The man with the hundred-year career
Celebrating the astonishing longevity of the legendary actor Norman Lloyd, who died aged 106
1920s
The actor turned professional aged just nine years old, having made regular appearances in vaudeville and women’s clubs since he was tiny.
1930s
Lloyd left New York University aged 17, to concentrate on acting. He met Orson Welles as a teenager, and was a founder member of Welles’ Mercury Theatre in 1937 — the company that would go on to produce Citizen Kane.
1940s
Lloyd’s first Hollywood gig was under the direction of one Alfred Hitchcock, playing the titular role in the 1942 thriller Saboteur. Lloyd later said of modern directors: “Most of these guys could never tell you what’s happening on the screen... Hitch could tell you every shot.”
1950s
Lloyd starred alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in Chaplin’s 1952 talkie Limelight, though he and Chaplin were friends first. “Charlie was passionate about tennis,” Lloyd later recalled. “I used to play with him about four times a week. And one day he asked me if I wanted to be in Limelight.”
1960s
Lloyd’s career slumped during the ’50s and ’60s, and he was placed on a blacklist during the Mccarthy witch hunts. Alfred Hitchcock, however, still hired him, as actor, director and producer on the anthology show Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
1970s
A Hollywood comeback came in 1977 with the psychological horror Audrey Rose, from director Robert Wise. Lloyd also found more work on TV, most notably in a 1975 episode of Kojak.
1980s
His longest-running role came in the medical drama series St. Elsewhere, debuting in 1982. Lloyd was only contracted to appear in four episodes; he ultimately starred in 132, across a sixyear run. He also won critical acclaim for his role as the vicious headmaster in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society.
1990s
Martin Scorsese cast Lloyd as Mr Letterblair in 1993’s The Age Of Innocence. The actor continued to be in demand on TV, popping up in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
2000s
Lloyd continued to act well into his nineties, guest-starring on Modern Family, and sharing billing with Cameron Diaz and Shirley Maclaine in the 2005 comedy In Her Shoes.
2010s
His final role came in 2015 — aged 100 — in Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, playing a lusty nursing-home resident. “I do a lot of thinking about the long story of my life,” he said in 2015, “and some of it astounds me.”