British Actors Archives - Page 93 of 137

Gemma Craven

Gemma Craven was born in Dublin in 1950. Her most recent success on television was in the popular Irish series “The Clinic”. Mch of her career has been based in the UK and she made her film debut with the lead in “The Slipper and the Rose” in 1975 with Richard Chamberlain and Margaret Lockwood. Her other films include “Why Not Stay for Breakfast” with George Chakiris and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. On television she has starred in the award winning “Pennies from Heaven”. She has also had a profilic stage career mainly in musicals. Gemma Craven has guest starred in the cult TV series “Fr Ted”.

Felicity Kendall was born in 1948 in Warwickshire. Her parents were travelling actors and she spent much of her childhood with her paretns while they travelled and performed across India. In 1965 the family acted in “Shakespeare Wallah” which was about their experiences as travelling players. In 1965 she received huge acclaim for her role as Barbara Good in “The Good Life” on the BBC with Richard Briers, Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith. She had another popular series with “Rosemary and Thyme”. Her films include “Valentino”. She has also acted many times on the stage in London’s West End.

IMDB entry:

British leading woman best known at one time for “cute” roles but a formidable actress in a wide variety of parts. Born in England, she was raised in India where her parentsGeoffrey Kendal and Laura Liddell toured the nation for decades with a traveling classical theatre troupe called Shakespeareana. Young Felicity first appeared on stage as an infant and grew up doing backstage chores and filling in on stage as boys or various supernumeraries. She attended whatever convent school was immediately convenient and by her teen years was appearing in important Shakespearean roles. Family friends James Ivory and Ismail Merchant fashioned their fictional film Shakespeare-Wallah (1965) around the Kendal troupe and gave Felicity the leading role. She returned to England following the film and struggled for a number of years getting work. She appeared on television opposite John Gielgud and soon thereafter was given the role that made her famous, Barbara Good in the TV series Good Neighbors (1975), about a couple who decides to live off the land in their decidedly suburban home. She followed “The Good Life” with several other TV programs, but made her most important contributions on the stage. She created roles in a number of plays by Tom Stoppard (with whom she had a highly publicized affair), and continued unabated her lifelong work in Shakespeare, playing Desdemona to Paul Scofield‘s Othello and a memorable Viola in a BBC production of Twelfth Night (1980). She continues to perform with regularity in London’s West End. She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1995. In 1999, she published her memoirs, “White Cargo.”

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

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Rosemary Harris. TCM Overview.

Rosemary Harris was born in 1927 in Leicestershire. She is a very accomplished stage actress. Among her movies are “Beau Brummel” in 1954, “The Shiralee”, “The Boys from Brazil” in 1978, “The Ploughman’s Lunch” and “Spiderman”.

TCM Overview:

This sensitive, expressive leading and supporting player is best known for her stellar stage work and occasional yet indelible film and TV appearances. Rosemary Harris frequently played secure, formidable women; strong adversaries or staunch supporters. Her delicate features and petite frame belied a fiercely determined, fully evolved persona. After growing up in India and preparing for a career in nursing, she changed course and began acting studies at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Harris made her stage debut in NYC in the Broadway production of Moss Hart’s “Climate of Eden” (1951) and then returned to her native England where she debuted on the West End in the British premiere of “The Seven Year Itch” (1952).

Harris proved an enormously popular and versatile player on both sides of the Atlantic and a succession of classical and modern roles followed. Over the course of her distinguished career, she had the good fortune to act opposite some of the most important figures in the theater including Richard Burton (“Othello” 1955), Jason Robards (“The Disenchanted” 1958), Laurence Olivier (“Uncle Vanya” 1963), Peter O’Toole (“Hamlet” 1964), Rex Harrison (“Heartbreak House” 1984) and John Gielgud (“The Best of Friends” 1987). She has been nominated eight times for Broadway’s Tony Award, taking home the prize in 1966 for creating the role of Eleanor of Aquitaine in James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter” in 1966. Other highlights of her stage career include her strong-willed Anna in Harold Pinter’s “Old Times” (1971), the Ethel Barrymore-like actress in “The Royal Family” (1975), the plain English housewife who discovers her neighbors are spies in “Pack of Lies” (1985), the mother of a diabetic in “Steel Magnolias” (1991), the iron-willed grandmother in Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” (1992), a troubled wife in “An Inspector Calls” (1994),the smug Agnes of Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” (1996) and a aging stage diva in “Waiting in the Wings” (1999-2000).

On the small screen, Harris has graced a number of TV productions since the mid-1950s, including playing Olivia in an adaptation of “Twelfth Night” (NBC, 1957). She went on to play the rich wife whose husband plots her murder in “Dial M For Murder” (NBC, 1958), the romantic Cathy to Richard Burton’s Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights” (NBC, 1958) and the beleaguered second wife in “Blithe Spirit” (NBC, 1966). She won a justly deserved Emmy Award for her brilliantly crafted portrait of the flamboyant French novelist George Sand in the drama series “Notorious Woman” (PBS, 1975) and offered an equally fine performance as the heroine Mrs. Ramsay in a 1984 adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel “To the Lighthouse”. Harris is perhaps best remembered for her appearances as matriarchs in two well-received miniseries: “Holocaust” (NBC, 1978), playing the aristocratic head of a Jewish family, and “The Chisolms” (CBS, 1979), as the wife and mother of a pioneering Virginia family in 1844.

Harris made a striking film debut as the unrequited love interest of Stewart Granger as “Beau Brummell” (1954) but rejected Hollywood offers of seven-year contracts to pursue her first love–the theater. Consequently, her film appearances have been infrequent. She did not make another film for some 14 years, turning up in the poorly received “A Flea in Her Ear” (1968), which also marked her US debut. Ten years later she gave memorable support in the thriller “The Boys From Brazil” (1978) and subsequently co-starred in the political drama “The Ploughman’s Lunch” (1983). Harris gave a strong, volatile performance as T S Eliot’s iron-willed mother-in-law in “Tom & Viv” (1994), which garnered her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Kenneth Branagh tapped her to play the Player Queen to Charlton Heston’s Player King in a full-length version of “Hamlet” (1996). Harris then essayed yet another strong-willed matriarch, this time of a Scottish family in “My Life So Far” (1999). She and her daughter, actress Jennifer Ehle, shared the pivotal role of Valerie Sonnenshein Sors in Istvan Szabo’s epic “Sunshine” (1999). Ehle portrayed the youthful, headstrong Valerie while Harris lent dignity and grace to the older Valerie who lives through the Holocaust and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

A role as psychic Cate Blanchett’s grandmother in “The Gift” (2000) marked her first collaboration with director Sam Raimi, who next cast her in the pivotal role of Peter Parker’s elderly Aunt May in the blockbuster comic book adapatation “Spider-Man” (2002), a role she reprised with greater prominence in the 2004 sequel “Spider-Man 2.”

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Susan Shaw was born in 1929 in London. In 1946 she was awarded a contract with J. Arthur Rank and her films include “London Town”, “It Always Rains On Sundays”, “Holiday Camp” and “My Brother’s Keeper”. Her husband was the actor Bonar Colleano. She died in 1978.

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

IMDB entry:

The lovely blonde actress, Susan Shaw, was groomed by the Rank Organisation in England for a career in film in the 40s and 50s. She was born on August 29, 1929 in West Norwood, England. Susan was at her best when cast in a role as a pretty young slip of a girl with her nose in the air. After a marriage to actor Albert Lieven, with whom she had a daughter, Susan married the American actor Bonar Colleano, known for his roles as the wisecracking Yank in British films. The two made a handsome couple, Susan with her petite blondeness and Bonar with his loud mouth and dark good looks. They had a child together, actor Mark Colleano, in 1955, before her husband suddenly died in a tragic road accident in 1958. After Bonar died, she was never the same and spent most of her life battling a drinking problem until her death in 1978. Her husband’s mother became the legal guardian of her little boy and groomed him for an acting career. As a child star, Mark went on to star opposite Rock Hudson in “Hornet’s Nest”, as a 14-year-old Italian youth.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: jstewart@directnet.com

Paul King was born in 1960 in Galway. His family moved to Coventry when he was a small child. He became part of the 80’s pop group “King”. He them became a famous DJ on MTV.

Patricia Phoenix was born in Manchester in 1923. She is best known for her role as Elsie Tanner in “Coronation Street”. She has acted on film in “The L Shaped Room” with Leslie Caron and Tom Bell in 1961. At the time of her death in 1986 she was married to actor Anthony Booth.

IMDB entry:

Bold, brassy and larger than life, Pat Phoenix was television’s favourite scarlet woman. For nearly 25 years, she dominated the soap opera Coronation Street (1960) in the role of Elsie Tanner and sent shivers down the spines of Britain’s menfolk twice a week. With her low cut cleavage, she was known as “the working man’s Raquel Welch” and was once dubbed by the then UK Prime Minister Jim Callaghan as “the sexiest woman on TV”.

Pat Phoenix’s life very much mirrored that of the character she played. Tough and determined, she came from a poor working class family in Manchester, but fought her way up to the top. Married three times, she was blunt, outspoken and a notorious chainsmoker. But like Elsie Tanner, she had a heart of gold and inspired affection in everybody.

Born in 1924, she desperately wanted to be an actress but her first job was as a filing clerk. She broke into repertory theatre and worked throughout the North of England with a variety of companies. “I played everything” she said. “When I was 22, I played 90 year old women. I was brought up in the theatre and I made my own way. I was in the theatre for many years before I was in television. The stage is most exhilarating. You know when an audience loves you”.

After working with the Joan Littlewood Theatre Workshop in London in the early 1950s, she found herself out of work and nearly gave up acting. Success came in 1960 when, at the age of 36, she was cast as Elsie Tanner in Granada TV’s new soap Coronation Street(1960). With the rise of interest in northern based sixties films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), the earthy characters and gritty settings of Coronation Street (1960) became an instant hit.

Created and written by Tony Warren, the role of the headstrong Elsie was a classic and transported Phoenix to international fame. Viewers followed “the Street” in such huge numbers that when she married US Army Sergeant Steve Tanner in 1967, over 20 million viewers tuned in to the programme.

“I was one of the first anti-heroines” said Phoenix, “not particularly good looking and no better than I should be. The character of Elsie had overtones of me in it, and overtones of my mother”.

Phoenix played Elsie for over 24 years but shocked producers and audiences when she decided to quit Coronation Street (1960) for good in 1983. She still remained on television in series such as Constant Hot Water (1986) and as an agony aunt for an early morning magazine programme. Her last TV role was as a bedridden actress in the dramaUnnatural Causes (1986).

A television legend, Pat Phoenix was loved by millions and numbered Laurence Olivieramong her admirers. Characteristically, she summed up her own talent saying “I don’t know what the word ‘star’ means. I only know I am a working actress”.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Patrick Newley

The above IMDB entry can also now be accessed online here.

Paul Jones was born in Portsmouth in 1942. He was the lead singer with the 1960’s pop group “Manfred Mann” and then went on to have a solo career as well as becoming a DJ. He has acted occasionally on television and had the lead in the 1967 film “Privilege” with Jean Shrimpton.

“The Telegraph” entry:

By David Gritten

12:12PM BST 30 Apr 2009

Here’s how musical history can hinge on a single decision, arrived at for what now looks like a laughable reason. In 1962, a talented 20 year old musician named Brian Jones asked singer Paul Jones (no relation) if he would join a band he was forming. Brian had plans to move to London from his home town of Cheltenham to have a crack at the big time.

Paul, then an undergraduate at Oxford, declined. He had already asked Brian to join his own group – but Brian had stiffly replied that he had no wish to be part of a band unless he was its leader.

“I didn’t say no out of spite,” Paul Jones says now. “I simply couldn’t see an economic future for us. And I’d just auditioned to be a singer with a dance band. In Slough.” He smiles ruefully at the memory. “Slough! That wasn’t anything like the height of my ambition, but I thought it could be a way into the music business.”

Soon afterwards, of course, Brian Jones hooked up with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and the Rolling Stones were born.

At first glance, it seems a huge missed opportunity – but Paul Jones sees it differently. “We can laugh now,” he says, “because in theory I could have been Mick Jagger. But I wouldn’t have been Mick Jagger. This is what would have happened. Brian and I would have had a band. Mick and Keith would have started another band. And that band would have become the Rolling Stones.”

It’s not as if Paul Jones got left behind by history. He became lead singer with Manfred Mann, one of the half-dozen most successful British groups of the 1960s, and stayed with them for over two years, singing on such hits as Doo Wah Diddy, Oh No Not My Baby and Pretty Flamingo.

As a solo artist he enjoyed chart success with High Time and I’ve Been a Bad Boy. He starred (along with 60s uber-model Jean Shrimpton) as a pop messiah in Peter Watkins’s controversial film Privilege. And he had a decent acting career, treading the boards at the RSC — and at the National, most memorably as Sky Masterson in Richard Eyre’s acclaimed production of Guys and Dolls.

That was where he met his wife, actress Fiona Hendley. She gave up the stage to devote her life to Christianity, and in 1984, after they went to see American evangelist Luis Palau together, Paul converted too. They now record gospel albums and perform at church events. No Sympathy for the Devil there, then.

He still tours for a few weeks a year with the Manfreds (excluding keyboard player Manfred Mann) and with his own group, the self-explanatory Blues Band. And for the last 24 years, he has had a slot as an articulate, knowledgeable, enthusiastic disc-jockey on a national radio station – formerly Jazz FM, but these days on Monday evenings on BBC Radio 2.

“Here’s how I used to be introduced on Jazz FM,” he says. “It was (he adopts a treacly mid-Atlantic accent): ‘Paul Jones – blues, gospel, soul and jazz’ — which is exactly right. I call it all blues. I don’t separate. But for me, that’s the music I love.”

It’s a broad portfolio, sustained by his faith and his love of music. Brian Jones taught him how to play blues harmonica when they were both 20, and it hit him like a thunderbolt: “Even now, I only have to hear the tone of a harmonica and I’m out there.” He notes proudly that he is president of the National Harmonica League.

I meet Paul Jones at the home of his friend Bill Gautier, a recording engineer who has a studio in the garden of his home, south-west of London. He is spending the day there, laying down a couple of harmonica tracks.

He is 67 now, but looks startlingly young, as well as fit, lean and energetic. He needs to be: merely juggling his schedule requires a nimble mind and a rock-solid work ethic.

On top of all his other commitments, Jones has completed his first solo album in some 30 years. Starting All Over Again comprises 13 tracks of workmanlike blues, rock and soul, including songs by Van Morrison (Philosopher’s Stone), Eric Bibb and Johnny Taylor. His sidemen are no slouches either. Eric Clapton plays guitar on two tracks; soul veteran Percy Sledge duets with Jones on another.

So how does that work? Does Jones just call up Eric Clapton and say: ‘I’m doing an album, come on down’?

He smiles modestly: “I’m not responsible for any musician being on the album. (Producers) Saul Davis and Carla Olson did the lot. They booked the studio, the band, and the guests. Saul had been talking to me about making an album for a couple of years, but I didn’t know if I’d ever find the time.”

After a projected US tour by the Manfreds last April collapsed, Davis, realising Jones would be available, seized his chance. “I flew over to Los Angeles for two clear days, did the sessions and flew straight back. It was great.”

Starting All Over Again sounds like the work of a man steeped in blues, and Jones admits his passion for it still burns fiercely half a century later.

As a teenager growing up in Portsmouth, he sought out swing music, then jazz, Lonnie Donegan (whose hit Rock Island Line led Jones to Leadbelly), and of course blues.

After his family moved to Plymouth, a local record store owner, knowing his tastes, played him a T-Bone Walker album with Junior Wells on harmonica: “And I went, wow! That was it. Within weeks, I had the best of Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Bo Diddley. But that one track made me think: I really want to do this.”

Fifty years on, and he’s still shaping half his working life around the music he loves. “You know what I think? “ Jones says. “I think I’m blessed.”

The above “Telegraph” entry can also be accessed here.

Paul Freeman was born in Hertfordshire in 1943. His films include “The Ling Good Friday” in 1980 and “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. In tthe U.S. he was part of the cast of television’s “Falcon Crest” and then back in the UK he was in “Monarch of the Glen” for the BBC.

IMDB entry:
One of Britain’s most versatile character actors, Paul Freeman’s dark, hypnotic good looks and talent for accents have often seen him cast as villains. He originally worked first in advertising and then he trained as a teacher, while he participated in amateur dramatics as a pastime. As a professional actor he gained extensive experience performing in repertory in England and Scotland and landed small roles at the Royal Court Theatre. He is also a founding member of the Joint Stock Theatre Company.

He acted at the National Theatre and began to get roles on British television. Films included The Long Good Friday (1980) (starring Bob Hoskins) and The Dogs of War (1980) (starring Christopher Walken). His work was noticed by American director Steven Spielberg, who cast Freeman as French archaeologist Rene Belloq, Harrison Ford‘s charismatic but utterly selfish rival in the blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). He had expected to appear in the next Indiana Jones movie, but Spielberg and George Lucasdecided on a different story. Nevertheless, his portrayal of Belloq guaranteed him good work in the following years, during which he continued to showcase his command of dialects and chameleonlike ability to disappear into roles, such as the deliciously evil Professor Moriarty in the Michael Caine comedy, Without a Clue (1988).

His notable television appearances have included Life of Shakespeare (1978), Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981), Falcon Crest (1981), Inspector Morse (1987), andER (1994). He has also continued to work as a stage actor.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Sonia Dresdel was born in the East Riding of Yorkshire in 1909. Among her films are “While I Live”, “The Fallen Idol”, “The Clouded Yellow” with Jean Simmons and “Public Eye”. She died in 1976.

IMDB entry:

Sonia Dresdel was born on May 5, 1909 in Hornsea, Yorkshire, England as Lois Obee. She was an actress, known for The Fallen Idol (1948), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) andWhile I Live (1947). She died on January 18, 1976 in Canterbury, Kent, England.

Sharp-featured Shakespearean stage actress of commanding presence. She first made headlines on the London stage as “Hedda Gabbler” at the Westminster Theatre in 1943. Her subsequent roles confined her to intense or neurotic characters in classic plays, often at the Old Vic. On screen, she was typically cast as villainesses – most memorably asRalph Richardson‘s evil wife in The Fallen Idol (1948). Her most productive period was in the early 1950’s. She later declined a number of job offers she felt were unworthy of her talents and switched her attention to theatre management and direction.

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.