Lionel Jeffries

Jeffries was born in Forest Hill, South London. Both his parents were social workers with the Salvation Army. As a boy, he attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wimborne Minster in Dorset. In 1945, he received a commission in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and served in Burma at the Rangoon radio station during the Second World War, being awarded the Burma Star. (He blamed the humidity there for his hair loss at the age of 19.) He also served as a Captain in the Royal West African Frontier Force.

He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He entered repertory at the David Garrick Theatre, Lichfield, Staffordshire for two years and appeared in early British television plays. Jeffries built a successful career in British films mainly in comic character roles and as he was prematurely bald he often played characters older than himself, such as the role of father to Caractacus Potts (played by Dick Van Dyke) in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), although Jeffries was actually six months younger than Van Dyke, who was born on 13 December 1925. His acting career reached a peak in the 1960s with leading roles in other films like Two-Way Stretch (1960), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), Murder Ahoy! (opposite Margaret Rutherford), First Men in the Moon (1964) and Camelot (1967). Jeffries turned to writing and directing children's films, including a well-regarded version of The Railway Children (1970) and The Amazing Mr. Blunden (1972). He was a member of the British Catholic Stage Guild. The Railway Children was very successful but Jeffries' later efforts were less so including Wombling Free. Jeffries had a negative attitude towards television and avoided the medium for many years. He reluctantly appeared on television in an acting role in the 1980 London Weekend Television Dennis Potter drama Cream in My Coffee and realised that television production values were now little different from those in the film industry; as a result he developed a belated career in television. He appeared in an episode of the Thames Television/ITV comedy drama Minder in 1983 as Cecil Caine, an eccentric widower, and in an episode of Inspector Morse in 1990 (Central Television/Zenith/ITV). He starred as Tom (Thomas Maddisson) in the Thames/ITV situation comedy Tom, Dick and Harriet with Ian Ogilvy and Brigit Forsyth. During location filming with Ogilvy for a 1983 episode, a stunt involving a car and a lake went very badly wrong, ending up with Jeffries only just managing to get out of the car's front window before the vehicle sank in 45 feet (14 m) of water.

Jeffries began to suffer from vascular dementia in 1998 and retired from acting in 2001. His health declined in the following years. He died on 19 February 2010, at a nursing home in Poole, Dorset. He was 83. The 2010 BBC TV drama The First Men in the Moon carries the dedication: "For Lionel Jeffries 1926–2010."

Jeffries was married to Eileen Mary Walsh from 1951 until his death. They had a son and two daughters. His son Ty Jeffries is a composer, lyricist and cabaret artist. His granddaughter Amy Mason is a novelist and playwright.

Acting roles