Peter Donat

Actor who used family link to get a break but proved his talent

Peter Donat, actor, Born: 20 January 1928 in Kentville, Canada. Died: 10 September 2018 in Point Reyes Station, California, aged 90.

Peter Donat, a Canadian-born character actor who played a wide variety of classical and contemporary roles in theatre, film and television, died last Monday at his home in California. He was 90. His wife, Maria, said the cause was complications of diabetes.

Donat was best known in recent years for his role as Agent Fox Mulder’s father in six episodes of The X Files.

But he preferred theatrical work. He performed frequently with respected companies like the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the Stratford Festival in Canada. Over the years he played Cyrano de Bergerac, Prospero, Shylock, King Lear and Hadrian VII.

“It’s the closest thing to the ideal creative life,” he said of stage acting in an interview with the Honolulu Advertiser in 1984. “I mean, how often can an actor do Shakespeare, Chekhov and a new play, all in an eight-month span? And do TV shows and films in between?”

He worked regularly in television, guest-starring on series like The FBI, Hawaii Five-o, Mcmillan & Wife, Hill Street Blues and Murder, She Wrote, on which he played three different roles over several series. On Dallas, he was a doctor who treated Texas oilman JR Ewing (Larry Hagman) after he had been shot in the famed 1980 cliffhanger episode.

His film career nearly received a significant boost when he was considered for the role of Tom Hagen, the consigliere to Don Corleone, in The Godfather (1972). From a list that also included Anthony Zerbe and Ben Piazza, director Francis Ford Coppola chose Robert Duvall. Coppola cast Donat in a small role as a lawyer in The Godfather Part II (1974) and as Otto Kerner, the US attorney who prosecuted carmaker Preston Tucker for fraud, in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).

Pierre Collingwood Donat was born on 20 January 1928 in Kentville, Nova Scotia. His father, Philip, was a landscape gardener, and his mother, Marie Bardet, a housewife. He was inspired to act by the films of his uncle, British film star Robert Donat, who won a best-actor Oscar for his performance in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). As a teenager, Pierre wrote and performed plays with school friends in his garage. After graduating from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and studying for one year at the Yale School of Drama in the early 1950s, Donat began performing onstage in Canada and the United States. He also won his first television roles.

While working in the United States, he changed his first name to Peter. In 1957, he took a chance on landing his first Broadway role when he spotted renowned British director Tyrone Guthrie walking in Manhattan’s theatre district with producer Alexander Cohen. The two were collaborating on The First Gentleman, a British costume drama by Norman Ginsbury.

“On the spur of the moment, I dashed across 45th Street and confronted them,” he recalled in a 1985 interview. “I said: ‘Dr. Guthrie, I’m Peter Donat. My uncle was Robert Donat and I’d like to audition for your play’.”

Guthrie agreed to cast Donat in the play, which starred Walter Slezak as the Prince Regent of England. For his performance as Prince Leopold, Donat won a Theatre World Award for best supporting actor. And in his otherwise mixed review of the play in The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson praised Donat’s Leopold as “theonegenuinehumanbeing in a palace of courtiers”.

Donat appeared later that year in the Broadway revival of The Country Wife. In 1958, he had a role in John Osborne’s play The Entertainer, alongside Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright.

In addition to his wife, Maria (Dejong) Donat – with whom he wrote a one-man show about Chekhov that he performed – Donat is survived by his sons, Caleb, Christopher and Lucas; two stepdaughters, Barbara Park Shapiro and Marina Park Sutton; a stepson, Malcolm Park; 11 grandchildren; and his brother, Richard, who is also an actor. Donat’s marriage to Waltons actress Michael Learned ended in divorce.

Donat recalled his uncle cautioning him to stay in North America to learn his craft.

“My uncle said, ‘In England, they’ll make you speak with an English accent, which has nothing to do with acting’. I think he didn’t want to see me become a half-baked Englishman.”

“My uncle said, ‘In England they’ll make you speak with an English accent, which has nothing to do with acting’ ”