Richard Armitage

Richard Armitage

Richard Armitage has had some very prominent roles on British television including Guy of Gisborne in “Robin Hood”, John Thornton in “North and South” and is now cast in the film “The Hobbit”. He was born in 1971 in Leicester.

TCM Overview:

British actor Richard Armitage was a television star in his native country, playing complicated men of action on series like “Spooks” (BBC One/Three, 2001-2011) and “Strike Back” “(Sky 1/Cinemax, 2010- ) before leaping to international attention in Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” (2012-2014) film trilogy. Like Hugh Jackman before him, Armitage began his career in musical theater before finding fame on British television, playing dark, dashing anti-heroes on “North and South” (BBC, 2004) and “Robin Hood” (BBC One, 2007-09). His growing popularity, especially among female viewers, led to a starring role on “Spooks” as a one-time terrorist masquerading as a spy, as well as voiceover work on numerous TV commercials and in documentaries. He then segued into another action series, “Strike Back,” before landing a central role in “The Hobbit,” which necessitated his leaving the series for what would most likely be a star-making turn not unlike Viggo Mortensen’s career-transforming appearance in Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” (2001-2003) trilogy. Having already conquered British television, Richard Armitage’s ascension to worldwide stardom in films seemed a foregone conclusion.

Born Richard Crispin Armitage in the village of Huncote, in Leicestershire, England on Aug. 22, 1971, he was the second son of engineer John Armitage and his wife, Margaret, a secretary. Armitage led a largely solitary childhood in which he found great solace in both reading and music. The latter, which encompassed playing the flute and cello at Brockington College and with a local orchestra, led him to Pattison College, where a school visit to see a production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre inspired him to pursue acting as well. Armitage began appearing in school productions before leaving Pattinson at the age of 17 to join a theater group, The Second Generation, at a circus in Budapest, Hungary. The experience earned him his Equity card, which allowed him to work professionally as an actor in the U.K. Upon his return to his native country, Armitage worked in musical theater before enrolling at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art to hone his acting skills. Following his completion of the school’s three-year program in 1998, he made his screen acting debut with a one-line role in “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” (1999). Armitage soon found steady work in theater while balancing bit and supporting roles in features and television.

In 2002, Armitage won his first substantive television role in “Sparkhouse” (BBC, 2002) a modern take on Wuthering Heights. More work on television soon led to his first starring turn in “North and South” as a mill owner who fell in love with Daniela Denby-Ashe’s plucky working class heroine. Armitage’s sensitive performance was praised by critics and fans alike, both of which minted him as a romantic leading man on the rise. He further cemented his fan base as Guy of Gisborne on “Robin Hood” (BBC One, 2007-09). At first glimpse, Gisborn was a world-class rogue in league with the series’ main villain, the Sheriff of Notthingham, but over the course of the season, viewers received a glimpse of the character’s conflicted loyalties, especially in regard to Marian (Lucy Griffiths) and his sister (Lara Pulver), who fell in love with Jonas Armstrong’s Robin of Locksley. The program was a sizable hit on both sides of the Atlantic, which increased Armitage’s profile even further.

While working on “Robin Hood,” Armitage also kept up a steady schedule of guest appearances on other series, while adding voiceover and radio work to his list of accomplishments, including a 2007 stint reading the letters of former poet laureate Ted Hughes on BBC Radio 4. The following year, he joined the cast of the popular espionage series “Spooks” as Lucas North, a British operative whose eight-year stint in a Russian prison left him a damaged, compromised figure upon his return to spy work. North remained the series’ leading role until its ninth season, when it was revealed that he had participated in the bombing of the British Embassy in Senegal and murdered a friend, a spy in training whom he then impersonated to gain entry into the government secret service. North’s suicide in the finale of the show’s ninth season marked the end of another critically acclaimed run for the actor, who had also performed his own stunts throughout the action-packed series, including a sequence in which he was briefly put through waterboarding.

Armitage quickly moved into another action series, “Strike Back,” playing a former special forces operative who reluctantly returned to duty after a mission that claimed the lives of two fellow soldiers. While working on the series, Armitage’s voiceover career soon encompassed advertisements for Alfa Romeo, Sky Television and the BBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, as well as numerous documentaries, radio programs and audio books. He also found time to make his Hollywood feature debut as Nazi spy Heinz Kruger in “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011). But when production commenced on the second season of “Strike Back,” Armitage was forced to drop out due to a commitment for what would be his biggest project to date: Peter Jackson’s three-part film trilogy “The Hobbit,” in which he starred as Thorin Oakenshield, leader of a company of 13 dwarves who enlisted Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) in a quest to reclaim their home from a monstrous dragon. Following completion of the film’s 18-month shoot, Armitage was cast in the action-thriller “Black Sky” (2013) as a widowed father protecting his son in the aftermath of a tornado.

By Paul Gaita

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Freddie Fox.

Freddie Fox was born in 1989 in Hammersmith, North London. He is the son of actors Joanna David and Edward Fox and younger brother of actress Emilia Fox. His films include “Any Human Heart” in 2010 and “The Three Musketeers”.

“MailOnline” article from 2012:

Freddie Fox is only slightly concerned that most of the scripts which come through his door are for ‘spoiled and entitled brats’.

He is doing rather well with them.

There was Edwin Drood, the arrogant young rich Dickens heir, which brought him to mainstream attention when it was screened in January.

And he also played the petulant King Louis XIII in the recent Hollywood version of the Three Musketeers.

There are plenty of reasons to expect that Freddie is spoiled and entitled himself. He is the third generation of an acting dynasty that includes his parents Edward Fox and Joanna David, his actress sister Emilia Fox, uncle Robert Fox, cousin Laurence Fox, and his grandfather Robin Fox, who was a theatrical agent.

‘I know how lucky I am, and I am aware that I have to fight the perception that I am also a spoiled brat,’ says the 22-year-old. ‘It is very easy to label people, and people especially love to do that in this business.

‘I know that I am lucky and that when I meet a casting agent they are curious about what the newest member of the Fox family can do. It helps to get me called in to roles. But I have to prove that I am worth the time spent.’

It seems he is doing something right. After briefly planning to be a fisherman, ‘until I realised that it was a lot of work for terrible money’, acting is all he ever wanted to do.

Freddie takes the lead in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, with Rosa Bud played by Tamzin Merchant

‘I tried to work hard at school because I knew that my parents were paying a lot of money for it,’ recalls Freddie who attended the £9,900-a-term Bryanston School in Dorset. ‘But I couldn’t wait for lessons to finish so I could be in rehearsals for the school play.’

He won his first major role aged 20 while still at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and it was a world away from the costume drama you would expect. He played Boy George’s bitchy friend, the cross-dresser Marilyn, in the BBC drama Worried About The Boy.

‘I have learned already that you have to work against people’s perception as they want to box you in very quickly,’ he says. ‘Marilyn was such fun to play and I was desperate to get the part because he was such a bonkers character.’

The Three Musketeers, which he filmed a few months later, was his first American blockbuster and he had a ball as the slightly camp and brattish French King.

‘I had a golden time making that film and I think it shows — I have a smile on my face the whole time,’ he says.

‘As an actor who had come out of drama school just a year earlier to be working with people like Matthew Macfadyen and Christoph Waltz was incredible. I felt like a child in an enormous sweet shop.

‘I particularly loved the costumes. Usually getting dressed on set is boring but I would put on baroque classical music and love getting on these wonderful ornate clothes.’

A love of style is something Freddie has inherited from his dapper father, who found fame in the 1978 mini-series Edward And Mrs Simpson. ‘My dad has kept his clothes in such good nick that I wear a lot of his older suits that don’t fit him any more,’ he says.

‘A lot of people choose not to wear three-piece suits these days but I think there is something amazingly elegant about them and I love to wear them.’

His family are still incredibly close and Freddie, whose latest project is appearing in the West End in Hay Fever, admits that’s his one advantage in life.

‘In showbiz, relationships break up all the time; we all know that,’ he says. ‘So I have huge admiration for my family. They have gone through thick and thin and they really love each other and stay together.

‘It has given me the best possible start. There’s nothing I like more than going round to my sister’s house and having a great big Sunday lunch with her, my niece, and my parents. It is bliss.

‘We don’t ever get bored of each other because we like the same things. Dad is wonderful in that he has done so much. It sounds a bit pretentious but he will bring out a choice quote from Shakespeare if it suits the moment; he is very sweet and philosophical.

‘If you want to offload and complain about something you always have someone who understands you and can help.’

Freddie is dating actress Tamzin Merchant who played his fiancée in the Mystery Of Edwin Drood. They met on set but Freddie insists he is not the type to date every girl with whom he acts.

‘I’m aware that set romances are known for being fleeting but I have never been that sort of person,’ he insists. ‘I have met someone I get on with well and I feel very lucky.’

As a couple they have been been classified as part of the Corset Crew – a name for young actors with breakthrough roles in period dramas.

But Freddie gets angry at the idea that he and his friends are cast only because they are posh and pretty.

‘It annoys me when people group my friends like Eddie Redmayne (Birdsong) or Doug Booth (Great Expectations) and Ben Cumberbatch (Sherlock) together as the pretty posh boys who are ruling our screens,’ he says.

‘People don’t realise how many years they have been working at their craft. People should talk about their talent, not about them looking like Burberry models.’

Similarly, Freddie doesn’t want to be known just for his family connections. ‘My family have been very successful in this business proving what they can do,’ he says.

‘Now it’s my time to prove what I can do.’

The above “MailOnline” article can also be accessed online here.

Michael Gothard was born in 1939 in London. He was a powerful actor who gave good performances in “The Devils” with Oliver Reed in 1971, 1973’s “The Three Musketeers” with Michael York and the James Bond movie “For Your Eyes Only” with Roger Moore in 1981. He died in 1992.

IMDB entry:

Michael Gothard was born in London on June 24, 1939. He left school at 17 with little idea of what he wanted to do. He traveled around Europe, washing dishes in restaurants, as a house cleaner and building laborer. He spent a year in Paris, living in the Latin Quarter. He dabbled in modeling, but never felt comfortable doing so. Michael claimed he was a clothes horse, not a person. He decided to become an actor at 21. Upon his return to England, he found a job as a scenery mover at the New Arts Theatre in London. He landed a part in an amateur movie a friend was making. He felt, as a joke, he could do better and read a part in the audition. To his surprise, he landed the lead role. He joined an actor’s workshop to gain experience, attending evenings and weekends while holding down a day job. Michael’s first television appearance was in an episode of Out of the Unknown (1965), a British science fiction series featuring stories by Isaac Asimov, ‘J.G Ballard’ and others. He featured in the episode The Machine Stops written by E.M. Forster. He then landed the lead in the Don Levy ‘s film Herostratus (1967), as Max, a young poet who has decided to commit suicide in public. The film brought him critical acclaim, but no major work. He spent time on the dole, starting a lunchtime theatre in pubs, but it still brought no money. The taste of unemployment gave him a more determined attitude towards his profession. Michael later found roles in Up the Junction(1968), Michael Kohlhaas – Der Rebell (1969), The Last Valley (1971) and Scream and Scream Again (1970). He played Keith, a cyborg vampire killer created by Vincent Price, and notably leaving his hand behind and jumping into a vat of acid after being hand-cuffed to a police car. With this film, he started his reputation of playing odd characters. Michael next appeared in Curtis Harrington ‘s Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972) as Albie, the menacing butler. He was not held in high regard by the director, who was later quoted saying “He was the most neurotic actor I have ever worked with. I didn’t like him at all”. He gave a stunning performance in Ken Russell ‘s _Devil’s, The (1971)_ as the insane exorcist/inquisitor Reverend Barre, responsible for burning ‘Oliver Reed’ at the stake. These roles brought him fame and popularity. He played Olivier in The Valley (Obscured by Clouds) (1972), a free-spirited mechanic who goes in search of the valley of the gods with a group of fellow misfits. He was cast in the TV series Arthur of the Britons(1972), which brought him more public attention, and was noticed by Richard Lester, who cast him as John Felton in The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge (1974), the manipulated lover of Madame de Winter (Faye Dunaway), who persuades him to kill the Duke of Buckingham. He would next be seen in King Arthur, the Young Warlord (1975), a feature-length film based on the television series, followed by Warrior Queen (1978), another medieval drama. Appearing in _Warlords of Atlantis (1978)_ alongside Doug McClure, he was Atmir, one of the elders of the Martian Atlantean race. The film had flimsy effects and garish costumes, but Michael was, at least, an interesting character. After an appearance in the The Professionals (1977) and Shoestring (1979), Michael landed a role in For Your Eyes Only (1981), where he played the silent henchman Locque. It was one of the last major films roles he had. After Ivanhoe (1982), he appeared in various TV series into the mid 80s and then a starring role in Tobe Hooper‘s under-ratedLifeforce (1985), an adaptation of Colin Wilson‘s book Space Vampires. He appeared withFrank Finlay, Peter Firth and Steve Railsback. The film was a box office flop, losing over $14 million. Less regular work followed, appearing in Minder (1979) and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984). He appeared in Going Undercover (1988) and Destroying Angel (1990), but neither were particularly memorable films. Playing George Lusk inDavid Wickes Jack the Ripper (1988) with Michael Caine, was one of his last appearances on British television. He landed a lead role in The Serpent of Death (1990) with Jeff Fahey. He re-united with For Your Eyes Only (1981) director John Glen in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), briefly taking over the role slated for Marlon Brandowho had not shown up for filming. In fact he had been cast as a possible replacement for Brando who had a habit of being unreliable, but Tom Selleck walked off the set in protest when Brando did not show up for filming on the first day, and Gothard reverted to his original role when Brando finally appeared. He worked again with David Wickes inFrankenstein (1992). This proved to be his last film. He committed suicide, alone at his home in Hampstead, on December 2, 1992. We can only wonder what more he could have accomplished later, had he been able to over come the depression that over-powered him.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Corrections by MO840

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Charlie Condou is an actor and a writer for the Guardian newspaper. He was born in London in 1973. He us currently on “Coronation Street” as Marcus. Other roles include “Dead Babies” and “Fred Claus”.

Albert Lieven was born in Germany in 1906. He fled to Britain in 1937 before the outbreak of World War Two. He made his movie debut in the UK some afterwards in “Victoria the Great” starring Anna Neagle. His films include “Frieda” in 1947, “Sleeping Car to Trieste” and “Conspiracy of Hearts” where he was an evil nazi major opposite Lilli Palmer as a nun. He died in 1971. He is the grandfather of rugby player Toby Flood.

IMDB entry:

German actor, on stage from 1928, who fled the Nazis during the war years, only to portray Nazi menacers in British films. Maternal grandfather of Newcastle and England rugby player Toby Flood. Grew up in East Prussia. First acted on stage at the Hoftheater in Gera in 1928, subsequently in the ensemble cast at the Preussische Staatstheater in Berlin. Left Germany because of his Jewish wife, Petra Peters. In England from 1936, appearing on stage and featuring in BBC foreign service radio broadcasts. From 1939 to 1952, affiliated with the Rank Organisation as a character actor. On Broadway in 1948. Returned to German film and TV in 1952.

His family produced a dynasty of noted physicians. His father was a lung specialist.

Andrew Hall was born in 1954. He was recently featured on “Coronation Street” as Marc Selby. His films include “The Truth About Love”.

Article in “Manchester Evening News”:

Award-winning Kindertransport, written by Liverpudlian playwright Diane Samuels, has already received world-wide acclaim.

This poignant story is directed by Manchester actor turned director Andrew Hall who we last saw as Watson in Sherlock Holmes: The Untold Secret at the Opera House.

It’s set during the nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War, when the ‘Kindertransport’ trains carried nearly 10,000 children, mainly Jewish, away from Germany and Austria.

Andrew explains: “This story’s about a desperate mother who forces her nine-year-old daughter onto a train to safety. Decades later, in England, we see another reluctant mother saying goodbye to her grown-up daughter, and it’s the bittersweet experience of teaching your child to survive which unites these women across the decades.”

“Maggie Steed (Born and Bred) and Janet Dibley (Doctors) head a sterling cast,” adds Andrew, who knows what he’s talking about as he has worked extensively as both actor and director. Andrew was born in Droylsden, but his grandfather was the manager of Oldham Batteries in the 1940s an 1950s and his father joined Burroughs Computers as a salesman, becoming UK vice president. Promotion meant moves to Marple and Lytham.

“At one point we lived in Joseph Locke’s old house. My first appearance on a professional stage was aged six on St. Anne’s Pier with Al Read and I still have family connections here as my godmother lives in Marple.”

Although he’s worked with the RSC and in comedies like Noises Off, Andrew’s best known for his television roles. “I was in Eastenders, Doctors, Brookside, Hollyoaks and even played one of the sons in Butterflies! Most recently I played evangelist Billy Graham in Nixon for Sky, this year.

“Perhaps my most controversial role was as cross-dressing Marc/Marcia Selby in Coronation Street. My godmother was thrilled about me being in Corrie but I had to warn her that in one episode I’d wear a frock as I knew she’d be shocked! I finally gained her approval when we had tea with Sue Nicholls, who plays Audrey!”

However, Andrew has no cause for concern about Kindertransport. “It’s such a privilege to direct this powerful story and to meet survivors who have wonderful stories to tell. If there’s any Kindertransport survivors in Manchester I do hope they too will come forward.”

The above “Manchester Evening News” article can also be accessed online here.

Penelope Horner was born in 1942 in London. She made her film debut in 1956 in the Frankie Howard film “A Touch of the Sun”. iIn 1959 she was in “The Nun’s Story”. She was particularily effective as Michael Craig’s girlfriend in “The Angry Silence” in 1960. In 1967 she was one of Tommy Steele’s romantic interests in the musical “Half A Sixpence”.

Frances Day was an American actress and singer whose career was based mainly in Britain. She was born in 1908 in East Orange, New Jersey. She made her London stage debut in 1932 in “Out of the Bottle”. Her films include “Who’s Your Lady Friend” in 1937 and “There’s Always A Thursday” in 1957. She died in Windsor in 1984.

IMDB entry:

Frances Day was born on December 16, 1907 in Newark, New Jersey, USA as Frances Victoria Schenk. She was an actress, known for While Nero Fiddled (1944), Tread Softly(1952) and The Girl in the Taxi (1937). She was married to Beaumont Alexander. She died in April 1984 in Brighton, East Sussex, England.

Changed her name on escaping to Maidenhead, Berkshire, England to Samta Young Johnson.

The actor John Mills was one of her closest friends.

Of German-Jewish descent, she was born Frankie Schenk and began performing in speakeasies while in her mid-teens. In England from 1925, she became an instant star of West End nightspots, creating a sensation when performing in a G-string with only an ostrich fan for cover.

Had a reputation as a voracious ‘maneater’. She was mistress to several royal princes and a future Prime Minster. The writer George Bernard Shaw was enamored with her (in fact, she began to pursue him, when he was 92 and she 41). However, she was also rumoured to have had liaisons with Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead.

Celebrated as Britain’s first and original platinum ‘blonde bombshell’, Frances Day was an American singer and actress who became a revue star in England.

Shane Briant was born in London in 1946. He studied law at Trinity College in Dublin and made his acting debut in the city’s Eblana Theatre in “Hamlet”. In 1973 he signed a contract with Elstree Studios in London and made “Straight On Till Morning” with Tom Bell and Rita Tushingham and “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” amongst others. In more recent years his film work has been in New Zealand and Australia where he now lives. He is also a successful novelist.

IMDB entry:

Born in London, Shane Briant topped the Law School at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Nominated by the London theatre critics as “Best Newcomer” in 1971, Briant has appeared in 32 features worldwide, most notably The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), The Naked Civil Servant (1975), The Lighthorsemen (1987), John Huston‘s The MacKintosh Man (1973) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981). He is also a novelist, having had five books published in Australia: “The Webber Agenda”, “The Chasen Catalyst”, “Hitkids”, “Bite of the Lotus” and his new best-selling thriller, “Graphic”, which came out in 2005. The short film he wrote in 2005, A Message from Fallujah (2005), won “Best in the Fest” at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, and many other awards. He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and cats. (sbriant@bigpond.net.au)

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Wendy Lycett

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Shane Briant obituary in The Times in 2021.

Stalwart of Hammer horror films such as Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell who played his roles with unnerving sincerity

Tuesday June 15 2021, 5.00pm BST, The Times

Shane Briant, left, with Peter Cushing and David Prowse in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, his final Hammer film

ALAMY

Shane Briant gave filmgoers a fright by doing something that his older Hammer colleagues rarely thought to do: he took his roles seriously. Eschewing the booming cackles of Christopher Lee, he opted for a more unnerving sincerity, specialising in ethereal, ingenuous young men, driven to villainy more by madness than malice. For all the plastic and fur in which the costume department clad its monsters, none looked scarier than the ill intent lurking in Briant’s pouting lips and doe eyes.

In Demons of the Mind (1972) he played Emil, a young man whose father has imprisoned him for fear he would succumb to a hereditary insanity. Having escaped, he deliriously terrorises the townsfolk, particularly the women. Asked by a friend what his work for Hammer involved, he put on his poker face and replied, “I have to run after gorgeous girls, wrestle them to the ground, tear off their flimsy blouses and strangle them.” “My god,” said his friend, “that’s what you do every day?” “More or less,” he shrugged.

He played the boyfriend of a woman who does not realise he is a psychopath in Straight on Till Morning (1972), while in his final Hammer film, Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1974), he uncharacteristically played the hero, a young surgeon called Simon Helder, trapped in a prison, who realises that Victor Frankenstein is building a monster out of his dead inmates.

Briant and Yvonne Mitchell in Demons of the Mind (1972)

ALAMY

One day on set, the Monster from Hell, played by the future Darth Vader actor David Prowse (obituary, November 30, 2020), lumbered up and asked if he liked its costume. “I looked at him from head to toe,” Briant recalled, “it looked like a hairy plastic Halloween suit. I looked at the feet. They were huge, gross, and very ugly, almost deformed. At least the feet were good, I thought to myself. I told him so.”

There was a long pause, after which Prowse replied: “The feet are my own.”

Shane Briant was born in London in 1946, the younger son of Elizabeth (née Nolan), a journalist whose career as an actress had been curtailed by the Second World War, and Keith, an author and poet who, after the war, became a public relations officer for the army on the Rhine. When Shane was a small boy the family lived in Bad Oeynhausen, a spa town in northern Germany, and for a time German was his first language. “Speak English, Shane!” his father would demand. He got what he requested when, having beckoned Shane down from his room to show him off at a cocktail party, Shane spoke his first words in English: “Vot you vont?”

He was five when the family returned to London, where they lived in an apartment overlooking Kew Gardens. Unlike his brother Dermot, a precocious if morose 11-year-old who would decorate his room with quotations from Nietzsche, Shane was “an average kid who wanted to play the guitar”. As his years at Haileybury and Imperial Service College drew to a close, he sensed that he should abandon hopes of university and find a job to support his mother, who suffered from depression. His father had died when he was 16.

With Rita Tushingham in Straight on Till Morning (1972)

ALAMY

Yet his university dream was revived by the generosity of his mother’s friend, a woman called Kit Adeane who provided the funds for him to take a place at Trinity College Dublin, to study law. In his final school report the headmaster wrote “he has the air of a dilettante. He will not get far.” “Let’s see how far I get,” Briant remembered thinking. He joined the Trinity Players and a director who had seen him perform recommended him to play Hamlet in a TV series,Shakespeare for Schools, which led to him playing the role at the Eblana Theatre in Dublin. He performed with such poignancy that one audience member was heard to cry, “Oh Jeez, don’t die Hamlet, don’t feckin’ die!”

Briant caught the eye of the director Vincent Dowling, who was staging a work of grand guignol called Children of the Wolf, and wanted him to take the role of Robin, a brain-damaged youth who stabs his mother to death. It was then that the door to the Hammer mansion creaked open. After his time there he took the titular role in a 1973 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray for ABC, and could perhaps have sprung into a career in Hollywood, but chose instead to remain in Britain where, on a Battersea tennis court, he met his wife, Wendy Lycett, with whom he emigrated to Australia in 1982. Living in Sydney, he did much work for Australian and Kiwi television, as well as writing eight novels.

In 2011 he published an autobiography, Always the Bad Guy, in which he wrote: “I’ve been cast as dangerous people all my life, and I’ve always been happiest playing them. On the odd occasions I’ve played good guys, I’ve had to dig deep into my imagination . . . does this suggest that I am at heart a bad person? I hope not. I consider myself a pussycat at heart.”

Shane Briant, actor, was born on August 17, 1946. He died after a long illness on May 27, 2021, aged 74

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Richard Armitage

Freddie Fox

Freddie Fox.

Michael Gothard

Charlie Condou

Albert Lieven

Andrew Hall

Penelope Horner

Frances Day

Shane Briant

Shane Briant obituary in The Times in 2021.

Stalwart of Hammer horror films such as Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell who played his roles with unnerving sincerity

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