Leonard Rossiter
Birthday: Born in 1926-10-21 in Wavertree, Liverpool, England, UK
Deathday: 1984-10-05
Leonard Rossiter (21 October 1926 – 5 October 1984) was an English actor known for his roles as Rupert Rigsby, in the British comedy television series Rising Damp (1974–78), and Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976–79). He also had a long and distinguished career in the theatre and gained some notoriety for a series of Cinzano commercials (1978–1983), with Joan Collins.
TV Credits
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
Character:
Disillusioned after a long career at Sunshine Desserts, Perrin goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own death. Returning in disguise after various attempts at finding a 'new life', he gets his old job back and finds nothing has changed. He is eventually found out, and in the second series has success with a chain of shops selling useless junk. That becomes so successful that he feels he has created a monster and decides to destroy it. In the third and final series he has a dream of formi...
Z-Cars
Character:
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978....
Rising Damp
Character: Rigsby
Set in a seedy bedsit, the cowardly landlord Rigsby has his conceits debunked by his long suffering tenants....
Redcap
Character:
Redcap is a British television series produced by ABC Weekend Television and broadcast on the ITV network. It starred John Thaw as Sergeant John Mann, a member of the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police and ran for two series and 26 episodes between 1964 and 1966, being about 50 minutes in a 60 minute time slot. Surprisingly for a 1960s ABC Weekend Television programme, 23 of the 26 episodes still exist....
Play for Today
Character:
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration....
The BBC Television Shakespeare
Character:
The BBC Television Shakespeare is a series of British television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, created by Cedric Messina and produced by BBC Television. It was transmitted in the UK from 3 December 1978 to 27 April 1985 and spanned seven series. Development of the series began in 1975 when Messina saw that Glamis Castle would make a perfect location for an adaptation of Shakespeare's play As You Like It. On returning to London, he envisioned an entire series devoted exclusivel...
The Losers
Character:
The Losers is a British sitcom that aired on ITV in 1978. Written by Alan Coren, it stars Leonard Rossiter and Alfred Molina. The Losers was made for ITV by ATV and was produced and directed by Joe McGrath. In The Losers, Rossiter plays Sydney Foskett, a wrestling promoter who discovers a young new wrestler called "The Butcher", played by Molina, who Foskett ensures loses to get the public's love....
Tripper's Day
Character:
Tripper's Day is a British television sitcom produced by Thames Television for ITV. The plot involved Leonard Rossiter as Norman Tripper, a Northern manager assigned to a London supermarket with a problematic staff. The programme is largely remembered for the negative critical reviews it received, and mainly for the fact that it was Rossiter's final television work, the actor dying between the broadcast of the second and third episodes. The series was brought back two years later with Bruce For...
BBC Play of the Month
Character: The Prime Minister
Play of the Month is a BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays which were usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983; the producer most associated with the Play of the Month was Cedric Messina. Some of the 121 episodes are missing from the archives, having been junked in the 1960s and 1970...
The Galton & Simpson Playhouse
Character:
Seven Hilariously comic situations from the fertile imaginations of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson....
You Can't Win
Character:
You Can't Win was a 1966 British television series made by ITV as an adaptation of the novels Scenes from Provincial Life and Scenes from Married Life by William Cooper. It stars Ian McShane as protagonist Joe Lunn, an English provincial grammar school physics teacher in 1939 who later moves to London and into the English establishment....
BBC Play of the Month
Character: Colonel Lukyn
Play of the Month is a BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays which were usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983; the producer most associated with the Play of the Month was Cedric Messina. Some of the 121 episodes are missing from the archives, having been junked in the 1960s and 1970...
Alice in Wonderland
Character: King of Hearts
Anglia Television's 5 episode adaption of Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland was inspired and based upon an early production put on by the famous Da Silva Puppets group at the Norwich Puppet Theatre....
Steptoe and Son
Character: Johnny Spooner
Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about a father and son played by Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett who deal in selling used items. They live on Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old Ned", was composed by Ron Grainer. The series was voted 15th in a 2004 BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom. It was remade ...
Steptoe and Son
Character: Welsh Hughie
Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about a father and son played by Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett who deal in selling used items. They live on Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were broadcast by the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, "Old Ned", was composed by Ron Grainer. The series was voted 15th in a 2004 BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom. It was remade ...
Play for Today
Character: Arthur
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration....
Movie Credits
2001: A Space Odyssey
Character: Dr. Andrei Smyslov
Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer....
Barry Lyndon
Character: Captain Quin
An Irish rogue uses his cunning and wit to work his way up the social classes of 18th century England, transforming himself from the humble Redmond Barry into the noble Barry Lyndon....
Otley
Character: Johnson
A petty crook finds himself mistaken for a murderer and a secret agent....
Deadlier Than the Male
Character: Henry Bridgenorth
British agent Bulldog Drummond is assigned to stop a master criminal who uses beautiful women to do his killings....
Rising Damp
Character: Rigsby
Stingy landlord Rigsby manages to scam his lodgers John, an art student, and Philip, an African medical student, making both pay for a room they must share. However Rigsby's favorite lodger, Miss Jones, flirts with Philip rather than him, despite his pitiful attempts at seduction....
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
Character: Quinlan
Charles Dreyfus, who has finally cracked over inspector Clouseau's antics, escapes from a mental institution and launches an elaborate plan to get rid of Clouseau once and for all....
Billy Liar
Character: Emanuel Shadrack
A young Englishman dreams of escaping from his working class family and dead-end job as an undertaker's assistant. A number of indiscretions cause him to lie in order to avoid the penalties. His life turns into a mess and he has an opportunity to run away and leave it all behind....
Britannia Hospital
Character: Vincent Potter
Britannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, an African cannibal dictator, and sinister human experiments....
A Kind of Loving
Character: Whymper
As Vic Brown vacillates between infatuation and disinterest for his co-worker Ingrid Rothwell, she finds out that she is pregnant and Vic has to reconcile how he thought his life would go with what life actually has in store for him....
The Witches
Character: Dr. Wallis
Following a nervous breakdown, Gwen takes up the job of head teacher in the small village of Haddaby. There she can benefit from the tranquillity and peace, enabling her to recover fully. But under the facade of idyllic country life she slowly unearths the frightening reality of village life in which the inhabitants are followers of a menacing satanic cult with the power to inflict indiscriminate evil and death if crossed....
King Rat
Character: McCoy
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life....
Drums Along The Avon
Character: Mr. Marcus
A liberal white man becomes a Muslim to promote racial harmony....
Oliver!
Character: Sowerberry
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a classic tale of an orphan who runs away from the workhouse and joins up with a group of boys headed by the Artful Dodger and trained to be pickpockets by master thief Fagin....
Deadfall
Character: Fillmore
Cat burglar Henry Clarke and his accomplices the Moreaus attempt to steal diamonds from the chateau of millionaire Salinas....
Water
Character: Sir Malcolm Leveridge
The British governor of a tiny island nation in the Caribbean Commonwealth finds his idyllic existence thrown into chaos when an American drilling company finds a huge source of natural mineral water there....
The Long Ships
Character: Persian Soldier Who Falls On Sword (uncredited)
Moorish ruler El Mansuh is determined to locate a massive bell made of gold known as the "Mother of Voices." Viking explorer Rolfe also becomes intent on finding the mythical treasure, and sails with his crew from Scandinavia to Africa to track it down. Reluctantly working together, El Mansuh and Rolfe, along with their men, embark on a quest for the prized object, but only one leader will be able to claim the bell as his own — if it even exists at all....
Luther
Character: Brother Weinand
One sixteenth-century clergyman's view breaks the Catholic Church apart....
'Oh, Miss Jones!': The Very Best of Leonard Rossiter
Character: Self
A compilation of the many characters played by Leonard Rossiter....
Le Petomane
Character: Monsieur Joseph Pujol
The incredibly true story of the legendary French entertainer Joseph Pujol, who performed impersonations with his self-described 'elastic anus' and a surfeit of wind....
The Year of the Sex Olympics
Character: Co-ordinator Ugo Priest
Influenced by concerns about overpopulation, the counterculture of the 1960s and the societal effects of television, the play depicts a world of the future where a small elite control the media, keeping the lower classes docile by serving them an endless diet of lowest common denominator programmes and pornography. The play concentrates on an idea the programme controllers have for a new programme which will follow the trials and tribulations of a group of people left to fend for themselves on a...
Hotel Paradiso
Character: Inspector
Monsieur Feydeau has writer's block, and he needs a new play. But he takes an opportunity to observe the upper class of 1900 Paris - Monsieur Boniface with a domineering wife, and the next-door neglectful husband Henri with a beautiful but ignored wife, Marcelle. Henri traces architectural anomalies (most ghost sounds are drains) and plans a night at the Hotel Paradiso, but this hotel is the assignation spot of Marcelle and Boniface. One wife, two husbands, a nephew, and the perky Boniface maid,...
Diamonds for Breakfast
Character: Inspector Dudley
Swinging playboy Grand Duke Nicholas Goduno, a direct descendent of the Romanov family who were overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917, learns that his family's crown jewels will be exhibited at a London museum and plots to steal them. To this end, he gathers a crew of beautiful but dangerous women, led by Bridget Rafferty, to assist in his plot against Popov, the Soviet functionary in charge of the exhibit....
Leonard Rossiter: Comedy Great
Character: Self (Archive footage)
A celebration of the actor's life and career, featuring contributions from friends, co-stars and fans including Don Warrington, Sue Nicholls and Mark Lester. The programme also includes a never-before-seen interview with Rossiter himself, and brings new perspectives on one of Britain's best-loved actors, from his upbringing in Liverpool to his remarkable, late-blossoming TV career....
A Jolly Bad Fellow
Character: Dr. Fisher
An English professor decides that there are too many useless people in the world and invents a gas that will kill them off. But first they'll at least have a good laugh....
Fearless Frank
Character:
The outrageous - and not entirely reliable - memoirs of Irish writer Frank Harris, sometime cowboy in the Old West, friend to the famous in the literary world, essayist and critic, and seducer of beautiful women....
Trail of the Pink Panther
Character: Superintendant Quinlan
The Pink Panther diamond is stolen once again from Lugash and the authorities call in Chief Inspector Clouseau from France. His plane disappears en-route. This time, famous French TV reporter Marie Jouvet sets out to solve the mystery and starts to interview everybody connected to Clouseau....
The Whisperers
Character: Assistance Board Officer
Margaret Ross is an impoverished old woman who lives alone in a seedy apartment and enjoys a rich fantasy life as an heiress. One day she discovers stolen money hidden by her son and believes her fantasy has come true....
Machinegunner
Character: Cyril Dugdale
A 'machinegunner' (West Country slang for a debt-collector) turns amateur sleuth, but finds himself in hot water with local criminals....
The Wrong Box
Character: Vyvyan Alistair Montague
In Victorian England, a fortune now depends on which of two brothers outlives the other—or can be made to have seemed to do so....
The Moon Over Soho
Character: Max von Konigsberg
A wily publisher of arts magazines tries to cope with ever-growing financial problems - and also his formidable German mother....
The Life and Death of King John
Character: King John
The reign of England's King John is threatened by Philip of France who demands that John's nephew Arthur be placed on the throne. Pragmatic and decisive, King John moves to plactate the French, but there are others who seek disputre his authority....
Starry Night
Character: Mr. Morganstern
Vincent Van Gogh comes back to life after being the recipient of a magic potion. He finds that his work has become quite valuable, and begins stealing his works. At the same time, he has a hard time getting anyone to believe he's really Van Gogh....
This Sporting Life
Character: Phillips, Sports Writer
In Northern England in the early 1960s, Frank Machin is mean, tough and ambitious enough to become an immediate star in the rugby league team run by local employer Weaver....
Dog Ends
Character: Arthur
A middle-aged man is feeling the strain of looking after his elderly grandfather, who is demanding and needs a lot of medical treatment. Then a neighbour suggests a painless way to be rid of him. This black comedy is set in the future, where euthanasia is lawful and increasingly common, but it should still, ideally, be voluntary....
Voyage of the Damned
Character: Commander von Bonin
A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival....
The Italian Table
Character: Mr. Jeffs
A junk dealer is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between a woman, her husband and his mistress when they sell a piece of their furniture....
The Unforgettable Leonard Rossiter
Character: Various (archive footage)
Tribute to the much-loved character actor....
After the Solo
Character: Dawson
"The voice will make its effect. And it will, undoubtedly, be very touching. But, tell me: after his voice has broken, can you make anything of him then?" After the solo, after the chorus, after the applause?...
The Factory
Character: Harry Meadows
A factory's workforce is dwindling as divisions between the workers and management widen....