Ronald Pickup
Birthday: Born in 1940-06-07 in Chester, England, UK
Deathday: 2021-02-25
Pickup was born in Chester, England, the son of Daisy (née Williams) and Eric Pickup, who was a lecturer.[1] Pickup was educated at The King's School, Chester, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, and became an Associate Member of RADA. His television work began with an episode during the second series of Doctor Who in 1964, for which he was paid £30. Pickup worked with Laurence Olivier at the Royal National Theatre, most notably in Three Sisters and Long Day's Journey Into Night. In 1973, he starred in the BBC drama series The Dragon's Opponent, playing a World War II bomb disposal expert and also appeared in The Day of the Jackal. He played Lt. Harford in Zulu Dawn in 1979, portrayed Igor Stravinsky in Nijinsky in 1980, Prince John in Ivanhoe in 1982, and in 1983 he appeared opposite Penelope Keith in Moving, in 1988 in the BBC miniseries The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1988 TV Serial) as the voice of Aslan, and in 1990 he starred in the short lived sit-com, Not with a Bang. More modern roles have included parts in Hornblower, Hustle, Foyle's War, Midsomer Murders, Waking the Dead, The Bill, Silent Witness, Sherlock Holmes, and Inspector Morse. He is also a regular character in the BBC sitcom The Worst Week of My Life. His most recent appearance was in Holby City as Lord Charles Byrne. Pickup gave a highly acclaimed performance as a decayed Russian aristocrat in the BBC series Fortunes of War, based on a work by Olivia Manning. He also provided the voice for Aslan in the BBC's adaptation of the Chronicles of Narnia and starred opposite Judi Dench in the 1989 Channel 4 serial Behaving Badly. He is also an accomplished stage actor. He was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role of 1997 for his performance in Amy's View. Pickup had the starring role as composer Giuseppe Verdi in the acclaimed The Life of Verdi, written and directed by Renato Castellani. In 2005, he had a supporting role in the family-based film, The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby. Between March and August 2009, he starred as Lucky in Sean Mathias' production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett opposite Sir Ian McKellen (Estragon), Patrick Stewart (Vladimir) and also Simon Callow (Pozzo). The tour opened in Malvern before travelling to Milton Keynes, Brighton, Bath, Norwich, Edinburgh and Newcastle; its run at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket was extended due to demand. In February 2010 he also appeared as 'Pegleg' in the BBC's period drama Lark Rise to Candleford. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ronald Pickup, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
TV Credits
Midsomer Murders
Character: Rupert Smythe-Webster
The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty. ...
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
Character: Sir Stuart Stinhurst
DS Barbara Havers is assigned to work with the upper-crust DI Thomas Lynley to solve murders....
Hustle
Character: Harry Holmes
A motley group of London con artists pull of a series of daring and intricate stings....
Silent Witness
Character:
Silent Witness is a British crime thriller series focusing on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes....
Moving
Character:
Moving is a British sitcom that aired on ITV in 1985. It stars Penelope Keith and was written by Stanley Price. It was made for the ITV network by Thames Television....
Inspector Morse
Character: Ian Matthews
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis, as well as a large cast of notable actors and actresses....
The Worst Week of My Life
Character: Fraser
The Worst Week of My Life is a British comedy television series, first broadcast on BBC One between March and April 2004. A second series was aired between November and December 2005 and a three-part Christmas special, The Worst Christmas of My Life was shown during December 2006. It was written by Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni....
Lovejoy
Character: Edwin Felt
The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries....
Waking the Dead
Character: Charles Sutton
A detective team apply new techniques to old crimes as they solve cold cases....
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Character: Jean
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The longest-running primetime series in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning during 1951 and continuing into 2013. From 1954 onward, all of its productions have been shown in color, although color television video productions were extremely rare in 1954. Many television movies have been shown on the program since its debut, ...
Not with a Bang
Character: Brian Appleyard
Not with a Bang was a short-lived British television sitcom produced by London Weekend Television in 1990. It ran for seven episodes, each 30 minutes long. The show was a dark science fiction comedy, focusing on the end of the human race on Earth. The title comes from the last line of T. S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men "not with a bang, but a whimper"....
The Chronicles of Narnia
Character:
Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are evacuated from London at the beginning of the Second World War, little dreaming of the magical adventures that lie ahead....
Fortunes of War
Character: Prince Yakimov
Fortunes of War is a 1987 BBC television adaptation of Olivia Manning's cycle of novels Fortunes of War. It stars Kenneth Branagh as Guy Pringle, lecturer in English Literature in Bucharest during the early part of the Second World War, and Emma Thompson as his wife Harriet. Other cast members included Ronald Pickup, Robert Stephens, Alan Bennett, Philip Madoc and Rupert Graves. The series stays relatively faithful to the original novels, with no notable departures from their plot....
Sea of Souls
Character: Alex Galt
Sea of Souls follows para-psychologist Monaghan and his two sidekicks from a fictitious Scottish University that investigates paranormal activity....
Behaving Badly
Character:
Behaving Badly is a 1989 British television serial directed by David Tucker. The teleplay by Catherine Heath and Moira Williams is based on Heath's novel of the same name. It was initially broadcast by Channel 4. The series was released on DVD in 2005. The plot focuses on Bridget Mayor, a middle-aged housewife and part-time teacher who is forced to re-evaluate her life when her husband of twenty years abandons her for a younger woman....
Feather Boy
Character: Ernest Sorrel
Robert Nobel is the butt of classroom jokes and a victim of Niker the classroom bully. He is haunted by dreams that seem to tell the future as well as the past. His life changes when a storyteller invites some of his class to Mayfield House, a place Robert has already dreamed about. There he meets a spiky old lady called Edith Sorrel who chooses him as her partner. He embarks on a series of events that will change their lives forever....
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...
Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill
Character: Randolph Churchill
Lee Remick stars as Jennie Jerome, born in the United States in 1845, who eventually became Lady Randolph Churchill, and gave birth to Sir Winston Churchill in this seven-part, seven-hour biographical mini-series....
Hornblower
Character: Don Massaredo
Set during the 18th century Napoleonic Wars, Horatio Hornblower, a young and shy midshipman, rises through the ranks to become an admiral....
Father Brown
Character:
Father Brown was a Catholic priest who doubled as an amateur detective in order to solve mysteries....
The Riff Raff Element
Character: Roger Tundish
The Riff Raff Element is a 1990's British comedy-drama series written by Debbie Horsfield and directed by Jeremy Ancock, who also directed Dressing for Breakfast and episodes of The Bill and Bergerac. It was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series in 1994....
Performance
Character: King Henry IV
An anthology series of various plays and dramatic performances....
The Jury
Character: Jeffrey Livingstone
The Jury is a British television serial broadcast in 2002. The series was the first ever to be allowed to film inside the historic Old Bailey courthouse....
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates
Character: Lester Rose
Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor....
Foyle's War
Character: Sir Giles Messinger
As WW2 rages around the world, DCS Foyle fights his own war on the home-front as he investigates crimes on the south coast of England. Foyle's War opens in southern England in the year 1940. Later series sees the retired detective working as an MI5 agent operating in the aftermath of the war....
Atlantis
Character: Orpheus
A fantasy drama set in a world of legendary heroes and mythical creatures. Far from home and desperate for answers, Jason washes up on the shores of an ancient land. A mysterious place; a world of bull leaping, of snake haired goddesses and of palaces so vast it was said they were built by giants - this is the city of Atlantis. Aided by his two new friends, Pythagoras and Hercules, Jason embarks on a voyage of discovery, and salvation, which sees him brush shoulders with Medusa, come face to fac...
The Ruth Rendell Mysteries
Character: Chief Inspector Moore
The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000....
Play for Today
Character: Richard Massingham
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....
Murder Rooms: Mysteries of the Real Sherlock Holmes
Character: Sir John Starr
If Arthur Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes on a real person to any degree, it was on his former professor, forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Bell. This series recounts the fictional murder investigations that Bell might have undertaken with the assistance of young student Doyle....
Pramface
Character:
Pramface is a BBC Three television comedy series starring Scarlett Alice Johnson, Sean Michael Verey, Ben Crompton, Bronagh Gallagher, Anna Chancellor and Angus Deayton. Written by Chris Reddy and produced by BBC/Little Comet, the six-part first series commenced transmission on 23 February 2012. The second series began on 8 January 2013, with the first episode 60 minutes long, as a special, and the remainder of the series consisted of the usual 30 minute episodes. The second series concluded on ...
Sherlock Holmes
Character: Barrymore
Sherlock Holmes uses his abilities to take on cases by private clients and those that the Scotland Yard are unable to solve, along with his friend Dr. Watson....
Lark Rise to Candleford
Character:
Set in the small hamlet of Lark Rise and the wealthier neighbouring market town, Candleford, the series chronicles the daily lives of farm-workers, craftsmen and gentry at the end of the 19th Century. Lark Rise to Candleford is a love letter to a vanished corner of rural England and a heart-warming drama series teeming with wit, wisdom and romance....
Downton Abbey
Character: Sir Michael Reresby
A chronicle of the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era—with great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy. ...
Albert Einstein
Character: Albert Einstein
...
Matlock
Character: Sir Alec Moore
Matlock is an American television legal drama, starring Andy Griffith in the title role of criminal defense attorney Ben Matlock. The show, produced by The Fred Silverman Company, Dean Hargrove Productions, Viacom Productions and Paramount Television originally aired from September 23, 1986 to May 8, 1992 on NBC; and from November 5, 1992 until May 7, 1995 on ABC. The show's format is similar to that of CBS's Perry Mason, with Matlock identifying the perpetrators and then confronting them in dr...
Vera
Character: Mr. Kipford
A sharp detective with a messy life, DCI Vera Stanhope patrols her “patch” of northeast England, pursuing the truth in cases of murder, kidnapping, and blackmail. Vera is obsessive about her work and faces the world with caustic wit, guile and courage....
Casualty
Character: Martin / Reginald Freeborn
Drama series about the staff and patients at Holby City Hospital's emergency department, charting the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives....
Ivanhoe
Character: Waldemar Fitzurse
The epic tale of the idealistic young knight Ivanhoe and his battle against the evil Templar Bois-Guilbert. Caught between the rivalries and religious struggles are Ivanhoe's betrothed Rowena and the brave, beautiful Jewess healer Rebecca, who wins Ivanhoe's heart with her courage. This grand six-part adaptation of Sir Walter Scott's rousing adventure of the Middle Ages is set against the historical backdrop of a Britain straining under the corrupt rule of Prince John while Richard the Lionheart...
The Fight Against Slavery
Character: William Pitt
...
The Rector's Wife
Character: Daniel Byrne
Three-part dramatization of the novel by Joanna Trollope. A clergyman's wife shocks the church establishment and infuriates her husband by taking a job in a supermarket. She attracts the passionate interest of three very different men: a newly-appointed archdeacon; his younger brother, a philosopher and academic; and a wealthy businessman new to the village....
The Chronicles of Narnia
Character: Aslan (voice)
Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are evacuated from London at the beginning of the Second World War, little dreaming of the magical adventures that lie ahead....
Cambridge Spies
Character: Colonel Winter
In 1934, four brilliant Cambridge students are recruited to spy for Russia. Fueled by youthful idealism, a passion for social justice and a talent for lying, they take huge personal risks to pass Britain's biggest secrets to Moscow....
Black Hearts in Battersea
Character: Duke Of Battersea
In an alternate early nineteenth century London, the rightful Duke finds himself cheated out of his inheritance. A 6x25' TV adaptation of Joan Aiken's 1964 children's novel, Black Hearts in Battersea....
Verdi
Character: Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 and lived until 1901, his life spanning nearly a century of political turmoil and considerable personal turmoil. This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem....
Bergerac
Character: Sir Antony Villiers
Bergerac is a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and first screened on BBC1, it stars John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in Le Bureau des Étrangers, part of the States of Jersey Police....
Call the Midwife
Character: Philip Worth
Drama following the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London during the 1950s, based on the best-selling memoirs of Jennifer Worth....
BBC Play of the Month
Character: Mercutio
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...
A Time to Dance
Character: Andrew Powell
A fifty something English Banker falls for and has an affair with a teenage Irish waif from the wrong side of the tracks causing him grief at work and at home....
The Crown
Character: Archbishop of Canterbury
The gripping, decades-spanning inside story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Ministers who shaped Britain's post-war destiny. The Crown tells the inside story of two of the most famous addresses in the world – Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street – and the intrigues, love lives and machinations behind the great events that shaped the second half of the 20th century. Two houses, two courts, one Crown....
Midsomer Murders
Character: Ernest Balliol
The peacefulness of the Midsomer community is shattered by violent crimes, suspects are placed under suspicion, and it is up to a veteran DCI and his young sergeant to calmly and diligently eliminate the innocent and ruthlessly pursue the guilty. ...
Performance
Character: Siegfried Shrager
An anthology series of various plays and dramatic performances....
Screen Two
Character: Brian Silcott
Series of single made-for-television dramas....
Movie Credits
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea
Character: Monsieur Moitessier
The Tulse Luper Suitcases reconstructs the life of Tulse Luper, a professional writer and project-maker, caught up in a life of prisons. He was born in 1911 in Newport, South Wales and presumably last heard of in 1989. His life is reconstructed from the evidence of 92 suitcases found around the world - 92 being the atomic number of the element Uranium. The project includes three feature films, a TV series, 92 DVDs, CD-ROMs, and books....
The Mission
Character: Hontar
When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors....
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian & The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Character: Aslan (voice)
Young Prince Caspian of Narnia wonders and dreams about the old days of Narnia when animals talked, and there were mythical creatures and four rulers in Cair Paravel. But his uncle and aunt don’t like to hear him thinking of such things, and plan to murder him and take his throne. Caspian’s tutor, Dr. Cornelius manages to save him, and not only teach him about the old ways, but bring him into the real Narnia and introduce him to the real Narnia. But Caspian’s plight is desperate, and he must use...
Bethune: The Making of a Hero
Character: Alan Coleman
True story of Norman Bethune, a medical doctor who fought for justice in China during Mao's rise to power....
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Character: King Sharaman
A rogue prince reluctantly joins forces with a mysterious princess and together, they race against dark forces to safeguard an ancient dagger capable of releasing the Sands of Time – gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world....
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair
Character: Aslan (voice)
Eustace is sent to a horrible school and finds a friend in Jill Pole, who's also running from bullies and looking for a place to hide. The two of them are magically transported from the garden shed into the magical world of Narnia, where they are entrusted with a task by Aslan: to rescue the king's stolen son, Prince Rilian. Together with Puddleglum the Marshwiggle, they must travel north across the mountains, dodge giants, and journey down into the earth itself to rescue Rilian from the mysteri...
Dark Floors
Character: Tobias
A man emerges with his autistic daughter and three others from a hospital elevator to find themselves trapped in the building with devilish monsters....
Hornblower: The Duchess and the Devil
Character: Don Massaredo
Acting Lieutenant Hornblower and his crew are captured by the enemy while escorting a Duchess who has secrets of her own....
A Murder of Quality
Character: Felix D'Arcy
At the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly bla...
Evilenko
Character: Aron Richter
For years, Andrei Evilenko eluded the obsessive Detective Lesiev and the psychiatric profiler Aron Richter. Spurred on by his rabid fury at the gradual crumbling of his precious Soviet Union, Evilenko is a man who will live, die and kill as a communist....
Ivanhoe
Character: Prince John
Ivanhoe, a worthy and noble knight, the champion of justice returns to England after the holy wars, and finds England under the reign of Prince John and his henchmen and finds himself being involved in the power-struggle for the throne of England....
Jekyll & Hyde
Character: Jeffrey Utterson, Esquire
Henry Jekyll is a troubled man. His wife died of pneumonia. He wants his sister-in-law, but her father forbids any contact. And his experiments into the dual nature of man have yielded a personality-splitting drug that he has tested on himself, changing him into an uninhibited brute who seeks violent and undignified pleasures. Jekyll quickly becomes addicted to the sordid freedom induced by the drug. He can commit the most enjoyably revolting deeds, then return to his laboratory and use an antid...
Danny the Champion of the World
Character: Captain Lancaster
Somewhere in England, in the Autumn of 1955, a widowed father and his son live an idyllic life together. Only their gas station happens to sit on a piece of land that a local developer wants to buy. And when he won't take no for an answer, and sets government inspectors and social works onto Danny and his father, Danny and his father decide to get even with Hazell and his pheasant- shooting friends in a manner in keeping with their own family tradition....
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Character: Norman Cousins
British retirees travel to India to take up residence in what they believe is a newly restored hotel. Less luxurious than its advertisements, the Marigold Hotel nevertheless slowly begins to charm in unexpected ways as the residents find new purpose in their old age....
Puccini
Character: Giulio Ricordi
In Torre del Lago, by Lake Massaciuccoli, Puccini is writing "The Girl of the Golden West" when his wife Elvira accuses him of a dalliance with their maid, Doria Manfredi, a young women from town. Although the maestro is frequently unfaithful, he denies the affair; Elvira insists she's right and publicly hounds Doria. Between scenes in this domestic drama that turns tragic, we watch a Scottish company rehearse and stage "Turandot," Puccini's last opera. The film finds parallels between the two s...
Schadenfreude
Character: The Gambler
Jeremy O'Reilly, the self-important presenter of a TV news show, returns to a clueless East End community where a prank leads to the murder of a beautiful local actress and a savage Press that demands to know, "Who killed Paige Boston?"...
A Little Place Off the Edgware Road
Character: Bearded Man
A writer of crime fiction is suffering from writer's block. Haunted by dreams of his wife and child, he seeks solace in a Hitchcock Festival at his local cinema as well as regular sessions with his therapist. A disturbance outside his flat leads to a strange encounter, blurring the line between reality and fantasy....
Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis
Character: Percy Stone
Marla Darland is blessed with the voice of an angel, a singing legend. But when her agent, Marty Starr, finds his agency in trouble, he concocts a sinister plot to bring up her record sales. Amazed at the posthumous record sales of Elvis and Jimi Hendrix, Marty becomes determined to arrange a similar fate for Marla, staging the perfect tragic demise. But he didn't count on Marla not being quite ready to go....
Nijinsky
Character: Igor Stravinsky
A ballet dancer struggles with his homosexuality and the increasing allure of a young ballerina who seeks to draw him away from his domineering lover....
Theatreland
Character: Himself
8 part series behind the scenes at the famous Theatre Royal, Haymarket, with a focus on a production Waiting for Godot featuring Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Ronald Pickup and Simon Callow. Also covers the early stages of Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Anna Friel and Joseph Cross....
Joseph Andrews
Character: Mr. Wilson
Lady Booby alias 'Belle', the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby, has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews, a Latin pupil and protégé of parson Adams, and makes him their footman. Joseph's heart belongs to a country girl, foundling Fanny Goodwill, but his masters take him on a fashionable trip to Bath, where the spoiled society comes mainly to see and be seen, but drowns in the famous Roman baths. When the all but grieving lady finds Joseph's Chri...
In The Cold Light Of Day
Character: Morris
It is the late 1930s and some British households still eagerly await the arrival of electricity. When a pylon is erected in the garden, Morris's mother can't wait to show off her Swedish lumbago belt and toaster. But Morris is gripped by a deeper passion that will change his life - one that will not be illuminated for 50 years....
End of Term
Character: Damian Self
A group of students are tormented by the lingering menace of Garth Stroman, an artist who had a disturbing vision fifty years prior. The pupils discover that true art can only be achieved through suffering and pain....
Long Day's Journey Into Night
Character: Edmund Tyrone
On a day in the summer of 1912, the family of retired matinee idol James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of Tyrone's wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund, and the alcoholism and debauchery of the older son Jamie. As day turns into night, guilt, anger, despair, and regret threaten to destroy the family....
Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill
Character: Lord Randolph Churchill
Lee Remick stars as Jennie Jerome, born in the United States in 1845, who eventually became Lady Randolph Churchill, and gave birth to Sir Winston Churchill in this seven-part, seven-hour biographical mini-series....
Pope John Paul II
Character: Jan Tyranowski
Bio-drama tracing the life and career of Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla from his days as a young activist in Poland to his rise and installation in 1978 as Pope of the Catholic world....
Never Say Never Again
Character: Elliott
James Bond returns as the secret agent 007 to battle the evil organization SPECTRE. Bond must defeat Largo, who has stolen two atomic warheads for nuclear blackmail. But Bond has an ally in Largo's girlfriend, the willowy Domino, who falls for Bond and seeks revenge....
Much Ado About Nothing
Character: Don Pedro
A film of the National Theatre's presentation of the Shakespeare play....
...but the clouds...
Character:
A woman left behind by a man. Based on a script by Samuel Beckett....
Supernova
Character: Dr. Malcolm Handey
A international science conference is held in Australia when Dr. Austin Shepard mysteriously disappears. Dr. Shepard's colleague, Christopher Richardson and other people are soon faced with the reality of an impending crisis and an attempt to keep the information from the public. While a full-blown supernova does not occur, explosions on the sun cause massive damage in Australia, and is shown often in Sydney and in various other cities and countries of the world....
King Lear
Character: Edgar
King Lear, old and tired, divides his kingdom among his daughters, giving great importance to their protestations of love for him. When Cordelia, youngest and most honest, refuses to idly flatter the old man in return for favor, he banishes her and turns for support to his remaining daughters. But Goneril and Regan have no love for him and instead plot to take all his power from him. In a parallel, Lear's loyal courtier Gloucester favors his illegitimate son Edmund after being told lies about hi...
Camille
Character: Jean
Camille is a courtesan in Paris. She falls deeply in love with a young man of promise, Armand Duval. When Armand's father begs her not to ruin his hope of a career and position by marrying Armand, she acquiesces and leaves her lover. However, when poverty and terminal illness overwhelm her, Camille discovers that Armand has not lost his love for her....
All Good Men
Character:
On the eve of an in-depth television interview, Edward Waite, former Labour cabinet minister, calls his family together for a birthday celebration that results in dramatic revelations....
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Character: Norman Cousins
As the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has only a single remaining vacancy - posing a rooming predicament for two fresh arrivals - Sonny pursues his expansionist dream of opening a second hotel....
Secret Passage
Character: Da Monte
Isabel and Clara are growing up in a time of terror. It is 1492, and Spain has decreed that all Jews must either convert to Catholicism, go into exile or face trial and execution. Although forcibly baptized, the sisters are chased through Christendom until they arrive in Venice. It is in this great maritime empire, where opulence rhymes with tolerance, that Isabel organizes secret passages for refugees fleeing the Inquisition while Clara falls in love with a Venetian noble, Paolo Zane. Isabel in...
Zulu Dawn
Character: Lt. Harford
In 1879, the British suffer a great loss at the Battle of Isandlwana due to incompetent leadership....
The Letter
Character: Howard Joyce
The wife of a Malaysian planter kills an employee of her husband one night, but her motive begins to appear not entirely truthful....
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
Character: Aslan (voice)
Four kids travel to the magical land of Narnia where they must battle an evil queen with the direction of the lion, Aslan....
The War That Never Ends
Character: Diodotus
The Peloponnesian Wars (Athens versus Sparta for twenty-seven years) told in the format of news broadcast-like monologues by Theucydides, Plato, and others....
Absolute Hell
Character: Siegfried Shrager
Black comedy set in Soho, London, right after World War II. Half of the fun is seeing a slew of very familiar faces kick up their heels as gay men, lesbians, party-girls, drunks, and drag queens. Originally aired as part of the anthology series "Performance."...
Lolita
Character: Young Humbert's Father
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter....
The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
Character: William McDowell
When a broken hearted boy loses the treasured wooden nativity set that links him to his dead father, his worried mother persuades a lonely ill-tempered woodcarver to create a replacement, and to allow her son to watch him work on it....
The Have-Nots
Character: Bentham
The thin line between happiness and disaster: Jakob cancels a business trip to New York City because he finds out his ex-girlfriend is coming to a party in Berlin on that day: 9/11/2001. His friend Hans goes to the US instead....
Verdi
Character: Giuseppe Verdi
This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem....
The Fourth Protocol
Character: Wynne-Evans
Led by Kim Philby, Plan Aurora is a plan that breaches the top-secret Fourth Protocol and turns the fears that shaped it into a living nightmare. A crack Soviet agent, placed under cover in a quiet English country town, begins to assemble a nuclear bomb, whilst an MI5 agent attempts to prevent its detonation....
Romeo and Juliet
Character: Mercutio
BBC Play of the Month adaptation of Shakespeare's tragic love story....
Message for Posterity
Character: Richard Browning
A version of Dennis Potter's play for television, remade shortly before his death as the original 1960s version had been wiped....
Milner
Character: Jocelyn Fry
Stephen Milner is a solicitor, but he fits uneasily into the world of Lewis Strange and Partners, who are an upmarket firm of solicitors. The film follows Milner's fraught relationship with a lucrative client, Ron Jesson. When one of his offices goes up in flames, the press are convinced that Ron arranged the fire for insurance purposes. Milner also has to cope with an estranged wife, batty mother and debt ridden younger brother....
A Life in Suitcases
Character: Monsieur Moitessier
Follows Tulse Luper as he is swept into the ill-fortuned tides of the 20th century and forced to spend his life in a succession of imprisonments....
Cherished
Character: Professor Sir Roy Meadow
A drama based on the true story of Angela Cannings, who was wrongly convicted of killing two of her children, on the basis of "expert witness" evidence about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Cot Death Syndrome) which has since been discredited....
The Time of Their Lives
Character: Frank
Determined to gatecrash her ex-lover's funeral on glamorous French hideaway Île de Ré, former Hollywood siren Helen escapes her London retirement home with help of repressed English housewife Priscilla and they hit the road together in a race to get to the funeral on time....
Eleni
Character: Spiro
Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers....
A Dry White Season
Character: Louw
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody....
Darkest Hour
Character: Neville Chamberlain
In May 1940, the fate of World War II hangs on Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or fight on knowing that it could mean the end of the British Empire....
Mahler
Character: Nick
Famed composer Gustav Mahler reflects on the tragedies of his life and failing marriage while traveling by train....
Testimony
Character: Marshall Tukhachevsky
The story of the great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and his life and career during the rule of Stalin....
The Day of the Jackal
Character: The Forger
An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail....
The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby
Character: Cecil Johnson
This is the true story of a little dog that refused to leave his master's graveside in Edinburgh. The dog visited the grave for years....
Stealing Silver
Character: Udo
A woman confronting a painful time in her life after she discovers the truth about a mysterious old man living across from her....
Der Blinde
Character: Dr. Bartnik
An encounter with a blind man ends unexpectedly for Susan Howard. The supposedly helpless man stuns and kidnaps her. The case is handed over by the Home Secretary to Sir John, the head of Scotland Yard. He entrusts Chief Inspector Higgins and Superintendent Lane with the investigation. Their investigations quickly lead Higgins and Lane on the trail of murder, white slavery and blackmail....
A Very Open Prison
Character: Brian Silcott
The Home Secretary has his eye on the Prime Minister's job. But an experiment in the way the prisons are run leads to embarrassment - and escaped murderers! The fore runner of Crossing The Floor...
The Thirty Nine Steps
Character: Bayliss
The year is 1914 and Richard Hannay, Mining Engineer who is visiting Britain for a short time before returning to South Africa, is shocked when one of his neighbours, Colonel Scudder, bursts into his rooms one night and tells him a story that Prussian 'sleeper' agents are planning to pre-start World War I by murdering a visiting foreign minister. However, Scudder is murdered and Hannay is framed for the death by the 'sleepers'. Fleeing to Scotland Hannay attempts to clear his name and to stop th...
Henry VIII
Character: Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury
Henry is a proud monarch who flies in the face of the church in seeking to divorce Queen Katherine and marry Anne Bullen. As cardinal Wolsey, the powerful Lord Chancellor of England, attempts to bend Rome to the King's wishes, the court reverbates with political intrigue and accusations of treachery....
Journey of Honor
Character: Capt. Crawford
The son of a besieged Shogun in war-torn 17th century Japan travels to Spain to buy weaponry from the king....
My Friend Walter
Character: Sir Walter Raleigh
Bess Throckmorton, a farmer's daughter from Devon, encounters an ancient relative who soon reveals himself to be the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh, determined to escape the Tower of London once and for all and return to Devon. When Sir Raleigh learns that a pair of dastardly brothers have designs on his ancestors' farm, he devises a plan to thwart them....
The Happy Prince
Character: Judge
In 1895, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was the most famous writer in London, and Bosie Douglas, son of the notorious Marquess of Queensberry, was his lover. Accused and convicted of gross indecency, he was imprisoned for two years and subjected to hard labor. Once free, he abandons England to live in France, where he will spend his last years, haunted by memories of the past, poverty and immense sadness....
Samuel Beckett: As the Story Was Told
Character: Narrator
A two-part biography of the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. The first part covers the traumas of his formative years: his ill-fated love affair with his first cousin, the death of his father, and his decorated service with the French Resistance. He had settled in France before the Second World War, met fellow Irishman James Joyce, and begun writing. Patrick Magee's television performance of `Krapp's Last Tape' (1972) is interwoven with key landscapes and personalities from Beckett's life. The secon...
Doctor Who: The Reign of Terror
Character: Physician
The TARDIS materialises not far from Paris in 1794 — one of the bloodiest years following the French Revolution of 1789. The travellers become involved with an escape chain rescuing prisoners from the guillotine and get caught up in the machinations of an English undercover spy, James Stirling — alias Lemaitre, governor of the Conciergerie prison....
Three Sisters
Character: Baron Tusenbach
Nearly a thousand miles away from their beloved Moscow, Chekhov's Three Sisters live in virtual exile. Olga , a schoolmistress, attempts to support her siblings and the home that is the sole legacy of their late father....
The Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura
Character: George Orwell
A remote farmhouse on an isolated island. Strangers with English accents. Quarrels and a lonely child. The year is 1946. The man is George Orwell. The book he has come to write is Nineteen Eighty-four....
Breathtaking
Character: Dr. Maclaren
A beautiful psychiatrist befriends an abused patient, ultimately leading to lust and murder....
Ladies' Night
Character: James Tripp
A tradition-bound gentlemen's club is thrown into chaos when women are allowed in during "ladies' night." One member resents the intrusion of women so much, he resorts to murder....
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Character: Barrymore
Sir Charles Baskerville dies on the moor under mysterious circumstances and rumors abound about a demonic hound. When the American heir arrives to take charge, a family friend calls in Holmes and Watson to get to the heart of the mystery....
Ghost Trio
Character:
A female voice identifies a lone man in a room. The shots cut closer, revealing he is holding a cassette recorder, playing Beethoven's "Ghost" Piano Trio no. 5. The film repeats the imagery, and then shows what he has been reacting to....
For Tea on Sunday
Character: Ian
An unexpected force shatters the urbane calm of a Sunday afternoon tea party....
In England's Green and Pleasant Land
Character: Norman Reynolds
Can a convicted murderer genuinely repent and reform? If you were the prison authorities, would you find it easy to decide if he should be released?...