she made her first professional appearance as First Tiger Lily in 1935 at London’s Playhouse in Alice Through theLooking Glass. Audiences would have been charmed by the young actress, with her diminutive size, pale skin and bright red hair.

Her film debut was in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, in which she played Jet van Dieren. Despite being made as a morale-boosting propaganda film, it was praised for its artistic values, the critic Edward Dolan describing it as among the “best of British films of the era”.

During the war she had a close escape when, on her way back from the theatre, a flying bomb exploded nearby. Her initial reaction to surviving the blast was a feeling of what she called “an almost supernatural confidence”. She did not experience the shock until several days later, when she collapsed, a combination of the incident and the stress of opening performances in Peer Gynt (as Solveig) and Arms and the Man (as Louka) within the same week.

Redman’s New York debut came in 1946 in Henry IV Part 2 as Doll Tearsheet, the prostitute who frequents the Boar’s Head Tavern. She followed this two years later with the role of Anne Boleyn opposite Rex Harrison’s Henry in Maxwell Anderson’s Anne of the Thousand Days. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson remarked admiringly that she “…scorches the pages of the drama, to the point where the play is not a good fire insurance risk.”

For the next decade she divided her time between Broadway and London. Then, when the National Theatre Company was formed by Laurence Olivier in 1963, Redman played at the Old Vic and toured with the company to Moscow and Berlin.

Following the tremendous success of Tom Jones, and emphasising her dedication to her family, she recalled, “After Tom Jones I was offered all kinds of things, and I could have named my price, but the children were still pretty young, and no way could I leave them.”

She received a second Oscar nomination for her role as Emilia, servant of Desdemona, in the film version of Othello (1965), starring Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for the same production. Also made for the cinema, Prudence and the Pill (1968) saw her in an entertaining farce about marriage and infidelity starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Redman’s character becomes pregnant after a deliberate switch of contraceptive pills for aspirin.

In 1979 Redman returned to the stage for Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment, playing the wife of the landowner, opposite Ralph Richardson. Five years later she was in Clandestine Marriage, the first theatre production from Anthony Quayle’s innovative touring Compass Theatre Company. She continued with the same company, which produced a number of other plays, including Dandy Dick, Saint Joan and King Lear.

On television Redman played Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair and featured in several episodes of Ruth Rendell Mysteries and in Tales of the Unexpected. Her television movie roles included The Merry Wives of Windsor (1955), The Seven Dials Mystery (1981) and Prime Suspect: Scent of Darkness (1995).

Her last role was in 2001 for the TV movie Victoria & Albert, in which she played the elderly monarch and her son Crispin Redman played Mr Anson. Her niece, Amanda Redman, stars in the BBC crime series New Tricks.

“The Times” obituary:

One of the most dependable players on the London stage over more than 40 years, Joyce Redman was as warm-hearted as she was versatile. A small, 5ft tall, compact figure, with a direct gaze, a perpetually melting voice, and Irish inflections that she never lost, she could move untroubled from comedy to emotional drama, from Lear’s Cordelia to Dol in The Alchemist.

Although she began with the kind of parts to which she was physically suited as a girl — Lady Precious Stream, Alice in Wonderland — she soon developed in range and confidence. She is likely to be remembered most for her two largely classical seasons, one at the New Theatre during the Old Vic tenancy in the 1940s, another when the National Theatre company was at the Old Vic 20 years later.

Essentially a stage actress, she appeared in only a handful of films, though two of them brought her Oscar nominations. As the sexually ravenous Mrs Waters in Tony Richardson’s rollicking take on Tom Jones (1963) she appeared in the film’s most memorable scene, slobbering and slurping over a plateful of chicken’s legs and over-ripe fruit with Albert Finney. Her other nomination was for Desdemona’s servant Emilia in Othello (1965), a film of the National Theatre production with Laurence Olivier as the Moor.

She was born in 1915 at Newcastle upon Tyne, though her roots were in Co Mayo where she was brought up in a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. Her father was an engineer. Educated by private governesses, she moved to London to study at RADA and went at 17 to Nancy Price’s company, then at the Little Theatre in the Adelphi. Within 12 months she was appearing as Mrs Cricket in The Insect Play.

At the Piccadilly in 1940 she joined Robert Donat as the orphan Essie in The Devil’s Disciple and when Alec Clunes began his management of the Arts in 1942 she became, most cheerfully, Maria in Twelfth Night. That Christmas she was Wendy, one of the best of her generation, in Peter Pan at the Winter Garden.

She had her first general acclamation as the little maidservant Brigid in Paul Vincent Carroll’s Shadow and Substance (Duke of York’s, 1943) and from 1944 to 1947 she acted continuously with the Old Vic company under Olivier and Ralph Richardson at the New Theatre in some of the great productions of their time. In a first season she was Solveig in Peer Gynt, preserving the simplicity without edging into the sentimental; Louka in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Lady Anne to Olivier’s famous Richard III and Sonya in Uncle Vanya.

Later she played Doll — which a critic called “one of the O’Tearsheets” — in Henry IV, Part II and Cordelia to Olivier’s King Lear. An Irish Dol Common, bouncing upstairs and down, in The Alchemist, followed during 1946-47. In 1946 she had appeared as Dol in New York, and she went back there in 1947 in Duet for Two Hands.

For a time she moved between New York and London. Her Anne Boleyn in the 1949 Broadway production of Maxwell Anderson’s Anne of the Thousand Days “scorches the pages to the point where the play is not a good fire insurance risk”, according to the New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson. She was Anouilh’s Colombe for Peter Brook (New London, 1951), and at Stratford-upon-Avon (1955) had the ill luck to act in a remarkable season’s two leastregarded productions, though her Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well was well received.

Her next major engagement was with the National Theatre at the Old Vic from 1964. Here, as Emilia facing Olivier’s Othello, and Elizabeth in The Crucible (a critic wrote of “quiet magnificence”), she was in her fullest emotional power, varied by the comedy of Mrs Frail in Love For Love, and the tragi-comedy of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock. Remarkably, this was only the second Irish play in which she had appeared; speaking with a compromise between the Dublin accent and her own softer tongue, she was memorable in the last challenge, “Take away this murdherin’ hate and give us Thine own eternal love.”

She later appeared in such West End plays as The Lionel Touch with Rex Harrison and Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, and, at Chichester, Dear Antoine. In 1979, with an amusing verbal bite, she was the wife of the landowner (Ralph Richardson) in Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment at the National Theatre.

She was back in the West End playing Mrs Heidelberg in The Clandestine Marriage (1984) but as the years progressed she had fewer London parts. In 1997, in her eighties, she played Judi Dench’s senile mother-in-law in Amy’s View by David Hare at the National. She did not appear at the final curtain call, preferring to catch the 10.30pm train home from Waterloo. The play transferred to the West End.

She first appeared on television in the 1930s. She played a “seductive” Lady Macbeth in a 1949 American production and in Britain she was Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Becky Sharp, heroine of Vanity Fair. In 1976 she was the straight-laced Auntie Hamps in Clayhanger and there were later roles in Prime Suspect and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. Her last screen part was the elderly Queen Victoria in the 2001 BBC drama, Victoria and Albert.

For some years she owned the island of Bartragh, a mile off the coast of Co Mayo, which had been in the family for several generations. But in 1984 she decided to sell it and she spent her later years in Kent.

She married Charles Wynne-Roberts, a former Army captain, in 1949. She is survived by three children, including the actor Crispin Redman. She was the aunt of the actress Amanda Redman.

Joyce Redman, actress, was born on December 9, 1915. She died on May 10, 2012, aged 96

Jessie Matthews. Wikipedia

Jessie Matthews was born in 1907 and was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period.

After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed “The Dancing Divinity”. Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.

Matthews was born in a flat behind a butcher’s shop at 94 Berwick Street, Soho, London, in relative poverty, the seventh of sixteen children (of whom eleven survived) of a fruit-and-vegetable seller. She took dancing lessons as a child in a room above the local public house at 22 Berwick Street.

She went on stage on 29 December 1919, aged 12, in Bluebell in Fairyland, by Seymour Hicks, music by Walter Slaughter and lyrics by Charles Taylor, at the Metropolitan Music Hall, Edgware Road, London, as a child dancer

She made her film debut in 1923 in the silent film The Beloved Vagabond. She had a small part in Straws in the Wind (1924).

Matthews was in the chorus in Charlot’s Review of 1924 in London. She went with the show to New York, where she was also understudy to the star, Gertrude Lawrence. The show moved to Toronto, and when Lawrence fell ill she took over the role and was given great reviews.

Matthews was acclaimed in the United Kingdom as a dancer and as the first performer of numerous popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s, including “A Room with a View” by Noël Coward and “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” by Cole Porter.

Matthews’ fame reached its initial height with her lead role in Charles B. Cochran‘s 1930 stage production of Ever Green, premiered at the Alhambra Theatre Glasgow. The musical by Rodgers and Hart was partly inspired by the life of music hall star Marie Lloyd and her daughter’s tribute act resurrection of her mother’s acclaimed Edwardian stage show as Marie Lloyd Junior. At its time Ever Green, which included the first major revolving stage in Britain,was the most expensive musical ever mounted on a British stage.

Matthews’ first major film role was in Out of the Blue (1931). She was in two films directed by Albert de Courville, The Midshipmaid (1932) and There Goes the Bride (1932).

Matthews enjoyed great success with The Good Companions (1933) directed by Victor Saville, although it was more of an ensemble film and The Man from Toronto (1933). Waltzes from Vienna (1933) was an operetta directed by Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Friday the Thirteenth (1933).

She was in the film version of Evergreen (1934) which featured the newly composed song Over My Shoulder which was to go on to become Matthews’ personal signature song, later giving its title to her autobiography and to a 21st-century musical stage show of her life.

She was in First a Girl (1935) as a cross dresser, then It’s Love Again (1936), where she had an American co-star Robert Young. Exhibitors voted her the sixth biggest star in the country that year.

Matthews started to appear in films directed by husband Sonnie Hale: Gangway (1937), Head over Heels (1937) and Sailing Along (1938). She did Climbing High (1938) directed by Carol Reed. In 1938 she was the fourth biggest British star.

Her warbling voice and round cheeks made her a familiar and much-loved personality to British theatre and film audiences at the beginning of World War II. She was one of many British-born stars in the Hollywood film Forever and a Day (1943) (in whose cast Matthews was virtually unique by virtue of not being an expat: while in New York City preparing for a Broadway role Matthews had been recruited to film a role intended for Greer Garson in Hollywood over three days). Her popularity waned in the 1940s after several years’ absence from the screen followed by an unsatisfactory thriller, Candles at Nine (1944).

Post-war audiences associated her with a world of hectic pre-war luxury that was now seen as obsolete in austerity-era Britain.^[ In the late 1940s she ran an amateur theatre group at the Theatre Royal in Aldershot.

After a few false starts as a straight actress she played Tom Thumb‘s mother in the 1958 children’s film, and during the 1960s found new fame when she took over the leading role of Mary Dale in the BBC‘s long-running daily radio soap, The Dales, formerly Mrs Dale’s Diary.

Live theatre and variety shows remained the mainstay of Matthews’ work through the 1950s and 1960s, with successful tours of Australia and South Africa interspersed with periods of less glamorous but welcome work in British provincial theatre and pantomimes.

Jessie Matthews was awarded an OBE in 1970 and continued to make cabaret and occasional film and television appearances through the decade including one-off guest roles in the popular BBC series Angels and an episode of the ITV mystery anthology Tales of the Unexpected. She memorably played Wallis Simpson’s “Aunt Bessie” Merriman in the 1978 Thames TV series Edward & Mrs. Simpson.

She took her one-woman stage show to Los Angeles in 1979 and won the United States Drama Logue Award for the year’s best performance in concert.

In 1926 she married the first of her three husbands, actor Henry Lytton, Jr., the son of singer and actress Louie Henri and Sir Henry Lytton the doyen of the Savoy Theatre. They divorced in 1929.

Her second and longest marriage (1931–1944) was to actor-director Sonnie Hale; the third to military officer, Lt. Brian Lewis, both marriages ending in divorce.

With Hale she had one adopted daughter, Catherine Hale-Monro, who married Count Donald Grixoni on 15 November 1958; they eventually divorced but she remained known as Catherine, Countess Grixoni.

Matthews suffered from periods of ill-health throughout her life and eventually died of cancer, aged 74. She is buried at St Martin’s Church, Ruislip.

Jessie Matthews (1907–1981) was the undisputed “Dancing Divinity” of 1930s British cinema. A critical analysis of her work reveals an artist who was far more than a “British Ginger Rogers”; she was a unique, gamine presence who blended working-class grit with an aspirational, Art Deco glamour that defined an era.

I. Career Overview: From Soho to the Silver Screen

1. The Chorus Girl Ascendant (1920s)

Born into a large, impoverished family in the slums of Soho, Matthews’ early career was a literal “climb to the light.”

The Training: Her eldest sister, Rose, acted as a rigorous mentor, even taking elocution lessons herself to “scrub” Jessie’s Cockney accent into a Mayfair lilt.
The Breakthrough: After years in the chorus of C.B. Cochran’s revues, she became a West End sensation in the late 1920s. Her performance in Noël Coward’s This Year of Grace (1928) established her as a star capable of carrying both complex choreography and sophisticated song.

2. The Golden Age (1933–1938)

Matthews became the biggest British film star of the decade through her collaboration with director Victor Saville.

Evergreen (1934): This was her masterpiece. Playing a dual role as a music-hall star and her own daughter, Matthews showcased a fluid, balletic dance style that was distinctly different from the percussive tap of her American contemporaries. The song “Over My Shoulder” became her lifelong anthem.
First a Girl (1935): A remake of Viktor und Viktoria, this film allowed Matthews to play with gender-bending comedy and “high-class bump and grind” dancing, pushing the boundaries of contemporary censorship.

3. The Wane and the “Radio” Resurrection (1940s–1960s)

The outbreak of WWII and a series of personal crises (including nervous breakdowns and high-profile divorces) saw her star fade.

The Modern Obsolecence: Post-war Britain viewed her brand of “hectic pre-war luxury” as out of touch with the new era of austerity.
The Dales: In 1963, she found a second life on the radio, taking over the lead role of Mary Dale in the BBC’s The Dales (formerly Mrs. Dale’s Diary). For nearly a decade, the “Dancing Divinity” became the voice of middle-class domesticity for millions.

II. Detailed Critical Analysis

1. The “Ethereal vs. Earthy” Paradox

Critically, Matthews’ appeal lay in her physical contradictions.

The Silhouette: She was famous for her “saucer eyes” and incredibly long legs (likened by one critic to “twin exclamation marks”). Her dance style utilized her ballet background, giving her a fluidity of movement that Fred Astaire himself reportedly admired.
The Subtext of Survival: While her films were “fluff,” critics noted a “waif-like sex appeal” and a “joy of living” that felt hard-won. Because the public knew of her humble Soho beginnings, her on-screen glamour felt like a victory for the working class.

2. The “British Hollywood” Aesthetic

Matthews’ films with Victor Saville were the only British productions of the 30s that truly rivaled the technical polish of MGM or RKO.

Cosmopolitanism: Critically, these films are analyzed today as a “rejection of national identity” in favor of an International Art Deco style. While contemporaries like Gracie Fields represented a sturdy, Northern Britishness, Matthews represented a “consumerist fantasy” of cocktails, French Rivieras, and modern mansions.
Technical Innovation: Evergreen was the first British film to premiere at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Critics at the time praised Matthews for having “a million dollars of magnetism,” noting she was the only British star who didn’t look like an “import” when shown to American audiences.

3. The “Voice of Austerity”

When Matthews took over The Dales in the 60s, it was a fascinating cultural pivot.

The Mature Character Actor: Critics were surprised by her ability to transition from the “incandescent” star to a “limited but useful” character actress. Her voice—now deeper and seasoned by years of personal struggle—became a comfort to a generation that had forgotten her dancing but appreciated her “plummy” warmth.

Iconic Performance Comparison

Work	Role	Year	Critical Legacy
*Evergreen*	Harriet Green	1934	The peak of 1930s British musical cinema; a masterclass in duality.
*First a Girl*	Elizabeth	1935	A daring, sophisticated exploration of gender and performance.
*It’s Love Again*	Elaine Knight	1936	Showcased her “Dancing Divinity” peak with Robert Young.
*The Dales*	Mary Dale	1963	Proved her longevity and ability to adapt to a “middle-class” medium.

Jessie Matthews was the “Evergreen” star who represented the blind optimism of the 1930s. Her legacy is one of technical grace and “high-class” glamour that brought the sophistication of the world to a British setting. She remains the quintessential icon of the era when British cinema dared to dream as big as Hollywood

Tom Bell is one of my favourite actors. He carved out a distinguished career in stage, screen and television. This lean, long-faced actor was born in 1933 in Liverpool. He was tipped for major stardon after his performance with Leslie Caron in “The L Shaped Room” in 1962. However after an awards cermony in London where he was perceived to be rowdy, he found his cinema career stalled. After a number of years he excelled himself on television in a number of groundbreaking series such as “Holocaust”, “Out” and “Prime Suspect”. Sadly this great actor died in 2006.

Tom Bell obituary by Michael Coveney:

Tom Bell, who has died aged 73 after a short illness, was a naturally gifted and unusually reserved leading actor who never fulfilled the star promise of his breakthrough success as the unpublished writer in Bryan Forbes’ 1962 movie, The L-Shaped Room. Whereas Albert Finney (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960), Alan Bates (A Kind of Loving, 1962) and Tom Courtenay (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1962) all went on to careers in the new British cinema, and theatre, Bell drifted into television, where he became a fixture in the 1970s and 80s. But although his glory days were long gone, he never stopped working; he took a leading role in last night’s episode of Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire on BBC1.

Tom Bell enjoyed huge popularity in his signature role of armed robber Frank Ross in the late 1970s TV series Out, written by Trevor Preston and produced by Euston Films. As a single-minded avenger, lately released from prison, he cut a terrific swathe through the villains and bent policemen who put him away. Tough, good-looking, uncompromising, he was one of the great characters of British television in this period, and he cemented his relationship with the viewing public as the sneering Detective Sergeant Bill Otley in Prime Suspect, for which he was nominated for a Bafta, and as the unbending father of Clive Owen in Chancer (1990).

Tom Bell was famous for not mincing his words, and there are many who felt he scuppered his film career by heckling the Duke of Edinburgh at an awards dinner shortly after his first success. “Make us laugh, tell us a joke,” he cried, to the dismay of industry bigwigs such as John Mills and Richard Attenborough. Very much his own man, he even managed to get out of national service a fortnight after being called up. And he often compelled writers to cut long speeches with which he was loath to bore the audience.

With this week’s West End revival of Martin Sherman’s Bent, it is poignant to recall Bell’s performance in the original 1979 production at the Royal Court theatre, one of his rare, later stage appearances, in which he played Horst, the grimly saturnine companion to Ian McKellen’s Max in Dachau; the illicit sexual liaison between the two prisoners in the stone-breaking compound brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “getting one’s rocks off”. Bell’s quiet, mesmeric brand of acting was the perfect foil to McKellen’s more demonstrative emotional quivering.

The director Peter Gill, who joined the Swansea Rep when Bell, then in his mid-20s, was the leading man, said he represented a 1960s type before they existed. “In the theatre, Terry Stamp was the first, but Tom Bell had a Paul Newman quality that was rare – and still is – on the British stage. He had allure, and it was no wonder that he soon became the darling of the television producers of Armchair Theatre and so on. He was a troubled, smooth-skinned Liverpool boy, a more wholesome sort of John Lennon without the glasses.”

Bell was born into a large family, the son of a merchant seaman he hardly knew. As a child evacuee during the war, he lived with three different families in the Morecambe area. Tom Bell attended Euston Road secondary modern school in Morecambe, worked on the pier as a photographer during the holidays and later trained as an actor in Bradford with the legendary Esme Church, whose pupils then included Robert Stephens and Billie Whitelaw. After that, he went into weekly rep, with a fit-up, or temporary, company in Ireland and Britain, before becoming part of the “kitchen sink” movement in the 1960s, firstly as Paul in the film of Arnold Wesker’s The Kitchen.

One unlikely brush with Hollywood put him off the bright lights for good – “a total madhouse,” he told this newspaper in 1987, in a staccato style that was patently tongue-in-cheek: “Kept trying to get me laid, brought these girls with big tits up to my room. No way, couldn’t relate to it at all.” In that same year he played Uncle Philip in a film of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, exuding a livid streak of self-righteousness that improved even on Carter’s character.

In 1978 he had come to worldwide attention as Adolf Eichmann in the Emmy award-winning series The Holocaust, but many viewers will also treasure performances such as Walter Morel in Trevor Griffiths’ television adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1981), or Jack “the Hat” McVitie in Peter Medak’s film The Krays (1990). It is the sort of career that needs a season at the National Film Theatre to do it justice, for Tom Bell never gave a performance that was not instilled with truth and a rare sort of inner beauty.

Although he did, in fact, play the Finney role in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in the theatre, he never envied his friend’s move to the National: “I wouldn’t want to work there,” he said in 1978, “Albie climbs mountains there. I’d rather think in terms of films. I photograph quite well.” Indeed he did.

Tom Bell is survived by his son, Aran, from an early marriage, and by his partner of 30 years, the costume designer Frances Tempest, with whom he had a step-daughter, Nellie, and a daughter, Polly.

· Tom Bell, actor, born August 2 1933; died October 4 2006.

To also view “The Guardian” Obituary on Tom Bell, please click here.

Article on Tom Bell in “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:

Serious and thoughtful looking, Tom Bell was one of the UK’s finest actors to emerge in the early Sixties. Dark-haired and wiry with a rebellious streak and an unpredictability, he sadly never achieved the fame he could have once had.

Born in Liverpool on August 2nd 1933, Bell began in repertory before making his movie debut in Joseph Losey’s realistic prison drama ‘The Criminal’ (’60), starring Stanley Baker and Sam Wanamaker. A showy role soon followed in the exciting heist flick ‘Payroll’ (’61), as a loose-cannon crook, and he was then a brutal seaman in the Alec Guinness-Dirk Bogarde adventure ‘HMS Defiant’ (’62). A strong role came in Bryan Forbes’ excellent boarding house drama ‘The L-Shaped Room’ (’62). In it Bell played a young writer who briefly romances Leslie Caron’s lonely pregnant French girl. A big hit it garnered various awards including a Bafta, and an Academy Award nomination for Caron’s touching performance.

After playing an alcoholic in the Ray Charles drama ‘Ballad in Blue’ (’64), Tom had the lead role of a cat-burglar, in Charles Crichton’s interesting drama ‘He Who Rides a Tiger’ (’65) with Judi Dench. Later, Bell was very good as disillusioned IRA member Sean Rogan, who’s recruited by Ed Begley’s mastermind to blow up a British electronics factory, in Don Sharp’s ‘The Violent Enemy’ (’68). A rare comedy role followed when he played a sex-starved sailor in the bawdy farce ‘Lock Up Your Daughters!’ (’69). My favourite Tom Bell performance came in Gerry O’Hara’s excellent drama ‘All the Right Noises’ (’69), as a married electrician who falls for Olivia Hussey’s 15 year old actress. He gave a sensitive performance in what could have so easily been a sleazy picture, but was actually a nicely acted and engaging drama. Another interesting project was ‘Quest for Love’ (’71), a romantic Sci-fi sleeper which saw Tom as a physicist stuck in a parallel universe and falling in love with Joan Collins, who appeared in dual roles.

After playing a boutique owner in Hammer’s uneven shocker ‘Straight On till Morning’ (’72), Bell had a supporting role as one of Oliver Reed’s henchmen, in Richard Lester’s star-laden romp ‘Royal Flash’ (’75). This was followed by a strong turn in Jack Gold’s melodrama ‘The Sailor’s Return’ (’78), as a sailor returning home to the West Country, only to find himself ostracized by his community for marrying an African girl. It was a good performance in an interesting yet little-seen production. That same year Bell gained some worldwide exposure when he played Nazi chief Adolf Eichmann in the acclaimed mini-series ‘Holocaust’, alongside such stars as Meryl Streep, Michael Moriarty and James Woods. Another barely seen production was ‘Summer Lightning’ (’84), a mood piece which provided a rare screen outing for acclaimed actor Paul Scofield, but very few saw it.

A big hit came in 1987 with David Leland’s period comedy-drama ‘Wish You Were Here’, playing a dirty old man who sleeps with his friend’s bored young daughter (Emily Lloyd). A Falkland’s drama followed when Tom played the father of David Thewlis’s returning soldier in Paul Greengrass’s ‘Resurrected’ (’89). A real-life gangster part came next when Bell was cast as Jack “The Hat” McVitie, in Peter Medak’s violent biopic ‘The Krays’ (’90), which starred Gary and Martin Kemp as the notorious twins Ronald and Reggie Kray, with a standout turn from Billie Whitelaw as their beloved mum Violet.

Much seen on television, Bell had a good role opposite Helen Mirren in ‘Prime Suspect’ (’91), as Detective Sergeant Otley, and the part earned Tom a Bafta nomination in the third series. For cinema, Bell would play another Detective Sergeant that year, in the powerful and moving true-life drama ‘Let Him Have It’ (’91). The next few years saw fewer appearances although Tom did crop up in a handful of interesting productions, notably ‘Feast of July’ (’95) with Embeth Davidtz, a cameo in the Daniel Day-Lewis starrer ‘The Boxer’ (’97), and ‘Dead Man’s Cards’ (2006), a violent underworld flick with Paul Barber.

After a diverse 50 year career, Tom Bell died in Brighton, England on October 4th 2006, aged 73. A bit of a hell raiser in his time, he gave some powerful performances in a host of offbeat productions and, although I always see Tom as this unsmiling and serious character, I like the fact that he never took the easy route and was never afraid to be controversial.

Favourite Movie: ‘Let Him Have It’
Favourite Performance: ‘All the Right Noises’

The above article can aso be accessed online here.

Peter McEnery was born in Walsall, England in 1940.

“Scarlet Street Forum” on Peter McEnery can be viewed here .

His first film was “Tunes of Glory” in 1960 and his first major role was as Boy Barrett in “Victim”.

He made a number of films for the Disney studios including “The Moonspinners” with Hayley Mills and “The Fighting Prince of Donegal”.

Peter McEnery gave a very witty performance in Joe Orton’s “Entertaining Mr Sloane” in 1970. He also starred in “Clayhanger”.

The Game Is Over, poster, (aka LA CUREE), US poster art, from left: Jane Fonda, Peter McEnery, 1966. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Peter McEnery (Wikipedia)

Peter McEnery is an English stage and film actor.

McEnery was born in Walsall, Staffordshire, to Charles and Ada Mary (née Brinson) McEnery.

He was educated at Ellesmere College, Shropshire.

His younger brothers are the late actor John and the photographer David.

Peter McEnery was noted for having given Hayley Mills her first “grown-up” screen kiss in the 1964 film The Moon-Spinners.

In 1966, he took the lead in the Disney live action adventure film, The Fighting Prince of Donegal.

He played Edwin Clayhanger in the television dramatisation of the novels by Arnold Bennett with support from Janet Suzman, Harry Andrews and Clive Swift.

As an actor for the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played the title role in Ron Daniel’s 1979 production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre at The Other Place and played several roles in the 1982 epic production of Nicholas Nickleby for the same company.

In 1981 he played Oberon in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Another notable stage role was that of the surgeon Treves in the National Theatre’s 1980 production of The Elephant Man.

His wife (whom he married in 1978) was actress Julie Peasgood. They met in 1975 when she played a maid called Ada in the Clayhanger television series in which McEnery starred. Their daughter Kate, born in 1981, is also an actress.

Peter Finch said once: ‘I’ve been lucky. My agent might have hoped that I’d be a bigger name – as they call it – in America but I’m very happy. I like what I do and I choose what I do’. He did not always choose wisely. He was marked for the heights of stardom when he made his forst film in Britain but for a while the real peaks eluded him – too many bad films and kiss of death, a long-term Rank contract.

In the right material he always looked good. He had a good actor’s voice and stance, a touch of arrogance, a touch of humour, some warmth, leading man’s looks and the same sort of gritty dependability that characterized the malestars of Hollywood’s golden age” – David Shipman’s “The Great Movie Stars- The International years”. (1972)

He won for his performance in “Network” in 1976. Peter Finch was born in London in 1916. He went to live in Australia when he was ten years of age. He made his first film in Australia in 1938, The film was entitled “Dad and Dave Come to Town”.

When Laurence Oliver and Vivien Leigh were touring that country with the Old Vic in 1948 they met Peter Finch and he was offered a role by Oliver in the play “Daphne Laureola” in London which he accepted.He made the film “The Miniver Story” in England and then went to Hollywood to make “Elephant Walk” with Elizabeth Taylor and Dana Andrews. Over the next few years he made many fine films including “A Town Like Alice”, “The Nun’s Story”, “The Girl With Green Eyes”, “No Love for Johnny” and “Far From the Madding Crowd”. He was enjoying the huge revival of his career when he died from a heart attack in 1977 at the age of sixty. Peter Finch was the first actor to win a Academy Award for Best Actor after his death

TCM Overview:

The Trials Of Oscar Wilde, poster, US poster art, Peter Finch, 1960. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

A former vaudeville performer and popular radio actor in Australia, Peter Finch transitioned to film in his native England, where he rose from supporting actor to leading man in a number of emotionally charged dramas. While he delivered more than a few notable performances in his four-decade career, Finch was forever identified as the raving mad prophet Howard Beale in “Network” (1976), whose line “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” remained one of the most identifiable in all of cinema history. After supporting roles in several British-made films, he made the Hollywood transition with “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” (1952) and starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “Elephant” (1954).

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Finch went back and forth between films made in Hollywood and England, earning award nominations along the way for his performances in “The Nun’s Story” (1959), “The Trials of Oscar Wilde” (1960) and “No Love for Johnnie” (1961). Some time passed before Finch delivered another noteworthy performance, this time earning acclaim for his sympathetic and non-clichéd turn as a gay man in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971).

A few years later, he captured attention as the raving maniac Beale in “Network,” only to die from a heart attack two months before winning his one and only Academy Award, making him the first actor to win a posthumous Oscar.

Born on Sept. 28, 1916 in London, England, Finch was raised by his father, George, a research chemist from Australia who moved to England prior to World War I, and his mother, Alicia. His parents divorced when he was just two years old, leading to his father being given custody.

Decades later, Finch discovered that George was not his biological father and that his mother had carried on with an army officer named Wentworth Edward Dallas Campbell, leading to his parents’ divorce. After living for a time with his paternal grandmother in France, the 10-year-old was sent to live with his great uncle in Sydney, Australia.

After graduating from North Sydney Intermediate High School, Finch worked as a waiter, an apprentice on a sheep farm, and a copy boy for the Sydney Sun, but soon felt the pull of stage acting. He began appearing in sideshows and vaudeville, even serving as a stooge for American comedian Bert le Blanc before touring Australia with George Sorlie’s traveling company.

It was with Sorlie’s troupe that gained Finch notice with a producer from the Australian Broadcasting Commission, who served as his mentor and cast him in a children’s radio series. At the time, he also made his feature debut in “Dad and Dave Come to Town” (1938), which led to a more substantial part in the crime drama “Mr. Chedworth Steps Out” (1939). But with the world on the brink of war, Finch’s acting career was put on hold in order for him to enlist in the Australian army in 1941.

He served for a time in the Middle East and participated in the Bombing of Darwin as an anti-aircraft gunner, though he did continue to perform by appearing in the wartime propaganda film “The Rats of Tobruk” (1944), and directing plays for tours of army bases and hospitals. Following his discharge with the rank of sergeant in 1945, Finch established himself as one of Australia’s premiere radio actors and went on to co-found the Mercury Theatre Company with fellow actors Allan Ashbolt, Sydney John Kay, Colin Scrimgeour and John Wiltshire.

Named after Orson Welles’ own company, the Mercury put on a number of notable plays, including “The Imaginary Invalid” (1948), which starred Finch and attracted the attention of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, who later invited the actor to London. He returned to films with supporting roles in British productions like “Train of Events” (1949), “Eureka Stockade” (1949) and “The Wooden Horse” (1950), before making the turn toward Hollywood films.

He played the Sheriff of Nottingham in “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” (1952) and starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor – who took over for an ailing Vivian Leigh – in the rather disappointing melodrama “Elephant Walk” (1954). His career took off as he approached middle age in the mid-1950s with films including the charming romantic comedy “Simon and Laura” (1955), “The Dark Avenger” (1955) co-starring Errol Flynn, and the somber war drama “A Town Like Alice” (1956). In “Robbery Under Arms” (1957), he played famed cattle thief Captain Starlight, while he earned critical acclaim and a BAFTA nomination for his turn as a crusty surgeon working with an attractive nun (Audrey Hepburn) in the Belgian Congo in “The Nun’s Story” (1959).

Finch was somewhat less busy during the 1960s, but early in the decade he delivered to acclaimed, award-winning performances, playing the title roles in the biopic “The Trials of Oscar Wilde” (1960) and the Parliament-set drama “No Love for Johnnie” (1961). Both roles earned him BAFTA Awards for Best Actor. He next starred opposite Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury in the drama about marriage and infidelity, “In the Cool of the Day” (1963), before playing the third husband of a restless Anne Bancroft in the domestic drama “The Pumpkin Eater” (1964).

After starring in another relationship drama, “Girl With Green Eyes” (1964), Finch had a supporting role as a captain in the action yarn “The Flight of the Phoenix” (1965), starring James Stewart, and settled into a series of smaller films like “Judith” (1966), “Far from the Maddening Crowd” (1966), “The Legend of Lylah Clare” (1968) and “The Red Tent” (1969). He went on to deliver a powerful performance as a homosexual doctor engaged in a love triangle with Murray Head and Glenda Jackson in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971), a revolutionary drama for its frank and rather sympathetic perspective on homosexuality. His performance as the well-adjusted doctor seeking escape from his repressed upbringing earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

After his Oscar-worthy performance in “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Finch starred in a string of mediocre films like “Shattered” (1972), a psychological drama about the disintegration of a man’s life due to alcohol and a bad marriage, and “Lost Horizon” (1973), a disastrous remake of Frank Capra’s 1937 original of the same name. After playing real-life Cardinal Azzolino in “The Abdication” (1974), Finch played the one character that he would forever be indentified with, TV news anchor Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves whose mental breakdown on live television leads to a ratings bonanza for a struggling upstart station in Sydney Lumet’s searing satire, “Network” (1976). Also starring William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall, the film was a major critical and commercial hit, and received 10 Academy Award nominations. But just two months before the Oscar ceremony, on Jan. 15, 1977, Finch suffered a fatal heart in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he was waiting to meet Lumet for breakfast. He was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead hours later. Finch was 60 years old. At the ceremony, he won the Oscar for Best Actor, which was accepted by “Network” writer Paddy Chayefsky and Finch’s third wife, Eletha Barrett. Soon after, he was posthumously nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance as Yitzhak Rabin in the television movie, “Raid on Entebbe” (NBC, 1977), which aired days before he died and was the last time Finch was seen on screen.

By Shawn DwyerThe above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Blog on Peter Finch in “Pop Matters” can be accessed here.

Peter Finch (1916–1977) was a British‑Australian actor whose career spans stage, radio, Australian “talkies,” and major British and Hollywood films, culminating in a posthumous Best Actor Oscar for Network (1976). Over four decades he built a reputation as a robust, intelligent leading man capable of both Romantic‑era heroes and deeply troubled modern figures, often combining masculine authority with surprising psychological vulnerability.

Early career in Australia and radio

Born in London, Finch moved to Australia as a child, grew up in Sydney, and began his career in vaudeville and radio, where he quickly became one of Australia’s leading radio actors. He won multiple Macquarie Awards for Best Actor in the late 1940s, establishing himself as a major voice performer while also working as a compère, writer, and producer, which gave him an unusually hands‑on relationship with the medium.

His early Australian films—such as The Rats of Tobruk (1944), a war‑time drama about Australian POWs in North Africa—are often singled out as the point where he “came into his own,” playing a sensitive, Shakespeare‑quoting Anzac whose mix of courage and self‑doubt set him apart from more conventional war‑hero types. These roles helped define his early screen persona: a physically imposing man whose inner life was nuanced and emotionally exposed, not simply a rugged type.

British leading‑man stardom

After World War II Finch moved to London, joined the Old Vic, and emerged as one of British cinema’s most celebrated leading men, winning five BAFTA Awards for Best Actor across the 1950s and 1960s. Key films from this period include:

A Town Like Alice (1956), where he plays an Australian POW officer who becomes a de facto leader of a group of women in Malaya; his performance earned him his first BAFTA and helped establish him as a mature, emotionally grounded leading man rather than a lightweight star.
Windom’s Way (1957), a tense colonial‑war drama in which he plays a doctor caught up in the Malayan Emergency; critics often highlight his ability to embody both moral authority and frustration at the limits of diplomacy in a conflict zone.
The Nun’s Story (1959), a major religious drama starring Audrey Hepburn, in which he plays a worldly, humane doctor. His restrained presence offsets Hepburn’s rigor and gives the film a more grounded, secular emotional anchor.
The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), where he plays Wilde himself, earning a BAFTA for his sympathetic yet unflinching portrayal of the playwright’s wit, vanity, and self‑destruction.

In these roles Finch repeatedly demonstrated a gift for balancing strength and doubt: his characters are often doctors, officers, or public figures who are expected to be pillars of stability, yet Finch allows cracks of anxiety, exhaustion, or moral conflict to show through. This made him particularly effective in mid‑century British cinema’s concern with empire, duty, and personal sacrifice.

Hollywood and later international work

Finch made a partial transition to Hollywood, most notably in Elephant Walk (1954)—a turbulent production in which Vivien Leigh had a breakdown and was replaced by Elizabeth Taylor, an experience that soured him on a full‑time Hollywood career. He continued to work in the United States, but often returned to British and Australian‑based productions, which suited his temperament and allowed him to maintain a varied portfolio.

Among his later English‑language films:

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), where he plays a middle‑aged Jewish doctor in a complicated love triangle with a bisexual artist and a younger woman. The role earned him a BAFTA win and an Oscar nomination, and critics frequently praise its low‑key, introspective quality: Finch makes the character’s loneliness palpable without melodrama, embodying a kind of modern, emotionally honest masculinity rarely seen in mainstream cinema at the time.
Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), where he plays the brooding, obsessive Sergeant Troy, a role that critics note shows off his capacity for romantic danger and inner volatility, though some feel the film itself is more visually sumptuous than psychologically deep.

These performances underscore a consistent Finch pattern: a comfortable, even commanding surface presence that can suddenly give way to emotional fragility, making him especially effective in dramas about mid‑life crisis, identity, and moral ambiguity.

Network and the Howard Beale apotheosis

Finch’s final and most iconic role is Howard Beale, the unravelling TV news anchorman in Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976). He plays Beale as a man collapsing under the pressure of ratings, institutional cynicism, and his own late‑career despair, delivering one of the most quoted lines in film history—“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”—with a mix of theatrical fury and genuine psychological breakdown.

Critically, the performance is widely regarded as a masterpiece of controlled volatility: Finch walks a razor‑thin line between satire and realism, so that Beale never feels like a cartoonish rage‑figure but like a legitimate breakdown exposed for mass entertainment. His performance earned him a posthumous Best Actor Oscar, an Academy‑first at the time, and cemented his image as an actor who could embody the tragicomic face of modern media spectacle.

From a broader critical‑analysis standpoint, Beale acts as a summation of Finch’s earlier concerns: the burden of public visibility, the gap between private suffering and public image, and the tension between the “strong man” and the crumbling self. The role is both a cultural icon and a psychologically grounded character study, precisely the sort of balance Finch had spent his career pursuing.

Critical reputation and performance style

Critics and biographers consistently describe Finch as a complex, versatile actor whose strength lay in emotional authenticity rather than flamboyant technique. His voice was rich and resonant, his stature physically imposing, yet he disliked overt theatricality and preferred to underplay, trusting the subtext and the script’s psychology rather than his own charisma.

At the same time, his career is often read as a case of international success without full Hollywood‑mega‑star status. He was beloved by critics and audiences in Britain, Australia, and art‑film circles, but he never became a conventional box‑office “name” in the way some contemporaries did. Instead, his legacy rests on a string of rich, adult‑oriented performances—whether as a wartime officer, a conflicted doctor, or a raving TV prophet—that collectively paint a picture of a man wrestling with his own authority and vulnerability, a theme that feels more modern than the often‑stiff period roles he sometimes played

Nicol Williamson was born in Scotland in 1936. He made his stage debut with Dundee rep in 1960. He starred in John Osborne’s “Inadmissable Evidence” in 1964 in London in which he won rave reviews. He went with the play to London where he won a Tony Award for Best Actor. In 1968 he starred in a filmed version of “Hamlet”. He made a number of films including “The Bofors Guns”, “The Reckoning” and “Laughter in the Dark”. In the late seventies he appeared in some Hollywood films e.g. “The Goodbye Girl”. His last film credit seems to be “Spawn” in 1997. Nicol Williamson died in December 2011.

“The Independent” obituary:

Nicol Williamson was the notorious bad boy of the theatre, his unpredictable behaviour, unreliability and blunt rudeness to those he did not respect – which may well have been the majority of those he met in and out of the theatre world – having to be weighed by the theatres that employed him for his undoubted brilliance as an actor, and a star appeal that never fully flowered because of the reluctance of film producers and theatrical impresarios to engage him. Twin devils seemed to co-exist in his lanky body, one that drove his private life to frequent excess and public exhibitionism, and the other in which a creative genius seemed to be about to explode. He was quintessentially a model for the 19th century decadent romantic, a Byron, a des Esseintes or a Rimbaud. As an actor he could be electric: John Osborne declared him to be “the greatest actor since Marlon Brando”.

He was born and brought up in Hamilton outside Glasgow; it is difficult to imagine him as a boy in that quiet little town where the main cultural event of the year is the Salvation Army’s Christmas carol concert. He started his career at the Dundee Rep in 1960, stayed there two years, then went to the Arts Theatre in Cambridge and transferred to the Royal Court from there with That’s Us, staying on with the English Stage Company in a number of demanding roles. They included Jacobean and period drama and modern plays, the most successful of which was Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence, a palpable hit that transferred to the West End and had several later revivals, about a complex London barrister, but he was also well cast as Sebastian Dangerfield in The Ginger Man.

One of his greatest performances was as Vladimir in the 1964 revival of Waiting for Godot. Anthony Page, Nicol’s preferred director, was in charge, but Beckett turned up at rehearsals and was unhappy about the way the production was progressing, the actor retaining his London barrister’s accent for the author’s reflective tramp. “Where do you come from? Is that your natural voice?” asked Beckett, and when told that Nicol was Scottish, asked if he could not use his natural non-London intonation. That evening Beckett looked pleased, more so as the days passed, and he commented, “There’s a touch of genius there!” The opening night was a triumph, the audience electrified by his trumpeted scream of “I can’t go on!” at the climax of the great final monologue.

From then Beckett was Williamson’s God. When I invited him in 1965 to take part in a Beckett reading at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford on a Sunday night, he insisted on Beckett’s personal direction, and we visited him at Ussy on the Sunday before. We had launched the previous day and Nicol’s single-minded enthusiasm was such that he cancelled both his Saturday performances of Inadmissible Evidence, then playing at Wyndham’s, next door to our restaurant, and sent on his understudy – who also had to play the whole week following, because Williamson, having returned from the rehearsal in France on the Monday, then disappeared for the whole week.

But the day before the Sundayperformance at Stratford, when I had made emergency changes in the programme, he appeared at my flat to rehearse, and took the audience by storm the next day, throwing the other readers into confusion by his innovations. Patrick Magee said that he would never again appear on the same stage as an actor so selfish.

With the RSC he performed Arden of Faversham at the New Arts Theatre and played Sweeney in the TS Eliot memorial production of Sweeney Agonistes. He became a charismatic actor in films as well, but his appearances, especially in commercial productions, became rarer because his temperament and arrogance did not appeal to directors.

His marriage to the actress Jill Townsend was of short duration, and problems rising from his divorce, his messy private life and his mounting debt to the Inland Revenue forced him to move to New York, where he quickly blotted his copybook by knocking down David Merrick, the most powerful man on Broadway at the time. There he repeated some of his British successes and performed in roles that included Hamlet and Macbeth, but always for short runs.

He was cast as the ghost of John Barrymore, appearing to help a young actor play Hamlet, commented voluably to the press on the weakness of the play and others in the cast, and at an early performance actually stabbed the other actor during a fencing episode. He strode to the footlights and announced, “Something’s gone wrong. You’d better bring down the curtain.” Most thought it was part of the play. The second act started after more than an hour’s interval with an understudy, and Williamson playing normally, but the actors had summoned Equity and the play closed a few nights later.

Williamson’s career was peppered with such incidents. He had a good natural tenor voice and could mimic any crooner perfectly, and if he heard an accent he could imitate it; years later he could still do Beckett’s voice perfectly. He devised a number of one-man shows, songs, patter and extracts from plays and other literature, but, in spite of brilliant moments, they were not successful, and while he could excite an audience, he had little critical judgement in choosing and interpreting a text without outside help.

His films included: Inadmissible Evidence (1967), The Bofors Gun (1968), The Seven Per Cent Solution (1975), The Human Factor (1979), Excalibur (1980) – the film for which he is probably best known, as Merlin – Black Widow (1986) and several others of varying quality, including The Exorcist III. Other plays in which he appeared include The Entertainer (1983), The Lark (1983) and The Real Thing (1985).

In person he was entertaining but often embarrassing company, carrying role-playing to extremes and needing to dominate every assembly at which he was present, especially in his manic moods. When depressive he was pitiable and usually stayed on his own. But whoever saw his Vladimir and heard that despairing scream, embodying the whole anguish of the human condition, which is then followed by a resumption of the human need to regain a vestige of dignity, will never forget it. Metaphorically it also encompassed his life.

Although Williamson’s death was only announced yesterday, his son Luke said that he had died on 16 December of oesophageal cancer.

John Calder

Nicol Williamson, actor: born Hamilton, Scotland 14 September 1938; married 1971 Jill Townsend (divorced 1977; one son); died Amsterdam 16 December 2011.

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

Article on Nicol Williamson in “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:

Once called the finest actor of his generation, and the best since Brando, the supremely talented Nicol Williamson is a somewhat forgotten face of British cinema. But for a while it seemed that both on stage and screen, he was untouchable. From his iconic Shakespearean roles to some incredible screen performances, Williamson dominated each scene with a magnetism rarely seen.

Born in Scotland on September 14th, 1936, Nicol’s screen career began in 1963 with a few brief TV parts and an uncredited bit in the 1964 Kim Novak remake; ‘Of Human Bondage’. Nicol’s noted stage career took off in 1964 with John Osborne’s ‘Inadmissible Evidence’, where he created the role of Bill Maitland, a solicitor despairing at his own life and existence. A little seen but excellent version of Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ was made for TV in 1968, and Nicol was quite astonishing as the simple-minded Lennie, with George Segal as his protector George.

A film version of his acclaimed stage performance ‘Inadmissible Evidence’ was shot in 1968, and he was just as terrific. He was also excellent, though wholly unlikable, in Jack Gold’s ‘The Bofors Gun’, as an Irish soldier and suicidal bully. My favourite performance of Nicol’s was in the 1969 social drama ‘The Reckoning’, which saw Williamson as Michael Marler, a no-nonsense bed-hopping businessman, seeking revenge for his father’s death. He was also good that year in Tony Richardson’s ‘Laughter in the Dark’. Based on the Nabokov novel, it had Nicol as a bored art dealer lusting after Anna Karina’s beautiful but scheming movie usherette.

Staying with Richardson, Williamson made the 1969 movie version of their acclaimed stage production ‘Hamlet’, which had Marianne Faithfull as Ophelia and Anthony Hopkins as Claudius. In 1972 Nicol was an archeology professor in the Political drama ‘The Jerusalem File’, with Donald Pleasence and Bruce Davison. Williamson reunited with director Jack Gold, this time to play President Nixon during the Watergate affair, in a ‘Late-Night Drama’ TV episode called ‘I Know What I Mean’. He made an endearing Little John in Richard Lester’s elegiac ‘Robin and Marian’ (’76), and was very good as Sherlock Holmes in Nicholas Meyer’s personal yet engaging drama ‘The Seven-Per-Cent Solution’ (’76). A guest spot in a 1978 episode of ‘Columbo’ led to a brief bit in the Peter Falk comedy spoof ‘The Cheap Detective’ (’78). Nicol was then a double-agent in Otto Preminger’s final feature, ‘The Human Factor’ (’79), a somewhat convoluted thriller but with a top-notch cast.

For many, Williamson’s best cinematic portrayal was that of Merlin, in John Boorman’s King Arthur tale ‘Excalibur’ (’81). Despite not getting on with co-star Helen Mirren, (they famously fell out during an earlier production of Macbeth) he was wonderful, and it remains one of cinemas most enjoyable portrayals. From here his career waned somewhat. He was a police commander in the entertaining horror flick ‘Venom’ (’81), slumming it but still giving a solid performance. Nicol was however, excellent as an alcoholic lawyer in the 1982 drama ‘I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can’ with Jill Clayburgh.

Nicol would dress up again, this time in dual roles, for the 1985 fantasy ‘Return to Oz’ (’85). Though it sank at the Box Office it has since gained a minor cult following. He was very good as a melancholic Lord Mountbatten in a 1986 mini-series, then was a philanthropist murdered by Theresa Russell in Bob Rafelson’s fun thriller ‘Black Widow’ (’87). A supporting role followed as Father Morning, aiding George C. Scott’s Lieutenant Kinderman, in the horror sequel ‘The Exorcist III’ (’90), which was better than it’s poor reviews suggested. He was then back on British screens in the BBC’s entertaining black comedy ‘The Hour of the Pig’, and was charming as the voice of Badger, in Terry Jone’s enjoyable 1996 version of ‘Wind in the Willows’. Nicol’s final movie was the woeful horror; ‘Spawn’, once again playing a magician.

Williamson had a son with actress Jill Townsend, whom he was married to from 1971 to 1977. Having lived abroad for many years, Nicol Williamson died on December 16th 2011, in Amsterdam, after a two year battle with oesophageal cancer. He was 75. From Broadway to screen, Nicol Williamson was a hard drinking, no nonsense actor, and a towering talent. Uncompromising and fearless, he was also an accomplished poet, singer and writer, and with so many great movie performances it’s surprising he never received an Oscar nomination. Though true to his character, I doubt he ever gave it a thought.

Favourite Movie: The Reckoning
Favorite Performance: The Reckoning

Article above can also be accessed online here.

Nicol Williamson (1936–2011) was described by playwright John Osborne as “the greatest actor since Marlon Brando.” A critical analysis of his work reveals a performer of terrifying, volatile energy—a man who did not so much play a character as consume it.

He brought a jagged, uncomfortable honesty to the screen that made him the definitive anti-hero of the post-war era.

I. Career Overview: The Thunder from the North

1. The Royal Court and the “Angry Young Man” (1960s)

Born in Scotland and raised in Birmingham, Williamson’s accent and “rough” edges made him the perfect vessel for the new wave of British drama.

The Breakthrough: His performance as Bill Maitland in John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence(1964/1968) is legendary. He played a self-destructing lawyer with a “machine-gun” delivery of dialogue that left audiences breathless.
Hamlet (1969): Under Tony Richardson’s direction, he played the Prince of Denmark as a “Kitchen Sink” rebel—nasal, sweaty, and deeply cynical. It was a performance that stripped the “poetry” away from Shakespeare and replaced it with raw, psychological desperation.

2. The International Iconoclast (1970s–1981)

Williamson moved into international cinema, often playing men of high intelligence who were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976): He played Sherlock Holmes as a drug-addicted manic-depressive, providing a “Noir” depth to the character that had never been seen before.
Excalibur (1981): In a performance that mirrors Nicholas Clay’s Lancelot, Williamson played Merlin. He famously infused the wizard with a “mercurial eccentricity”—part-god, part-clown, and entirely unpredictable.

3. The “Difficult” Genius and Retirement

Williamson’s reputation for being “difficult” on set (famously walking off stage or clashing with directors) led to a dwindling number of roles in the 80s and 90s. He eventually retired to Amsterdam, leaving behind a legacy of “high-wire” performances that few have ever matched.

II. Detailed Critical Analysis

1. The “Acoustic” Violence

Critically, Williamson is analyzed for his voice. He possessed a distinctive, rasping tone that could move from a whisper to a roar in a heartbeat.

The Rhythmic Assault: In his Kitchen Sink roles, he used dialogue like a weapon. Analysts note that he had a “staccato” timing—he would hit certain consonants with such force that it felt physical. He didn’t use the “BBC English” of the 40s; he used the sound of the modern street, which gave his work an unvarnished, “Noir” authenticity.

2. The “Physical Unrest”

Unlike the “Stillness” of Clive Brook or Raymond Huntley, Williamson was a master of fidgeting.

The Energy of Anxiety: In The Reckoning (1969), he played a ruthless businessman returning to his Northern roots. Critics pointed out how he used his hands, his eyes, and even his posture to suggest a man who was “uncomfortable in his own skin.” He brought a “Realistic Neurosis” to the screen; you didn’t just watch him, you felt his blood pressure rising.

3. The Deconstruction of Authority

Williamson excelled at playing leaders who were spiritually hollowed out.

The Anti-Imperialist: In his military or historical roles, he didn’t play the “Officer” with the grace of Richard Johnson. He played them as men who were “tired of the lie.” This “weariness” is what makes his work so “savoury”—he showed the cracks in the armor. He brought a “Noir” darkness to the most heroic of settings.

Iconic Performance Highlights

Work	Role	Year	Critical Achievement
*Inadmissible Evidence*	Bill Maitland	1968	The definitive “Self-Loathing Modernist” performance.
*Hamlet*	Hamlet	1969	Revolutionized Shakespeare with “Gutter Realism.”
*The Seven-Per-Cent Solution*	Sherlock Holmes	1976	Brought “Clinical Paranoia” to the Great Detective.
*Excalibur*	Merlin	1981	Created the most “Human and Bizarre” Wizard in film history.

Moyna MacGill was born in Belfast in 1995. She was the daughter of a solicitor. She acted on the London stage and in British films. In 1940 she was a widow and to protect her children from the London bombings she moved with them to New York. She then went to Hollywood where she worked as a sterling character actress in such films as “Green Dolphin Street”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and on many television programmes. She died in 1975. Moyna MacGill was the mother of Angela Lansbury. Blog on Moyna McGill can be accessed here.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Born in Belfast, she was the daughter of a wealthy solicitor who was also a director of the Grand Opera House in Belfast, a position that sparked her interest in theatrics. She was still a teen when she was noticed riding the London Underground by director George Pearson, who cast her in several of his films. In 1918, she made her stage debut in the play Love in a Cottage at the West End‘s Globe Theatre.

Encouraged by Gerald du Maurier to change her name to Moyna Macgill (which invariably was misspelled as “MacGill” or “McGill”, and on at least one occasion, the film Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven, as “Magill”), she became a leading actress of the day, appearing in light comedies, melodramas, and classics opposite Herbert Marshall, John Gielgud, and Basil Rathbone, among others.

Twenty-six-year-old Macgill was married with a three-year-old daughter, Isolde (who later married Sir Peter Ustinov), when she became involved romantically with Edgar Lansbury, a socialist politician, who was a son of the Labour MP and Leader of the Opposition George Lansbury. Her husband, actor Reginald Denham, named Lansbury as co-respondent when he filed for divorce. A year after it was finalized, Macgill and Lansbury married and with Isolde settled into a garden flat in London‘s Regent’s Park.

Macgill temporarily set aside her career following the birth of daughter Angela and twin sons Edgar, Jr., and Bruce (both went on to becomeBroadway producers, but Bruce is better known for his work on television, such as the series The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, and his sister’s Murder, She Wrote), although music and dance were prevalent in their upbringing. When they moved into a larger house in suburban Mill Hill, she turned their home into a salon for actors, writers, directors, musicians, and artists, all of whom left an impression on young Angela and were instrumental in directing her interests towards acting.

The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.

Oliver Reed obituary in “The Independent” in 1999.

Oliver Reed was a big burly presence on film who was well known for his hard-drinking macho . He was born in 1938 in London and was the nephew of the great film director Sir Carol Reed. He began acting on film in 1958 in the Norman Wisdom comedy “The Square Peg” where he played a menancing thug. He spent a few years in supporting parts and then gained larger roles in Hammer Horror movies. In 1968 his uncle awarded him the plum role of Bill Sikes in the wonderful “Oliver”. Reed was excellent in the part and I think the best performance in the film. He went to Hollywood and made several films there and back in Britain. In his later career the quailty of the films diminished somewhat. He had a leading role in the excellent “Gladiator” which he was working on in Malta when he died of a heart attack in 2000. He was buried in Co. Cork Ireland near to his home of several years.

Independent, The (London), May 4, 1999 by Tom VallanceOLIVER REED was something of a rarity among British film stars, a bearish, scar-faced, larger-than-life figure whose off-screen exploits, notably his heavy drinking and the scrapes that it got him into, brought him more fame and notoriety than his acting career.As an actor, he made his strongest impression when playing similarly extrovert figures – such as the tortured heroes of Hammer horror movies or the brutal Bill Sikes in Oliver! Most memorable of all was his work with the director Ken Russell on television (as Rossetti and Debussy) and on film in The Devils, Tommy and their first collaboration, Women in Love, in which the nude wrestling scene between Reed and Alan Bates remains one of the most evocative and remarkable sequences of the Sixties. Russell wrote later: I wonder if people would still be talking about the film today if I hadn’t included that particular sequence. . . it wasn’t in the original script. I didn’t think it would pass the censor and I knew it would be difficult to shoot. I was wrong on my first guess and right on my second. Olly talked me into it. He wrestled with me, ju-jitsu style, in my kitchen, and wouldn’t let me up until I said, “OK, OK, you win, I’ll do it.” Thanks, Olly, we made history.

Original Cinema Exhibitor’s Campgain Book – Press Book

He was born in Wimbledon, south London, in 1938, grandson of the actor- manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree and nephew of the film director Carol Reed, though he later stated, “I never sought anything but advice from my uncle.” He denied as apocryphal the tale that he was expelled from 13 schools (“I left of my own free will”) but he did run away from home at the age of 17 to become a bouncer at a Soho strip club. He had a brief career as a boxer (“I won the first fight, lost the next, then decided I didn’t like being hit”) and worked as a mini-cab driver and mortuary attendant before doing National Service as a member of the Medical Corps. After his two years in the Army were finished, he returned to London determined to be an actor: “When I came out I went to my uncle and he said to go into repertory if I wanted to be an actor. It was good advice, because I ignored it completely. I don’t give a damn for the theatre, films is where it’s at.”

Reed instead took his photograph around to agencies and managed to get bit parts and extra work in British movies including The Captain’s Table (1958), Beat Girl (1959, as a teenage loafer), The League of Gentlemen (1960, as a ballet dancer) and The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960, as a bouncer). “Everyone told me not to do horror films,” he later stated, “but I wanted to act. I remember standing on a table blowing bubble gum as a child and everyone applauded. I like that.”

It was a horror film that gave Reed his first major opportunity. Terence Fisher’s Curse of the Werewolf (1961) is considered one of the best of Hammer’s output, an earnest attempt to understand folklore which spends almost the entire first half examining the origins of the werewolf myth (its portrayal of 18th-century Spain caused the film to be banned in that country for 15 years). As the young man fighting the beast within himself, Reed gave a performance described by one critic as “mesmerising”. Further Hammer films included Joseph Losey’s The Damned (1962), in which Reed was the leader of a motorcycle gang, The Pirates of Blood River (1962) and The Scarlet Blade (1963).

In one of Michael Winner’s better films, The System (1964), he was a seaside youth who has a way with the ladies – retitled The Girl-Getters, the film did well in the United States. But it was Ken Russell’s Monitor television film about Debussy (1965), in which Reed had the title role, that marked what he later referred to as his “intellectual breakthrough”. He was now being considered seriously as an actor and had also become one of the British cinema’s most potent sex symbols. Reed received some of his best notices for his performance as a primitive fur-trapper who takes an orphaned mute for a bride in Sidney Hayers’s The Trap (1966), then worked with Winner again in The Jokers (1967) and I’ll Never Forget What’s-‘is-name (1967), co- starring Orson Welles, who became a close friend. Oliver! (1968), in which Reed brought a menace considered by some to be overly brutish to the role of Bill Sikes, was directed by his uncle and became an Oscar-laden triumph. (Carol Reed, fearful of accusations of nepotism, cast his nephew only when the producer John Woolf insisted that the actor was the best choice.)

Oliver Reed was now reputed to be Britain’s highest-paid actor and, after a black comedy, The Assassination Bureau (1968), and Michael Winner’s Hannibal Brooks (1968), a popular comedy-drama in which Reed and Michael J. Pollard were prisoners-of-war taking an elephant over the Alps, he made Women in Love (1970), Ken Russell’s fine adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel. The film won an Oscar for Reed’s co-star Glenda Jackson, who commented, Oliver and I had absolutely nothing to say to each other off- screen. As people we are chalk and cheese. What I admire in Oliver is his consummate professionalism. It doesn’t matter what state he may be in physically, when they say “Action!” he is ready, and that was the aspect of working with him that I liked. I’ve worked with him a lot and he is an infinitely better actor than he gives himself credit for. He is also a brilliant comic actor and he’s never really explored that in himself.

Reed’s off-screen behaviour was by now getting more publicity than his acting, and his heavy drinking began to affect his appearance, which was becoming increasingly bloated, though he had never considered himself handsome (“I’ve got a face like a dustbin,” he commented, “but people are learning that if you kick a dustbin over and rhododendrons drop out, it’s glorious.”) His next film for Russell was a controversial piece, The Devils (1971), in which Reed’s licentious priest provokes sexual hysteria amongst the nuns. In the unpleasant and violent western The Hunting Party (1971), he headed a gang of rapists and killers, and he was effectively insensitive as a bullying sergeant in Michael Apted’s The Triple Echo (1972), in which he again co-starred with Glenda Jackson. It was around this time that he told a New York reporter, “Do you know what I am? I’m successful. Destroy me and you destroy the British film industry. Keep me going and I’m the biggest star you’ve got. I’m Mr England.”

In Richard Lester’s The Four Musketeers (1974), he was a formidable Athos and in 1975 he gave impressive performances again for Ken Russell in both Tommy and Lisztomania, but he was also making too many pot-boilers, in order to support his penchant for drink and women. In 1970 he had divorced his wife of 10 years, Kate Byrne, by whom he had a son, Mark. He then embarked on a 12-year relationship with the ballet dancer Jacquie Daryl, by whom he had a daughter. He would frequently boast of his appeal for women, and on an aeroplane trip upset the captain by dropping his trousers and asking the hostesses to judge a “prettiest boy” contest. In a hotel in Madrid while filming The Four Musketeers, he stripped during dinner and jumped into a large tank of goldfish. When the police were summoned, Reed shouted, “Leave me alone. You can’t touch me – I’m one of the Four Musketeers!”

“I like the effect drink has on me,” he once said, “What’s the point of being sober?” His exploits were becoming legendary – he is alleged to have spiked the snooker star Alex Higgins’s whisky with Chanel perfume, denied head-butting the actor Patrick Mower at a party by explaining, “I leant across the table to give him a kiss”, and during a drinking marathon at a rugby club in Doncaster he threw pounds 50 on the bar saying, “Get all these working- class pigs a drink.” He once arrived at Galway airport lying drunk on a luggage conveyor, and in 1979 turned a soda siphon on himself and other celebrities at a boxing event in London, then jumped into the ring and did a striptease.

On film sets, however, Reed would still be both professional and courteous. “I like Reed very much,” said Michael Winner. “I think he is a very kind and decent person.” Ken Russell commented, “For all his macho image, Oliver is a sensitive actor who approaches his craft intuitively.”

In 1985 the actor again made news when he married the 21-year-old Josephine Burge, who had been his companion since she was a 16-year-old schoolgirl. The marriage was preceded by a two-day drinking session in which Reed claimed to have consumed 136 pints of beer.

Reed was impressive as the islander who advertises for a wife in Nicholas Roeg’s Castaway (1986), but the filming in the Seychelles was marked with incident – Reed was taken to court for allegedly exposing himself to his co-star Amanda Donohoe during the filming, and he was also accused of throwing his stunt double Reg Prince over a balustrade in a drunken bout. Television viewers will not soon forget Reed’s appearance on the chat show After Dark in 1991 when the plainly inebriated actor swore, fell over a sofa, then announced, “Right, I’m off to have a slash.”

Reed was warned several times by doctors that he would not live long if he did not give up drinking, and he was drinking with friends during a break from filming the Steven Spielberg production The Gladiators when he became fatally ill.

Robert Oliver Reed, actor: born London 13 February 1938;
married 1960 Kathleen Byrne (one son; marriage dissolved 1970), (one daughter by Jacquie Daryl), 1985 Josephine Burge;
died Valetta 2 May 1999.

Source: Tom Vallance, The Independent, May 4th, 1999
URL: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990504/ai_n14233785/pg_1

Patrick McGoohan acheived immortal television fame through his lead role in two cult British series of the 1960’s – “Dangerman” and “The Prisoner”. He was born in New York in 1928 and raised in Co. Leitrim, Ireland and then in Sheffield in the UK. He commenced his career on British films such as “Nor the Moon by Night” and “Hell Drivers”. In 1967 he went to Hollywood to make “Ice Station Zebra”. He made many high profile television appearances in the U.S. in the 70’s and 80’s and in 1995 he starred with Mel Gibson in “Braveheart”. He died in 2002.

“Guardian” obituary:

The handsome and steady-eyed Patrick McGoohan, who has died aged 80, was the star, co-writer and sometimes director of one of British television’s most original and challenging series of the 1960s, The Prisoner. In it, he played Number Six, a mysterious, resigned former secret agent who is always trying to escape from the Village, an apparently congenial community which is in fact a virtual prison for people who know too much. They are allowed to be comfortable there only if they conform completely and do not try to escape.

McGoohan was at the time, 1967, the highest earning British TV star, paid £2,000 a week through appearing in a highly successful secret agent series called Danger Man, in which he was John Drake, a European security man who – on McGoohan’s own insistence – never carried a gun or seduced a woman. But he was becoming disenchanted with the series, whose American purchasers from Lew Grade’s British television company ITC were pressing for more stock banalities such as car chases, shoot-outs and sex scenes.

He was invited to lunch with one American executive, who explained that they wanted pictures of him on the screen with glamorous girls – or, as McGoohan himself put it, “the corny showbusiness formula, the publicity machine grinding away”. He declined, and the lunch lasted only six minutes.

McGoohan, who had his own production company, Everyman Films, suggested to Grade a different, seven-part series for which he and others had prepared scripts, called The Prisoner. Grade cheerfully admitted that he had not understood a word of what McGoohan proposed, but had so much confidence in him that he agreed to fund it immediately.

Grade’s chief international customer, however, wanted a longer series. There were 17 Prisoner programmes, each of them loaded with mysterious psychological nuances, and set in an ideally artificial Village – in reality Portmeirion, an experimental community with exotic buildings designed by the architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, in north Wales.

From the opening titles, the programme was no easy ride. An angry secret agent drives into London in his fashionable Lotus 7 as a storm threatens, bursts into his boss’s office, throws his resignation down on to his desk, and storms out again. At home later, he finds an undertaker at his door. Gas comes through the keyhole, and he collapses as he packs his bags to go away. He wakes up in the Village, and no one will tell him where he is or why he is there, only that he is Number Six. ” I am not a number, I am a free man!” is his answer – and battle was joined in 17 attempted escapes.

In the series McGoohan met several sinister Number Twos but could never find out who Number One was until the last episode, improvised by McGoohan and his large writing team at the last moment, when Number One’s false face was pulled off to reveal a monkey’s underneath. When that too was pulled off, it revealed the face of McGoohan’s Number Six himself.

The implication that human beings can imprison themselves was timely in the swinging 60s, while at the same time the notion of the security services as the real enemy was seeping its way into fiction that had previously existed in more black and white terms. The programme achieved cult status for both itself and McGoohan personally, who had involved himself in all aspects of the productions in a way his colleagues thought obsessive. He became a darling of the campuses, but found that The Prisoner was a difficult act to follow.

In 1974, Everyman Films went bankrupt with debts of £63,000, at least half of it owed to the Inland Revenue. By the 1980s, McGoohan had recovered, The movie Kings and Desperate Men (1981) was praised by British critics and he starred on Broadway in Hugh Whitemore’s Pack of Lies.

The cosmopolitan variety of his professional interests owed something to his background. He was born in New York to parents who were once Irish farmers. His father, though barely literate, had an ear for Shakespeare, so that when Patrick read plays to him, he would remember and recite whole passages months later.

The family returned to Ireland when he was six months old and then, when he was eight, moved to Sheffield. Patrick later won a scholarship to Ratcliffe college in Leicester, where he played Lear in a school production. Leaving school at 16, he went to work in a wire mill, rising from the factory floor to the offices and then leaving to work in a bank.

This made him feel caged, so he set up instead as a chicken farmer, until an attack of bronchial asthma put him in bed for six months. He walked around Sheffield looking for work and eventually tried the Sheffield Repertory Company, for which he became assistant stage manager. When members of the cast were off sick, he was asked to step in, and found that he was best in the lighter Shakespeare plays, gaining praise for his Petruchio.

McGoohan stayed for four years, by which time he had appeared in 200 plays, including a touring production of The Cocktail Party in a small mining town, lit by miners’ lamps when the electricity failed. He met and married the actor Joan Drummond, with whom he had three daughters.

He made his first appearance in the West End in 1955 as the lead in Serious Charge. Orson Welles saw him there and asked him to play Starbuck in his production of Moby Dick Rehearsed. At the same time he stood in for Dirk Bogarde during a screen test, and was offered a five-year contract with Rank. But the studio’s “charm school” approach irked him and the contract petered out after four films.

After this, he turned more towards television and appeared in a production of Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife, about a paranoid Hollywood producer and the protege actor who he thinks has betrayed him. It was seen by Grade, who thought McGoohan ideal for John Drake in the Danger Man scripts. From 1960, McGoohan played in 86 episodes. At around this time, he turned down the chance to play James Bond in the first Bond movie, Dr No, seeing the Bond character as a stock gunman who treated women badly.

In 1968, when The Prisoner series was ending, McGoohan left Mill Hill, north London, to live in Switzerland after the local council refused him permission to fence his house off from prying eyes. In 1973 he moved to Pacific Palisades in California. There he wrote poetry, a novel and television scripts. He appeared in, wrote or directed some of the Columbo films in which his American friend Peter Falk appeared as the deceptively ruffled detective.

This redoubtable enemy of dumbing-down remained a highly individual operator into the 1990s. In 1991 he came to London to make the TV version of Whitemore’s play The Best of Friends, in which he played with considerable plausibility and élan another Irishman not frightened to swim against the tide, George Bernard Shaw. In 1995 he was cast as Edward I in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.

In 2000, he provided the voice of Number Six for an episode of The Simpsons, and gained his last film credit in 2002 as the voice of Billy Bones in Treasure Planet. A proposed film version of The Prisoner has yet to make it to the screen, but a remake of the TV show has recently been filmed by ITV, with the US actor James Caviezel as Number Six, and is due to be transmitted later this year.

McGoohan is survived by his wife, three daughters and five grandchildren.

Patrick Joseph McGoohan, actor, writer and director, born 19 March 1928; died 13 January 2009

• This article was amended on Thursday 15 January 2009. Portmeirion is in north, not south, Wales. This has been corrected.

Dennis Barker’s obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.