Colin Blakely

Theatre

In 1958, Blakely made his stage debut in Belfast as Dick McCardle in Master of the House.^[3][1] He also appeared in several Ulster Group Theatre productions, including Gerard McLarnon's The Bonefire (1958)^[4] and Patricia O'Connor's The Sparrow's Fall (1959).^[5] From 1959 he was at the Royal Court Theatre, appearing in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance^[3] and, to critical approval, The Naming of Murderer's Rock.^[6][7][8] In the Royal Court production of Saint Joan, starring Joan Plowright, he had the small but prominent role of the English Soldier.^[9] 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.^[10]

In 1961, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon,^[3] before joining the National Theatre for its opening in 1963 at the Old Vic;^[3][11] 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.^[12][3][1] 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;^[13][14] Laurence Olivier specifically named him as an example of the "Versatile... deeply enthusiastic, courageous, gifted" actors he had sought to hire as director.^[15]

Among the many stage plays in which he appeared were The Recruiting Officer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Filumena Marturano, Volpone and Oedipus.^[3][11] He returned to the Royal Shakespeare in 1971 in Harold Pinter's Old Times and was subsequently in many West End plays.^[3][11]

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.^[16]

Film

Notable film roles included Maurice Braithwaite in This Sporting Life (1963),^[17] Sir Thomas More's house servant Matthew in A Man for All Seasons (1966), Dr. Watson to Robert Stephens's Holmes in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970),^[3] and the ageing Joseph Stalin in Jack Gold's Red Monarch (1983).^[6][1][a][b] In the 1975 British film, It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet, derived from the James Herriot books, Blakely played the eccentric Siegfried Farnon. (Blakely's Son of Man co-star Robert Hardy would play the role in the 1978-1990 BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small.)

Blakely appeared in two films based on the Hercule Poirot novels of Agatha Christie, described as having "all-star" casts: Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Evil Under the Sun (1982).^[21] He also appeared in The Long Ships (1964),^[22] Young Winston (1972),^[23] The National Health (1973),^[22] The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976),^[24] Equus (1977),^[25] The Dogs of War (1980),^[26] Nijinsky (1980)^[27] and Loophole (1981).^[22]

His last film role was as Peppone in the Italian comedy The World of Don Camillo (1984), directed by and starring Terence Hill.

Television

On television, Blakely appeared in the "Armchair Theatre" series in 1962, episode "The Hard Knock" and director Charles Crichton unusually cast Blakely in two different roles during the same run of episodes of the 1967 series Man in a Suitcase.

In 1969, Blakely's controversial role as an anguished Jesus Christ in Dennis Potter's Son of Man gained him wide recognition.^[3] He became a regular on British television,^[6] and in the same year played the leading role in a BBC adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now.^[28]

Noted for his skill in Shakespearean parts,^[29] Blakely appeared on television as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra (1981), directed by Jonathan Miller as part of the BBC Television Shakespeare series;^[30] and as Kent in the 1983 Granada Television version of King Lear which starred Laurence Olivier.^[31] Other television appearances included The Beiderbecke Affair (1985), Operation Julie (1985)^[32] and Paradise Postponed (1986).^[6]