John Stride
Handsome, clarion-voiced actor who shone on television and at the Old Vic and National theatres
JOHN STRIDE, the actor, who has died aged 81, did distinguished stage work with the Old Vic Company and the National Theatre in its heyday under Laurence Olivier before making a name on television. He starred in the drama series The Main Chance (ITV, 1969-75) as a ruthless, ladykilling lawyer who undergoes a transformation after moving from London to Leeds. He was a lecherous self-made businessman in Fay Weldon’s Growing Rich (ITV, 1992); and the promiscuous, pub-crawling writer, broadcaster and professional Welshman Alun Weaver in the BBC’S adaptation of Kingsley Amis’s Booker prize-winning novel The Old Devils (also 1992).
What Stride possessed was an arresting presence, youthful good looks, a clarion voice and naughtyboyish charm. Even in his sixties, when his self-assurance led him to declare: “I come from a generation of actors of very big talents who were destroyed by drink, but my talent is surviving with a regular consumption of good quality whisky and wine”, Stride never lost his sense of humour.
Or his pride in having, from the outset, turned down Hollywood: “I took advice from Rock Hudson and Paul Newman. They told me in no uncertain terms where the contracts should be stuck.”
Not that such advice inhibited his parallel ventures into films. One of his better known screen roles was that of the psychiatrist in The Omen (1976), shot in Britain; he also portrayed a Guards officer in A Bridge too Far (1977); a Scotland Yard inspector in the police thriller Brannigan (1975), starring John Wayne as a Chicago detective sent to London; and Ross in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971).
Stride’s stage career had started with his “handsome, moody, sweet and intelligent” Romeo to Judi Dench’s equally acclaimed Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s famous “sunbaked” revival of Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic (1960-61), the most sensational production of that year. The couple were so “desperately smitten”, the critic Michael Billington remarked, “that they maintained tactile, fingertip contact until the very last second of their balcony-scene parting.” His earlier performance as Brother Martin to Barbara Jefford’s Saint Joan at the Old Vic had prompted another critic to enthuse: “The speaker who can so charge a line with the electricity of acting is one to watch and cherish.”
One of five children of a mechanic, John Edward Stride was born in South Norwood on July 11 1936 and won scholarships to Alleyn’s School, where he began acting, and (much against parental wishes) to Rada.
He made his professional debut at Liverpool Playhouse in 1957 as Jimmy Porter in Look Back In Anger, and made his first West End appearance in John Gielgud’s production of Peter Shaffer’s first play, Five Finger Exercise (Comedy, 1959), taking over from Brian Bedford as the adolescent son waiting to go to university.
Later that year, Stride joined the Old Vic as Silvius to Moyra Fraser’s Audrey in As You Like It; the Duke of Aumerle to John Justin’s Richard II and the lively Chorus to Donald Houston’s Henry V in 1960. Reviewing Stride in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, Kenneth Tynan declared that the Old Vic had “done nothing better for a decade”; no one doubted, he wrote, that the reason for the delay in this Romeo’s leave-taking from Juliet was “sheer, newly wedded exhaustion”.
The production toured the world, including the United States, where on Broadway Stride played Malcolm in Macbeth and costarred with Susan Strasberg in The Lady of the Camellias. By then he had added Lysander to his Old Vic repertoire, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1; and a refreshingly humorous Gratiano in The Merchant Of Venice.
After acting with Gielgud in Jerome Kilty’s The Ides Of March (Haymarket, 1963), Stride was invited by Olivier to his new National Theatre at the Old Vic. In its inaugural production later that year, Stride played Fortinbras to Peter O’toole’s Hamlet.
He went to Moscow and Berlin with the National in 1965 as Cassio to Olivier’s Othello and Valentine in Love for Love. Back at the Old Vic, in the premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Old Vic, 1967) Stride as Rosencrantz gave what one reviewer called a “masterly” display of pointlessness, bringing out the sadness of “a rather pathetic simpleton whom an insurance company would class as accident-prone”.
He then took over two parts from Anthony Hopkins – Audrey in Clifford Williams’s all-male revival of As You Like It and Andrei in Olivier’s production of The Three Sisters. He also won approval for his “rough-hewn” Edward II to Geraldine Mcewan’s blowsy harridan of a Queen in Brecht’s version of Marlowe’s play.
Leaving the National, Stride went on to partner Eileen Atkins in Marguerite Duras’ Suzanna Andler (Guildford, 1971) and Vanessa Redgrave in Noël Coward’s Design for Living (Phoenix, 1973).
Among his other notable television credits were the title role in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (1979); Diamonds (1981), a series about a diamond merchant; Lytton’s Diary (1986); and The Trial of Klaus Barbie in 1987.
He married, first, the actress Virginia Thomas (dissolved), and, in 1972, the actress April Wilding, who predeceased him in 2003. Two daughters from his first marriage, and another from his second, survive him.
John Stride, born July 11 1936, died April 20 2018