Colin Blakely

According to the British Film Institute, Blakely's "chunky form and rumpled, good-natured features tended to direct him towards hero's-friend roles, but there was also an impressive toughness and intensity about his work."

• Name — Colin Blakely • Birth Name — Colin George Blakely • Born — 23 September 1930 • Birthplace — Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland • Died — 7 May 1987 • Place of death — London, England • Education — Sedbergh School • Occupation — Actor • Years Active — 1957–1987 • Children — 3 sons

Blakely was born in Bangor, County Down, the son of Victor and Dorothy Blakely (née Ashmore). His mother was a singer in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his father owned a sports retail shop in Belfast. He attended Sedbergh School in Yorkshire, England. At the age of 18, he started work in his family's sports goods shop in Belfast. After a spell of amateur dramatics with the Bangor Operatic Society, he turned professional aged 27.

In 1958, Blakely made his Belfast stage debut as Dick McCardle in Stanley Houghton's Master of the House. He also appeared in several Ulster Group Theatre productions, including Gerard McLarnon's The Bonefire (1958) and Patricia O'Connor's The Sparrow's Fall (1959). From 1959 he was at the Royal Court Theatre, appearing in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance and, to critical approval, The Naming of Murderer's Rock. In the Royal Court production of Saint Joan, starring Joan Plowright, he had the small but prominent role of the English Soldier. Blakely himself said, about his transfer to working in England, I was lucky then because the Royal Court were looking for actors like me at that time. Arden, Wesker, and so forth were writing for your plebians with rough knocked-about looking faces, so I got a job quite easily. In 1961, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, before joining the National Theatre for its opening in 1963 at the Old Vic; he was part of the NT cast that toured Moscow in 1965, the first time a foreign company was allowed to perform at the Kremlin. Critics and theatre historians have numbered Blakely among the actors like Maggie Smith and Derek Jacobi whose talent emerged in the NT's early years; Laurence Olivier specifically named him as an example of the "Versatile... deeply enthusiastic, courageous, gifted" actors he had sought to hire as director. Among the many stage plays in which he appeared were The Recruiting Officer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Filumena Marturano, Volpone and Oedipus. He returned to the Royal Shakespeare in 1971 in Harold Pinter's Old Times and was subsequently in many West End plays. In 1977, he was nominated for the Olivier Award for Actor of the Year in a New Play for his performance in Just Between Ourselves.

In 1969, Blakely's controversial role as an anguished Jesus Christ in Dennis Potter's Son of Man gained him wide recognition. He became a regular on British television, and in the same year played the leading role in a BBC adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now. In The Hanged Man (1975), he starred as a tycoon who fakes his own death in order to find out who has tried to assassinate him. Noted for his skill in Shakespearean parts, Blakely appeared on television as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra (1981), directed by Jonathan Miller as part of the BBC Television Shakespeare series; and as Kent in the 1983 Granada Television version of King Lear which starred Laurence Olivier. Other television appearances included The Beiderbecke Affair (1985), Operation Julie (1985) and Paradise Postponed (1986). His work as a white Zimbabwean adjusting to majority rule, in Douglas Livingstone's BBC-TV play Drums Along Balmoral Drive (1986), won him a BAFTA nomination. He last appeared onscreen in a 1987 production of The Birthday Party, broadcast a month after his death.

In 1961 Blakely married British actress Margaret Whiting: they had worked together in A Moon for the Misbegotten the previous year. The couple had three sons, Drummond, Cameron and Hamish.

Until two months before his death from leukaemia, he was performing in A Chorus of Disapproval in the West End while undergoing chemotherapy. Though visibly in pain from the disease, he recorded a video appeal for routine cancer tests. Blakely died, aged 56, at the Middlesex Hospital on 7 May 1987.

• Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) – Loudmouth • The Hellions (1961) – Matthew Billings • The Password Is Courage (1962) – 1st German Goon • This Sporting Life (1963) – Maurice Braithwaite • The Informers (1963) – Charlie Ruskin • The Long Ships (1964) – Rhykka • Never Put It in Writing (1964) – Oscar • The Counterfeit Constable (1964) – L'aveugle • A Man for All Seasons (1966) – Matthew • The Spy with a Cold Nose (1966) – Russian Premier • Charlie Bubbles (1967) – Smokey Pickles • The Day the Fish Came Out (1967) – The Pilot • The Vengeance of She (1968) – George • Decline and Fall... of a Birdwatcher (1968) – Solomon Philbrick • Alfred the Great (1969) – Asher • The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) – Dr. Watson • Something to Hide (1972) – Blagdon • Young Winston (1972) – Butcher • The National Health (1973) – Edward Loach • Murder on the Orient Express (1974) – Cyrus B. Hardman • Galileo (1975) – Priuli • It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet (1975) – Siegfried Farnon • The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) – Alec Drummond • Equus (1977) – Frank Strang • The Big Sleep (1978) – Harry Jones • Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979) – Tamil • The Day Christ Died (1980) - Caiaphas • Nijinsky (1980) – Vassili • Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980) – Silas Hobbs • The Dogs of War (1980) – North • Loophole (1981) – Gardner • Nailed (1981) – Elder Protestant • Evil Under the Sun (1982) – Sir Horace Blatt • Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) – Alec Drummond (archive footage) (uncredited) • The World of Don Camillo (1984) – Peppone

Colin Blakely is recorded as actor.