Tony Haygarth
Actor BORN FEBRUARY 4, 1945 DIED MARCH 10, 2017, AGED 72
A VETERAN of stage and screen, actor Tony Haygarth appeared in more than 30 films during his 45-year career as well as in TV favourites Where The Heart Is, The Bill and Emmerdale, where he played Mick Naylor.
Fans of the hit 2000 animation film Chicken Run will remember him as the voice of Mr Tweedy the farmer.
Born in Anfield, Liverpool, he was the only child of Stanley Haygarth, a bus conductor, and his wife Mary. After leaving Liverpool College he supported his acting ambitions by taking on a variety of jobs including as a lifeguard in Torquay, a fire breather and an escapologist in a travelling circus and a psychiatric nurse in Sefton Hospital.
He began his performing career on the stage, working with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company before making his film debut in 1971 in Percy.
Other film roles followed including in John Badham’s Dracula, starring Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier, and in Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital.
He was in The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice at the Vaudeville Theatre and at Chichester Festival Theatre in Brian Friel’s reworking of Turgenev’s A Month In The Country in 2010.
He was nominated for an Olivier Theatre Award in 1997 for his performance in Twelve Angry Men.
In 2014, three years after he had been successfully treated for prostate cancer, Haygarth was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.
A year after his diagnosis he said: “Forgetting my lines was the first proper sign that this was a bigger problem than I wanted to admit to. But I felt a mixture of relief and trepidation when I got the diagnosis. It meant that I got access to a lot of services and support which has been fantastic.”
He is survived by his ex-wife Carole, who cared for him through his illness, and their two daughters.