Charles Keating

Actor. Born: October 22, 1941; Died: August 9, 2014

CHARLES Keating, who has died of lung cancer aged 72, was an actor known for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and on television, including the acclaimed 1980s adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, but he later found fame in the United States in soap operas. He also had a regular role for many years in the daytime drama Crown Court playing a lawyer.

Born in London, he moved to Canada with his family as a teenager and then to the United States but after training to be an actor (after working briefly as a hairdresser) he found work in Britain on the stage and television.

Among his first roles were parts in The Professionals, the mini-series Edward and Mrs Simpson and the BBC2 Playhouse series.

He then spent seven years from 1972 until 1979 playing James Elliott QC in Crown Court, the afternoon drama that followed fictional court cases and featured appearances by the likes of Maureen Lipman, TP McKenna, and Richard Wilson.

In 1981, he appeared in ITV’s famous adaptation of Brideshead Revisited starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews before moving to the States in the late 1980s. He then went on to appear in the daytime serials All My Children and As the World Turns and won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1996 for his role as villainous Carl Hutchins on NBC’s Another World.

Although Keating primarily considered himself a stage actor, he was able to enjoy the attention he got from playing Hutchins from 1991-99.

His son Sean said: “It was fun because he played the villain role with gusto. At a restaurant, people would come up and grab him by the lapels and say, ‘You’re evil!’”

His father was wonderfully eccentric in many ways but the most loving person, said Sean Keating.

The actor always loved working on the stage and was with the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, before moving back to England to found a theatre company in Sheffield. He also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and was nominated for a Tony award in 1986 for his work in the revival of Look on Broadway with Zoe Wanamaker.

He also worked in films including the The Thomas Crown Affair with Pierce Brosnan, The Bodyguard starring Kevin Costner, and Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert de Niro. His last film role was in 2005 in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo with the comedian Rob Schneider. In later years, he was known for playing Zeus in the fantasy television series Xena: Warrior Princess.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and six grandchildren.