Acting’s old troupers
You know – the one who always played that funny bloke in thingy… Michael Simkins pays tribute to our best-loved character actors
What makes a great character actor? It’s a question I’ve been pondering lately, having followed with undisguised joy the rise and rise of Talking Pictures TV, the hugely popular channel showing largely forgotten (and largely British) films of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
David Quinlan’s definitive work on the genre, the Illustrated Directory of Film Character Actors (1985), classifies the breed as those performers who ‘walked into a film, stole a scene and walked out again, probably only to upstage a different star in a different film later that week’: the squaddies, the bank managers, the nosy neighbours and the police inspectors. Artists such as Peter Vaughan, Irene Handl and the ubiquitous Sam Kydd, who, according to his son, Jonathan, made more film appearances than any other performer – ‘In excess of 240,’ he assures me.
Despite their names being forever on the tip of our tongues (‘Oh it’s him – what’s his name again?’), many character actors enjoyed extraordinarily long careers. Each had his or her particular specialist role, and you could often predict who’d be playing which part even before the opening credits, simply by reading a summary of the plot. Growing up in a family of film buffs in the 1960s, I spent many of my youthful evenings doing just that.
Suave, lantern-faced nightclub owner? It had to be Ferdy Mayne. Brassy landlady? Dora Bryan. In Kydd’s case, he always played working-class stalwarts – able seamen, pub landlords and bookies’ runners; and a wonderful living he made from it.
Few became conventional leading stars – they were either too short, too tall, too stout or simply too quirky – but the parts they played were often more interesting than the chiselled-jawed heroes or smouldering beauties whose performances they adorned. A few
achieved their own immortality, such as Desmond Llewelyn, who played Q in 17 Bond movies, or Nigel Stock, who played Dr Watson throughout the 1960s with a variety of Sherlock Holmeses, and who later became Owen, M D, the nation’s favourite on-screen GP in 1971.
And speaking of Nigels, few were more characterful than the smooth, saturnine Nigel Green, the ramrod-straight colour sergeant in the 1964 film Zulu. To watch this quintessentially British movie, you’d have thought the defenders of Rorke’s Drift had been recruited from Equity rather than the 24th Regiment of Foot: Michael Caine, Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, James Booth and Glynn Edwards (Dave, the barman in Minder) among them.
Decades after their deaths, many character actors are still instantly recognisable today: Margaret Rutherford, Sid James, and the inimitable James Robertson Justice, who, in addition to a prolific film career, spoke 20 languages and was an ice hockey goal-tender.
One of the most enduring is the roguishly avuncular Wilfrid Hyde-white (Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady), who played every role with the same air of detached bemusement as if he’d just wandered on set and was making it up as he went along. The story goes that Hyde-white, wanting to catch the last train back to London at the end of a Saturday night performance of a play in which he was appearing at a provincial theatre, decided to save vital minutes by putting his hand over the mouth of the leading lady (another character stalwart, Megs Jenkins), just as she was about to deliver her big speech, and saying, ‘Now, now, we don’t need to hear all that, do we?’ He made the train but the two didn’t speak for the next fortnight.
Showbiz is a fickle mistress. Many years after his retirement, in 2002, 86-year-old Geoffrey Keen, mainstay of hundreds of British films, always as the tetchy detective inspector, the ministerial official or, in the Bond films, the Minister of Defence, was tracked down by a friend of mine.
When asked about his career, Keen sighed, as if trying to recall a dream he’d once had. ‘To be honest, I can’t remember much about any of them,’ he told my colleague. ‘It was all so long ago.’
Well, we still remember them, Geoffrey, and we salute you. And now, thanks to Talking Pictures TV, we can again sample your artistry in all its quiet genius.
The noble tradition of the character actor is still very much alive and kicking, via the likes of Eddie Marsan, Phil Davis and Toby Jones. Like their forebears, they’re quietly carving a reputation every bit as memorable as their leading men, the Redmaynes and the Cumberbatches.
The last word should be left to Robert Donat ( The 39 Steps and Goodbye, Mr Chips), one of the few character actors who could legitimately claim to be a leading man too. The story goes of Donat walking down the Strand when an old lady grabbed him and enveloped him in a matronly hug.
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Donat, once he’d recovered his breath.
‘Because you’re such a comfort,’ she replied.