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Colin Blakely
Colin George Edward Blakely (23 September 1930 – 7 May 1987) was a Northern Irish stage and screen actor. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Sidney Lumet's Equus (1977), and was nominated twice for a Best Actor in Television (1970, 1987). He was also an Olivier Award nominee.
According to the British Film Institute, Blakely's "chunky form and rumpled, good-natured features tended to direct him towards hero's-friend roles, but there was also an impressive toughness and intensity about his work."
Blakely was born in Bangor, County Down, the son of Victor and Dorothy Blakely (née Ashmore). His mother was a singer in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his father owned a sports retail shop in Belfast. He attended Sedbergh School in Yorkshire (now Cumbria), England.
At the age of 18, he started work in his family's sports goods shop in Belfast. After a spell of amateur dramatics with the Bangor Operatic Society, he turned professional aged 27.
In 1958, Blakely made his Belfast stage debut as Dick McCardle in Stanley Houghton's Master of the House. He also appeared in several Ulster Group Theatre productions, including Gerard McLarnon's The Bonefire (1958) and Patricia O'Connor's The Sparrow's Fall (1959). From 1959 he was at the Royal Court Theatre, appearing in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance and, to critical approval, The Naming of Murderer's Rock. In the Royal Court production of Saint Joan, starring Joan Plowright, he had the small but prominent role of the English Soldier. Blakely himself said, about his transfer to working in England,
I was lucky then because the Royal Court were looking for actors like me at that time. Arden, Wesker, and so forth were writing for your plebians with rough knocked-about looking faces, so I got a job quite easily.
In 1961, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, before joining the National Theatre for its opening in 1963 at the Old Vic; he was part of the NT cast that toured Moscow in 1965, the first time a foreign company was allowed to perform at the Kremlin. Critics and theatre historians have numbered Blakely among the actors like Maggie Smith and Derek Jacobi whose talent emerged in the NT's early years; Laurence Olivier specifically named him as an example of the "Versatile... deeply enthusiastic, courageous, gifted" actors he had sought to hire as director.
Among the many stage plays in which he appeared were The Recruiting Officer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Filumena Marturano, Volpone and Oedipus. He returned to the Royal Shakespeare in 1971 in Harold Pinter's Old Times and was subsequently in many West End plays.
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Colin Blakely
Colin George Edward Blakely (23 September 1930 – 7 May 1987) was a Northern Irish stage and screen actor. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Sidney Lumet's Equus (1977), and was nominated twice for a Best Actor in Television (1970, 1987). He was also an Olivier Award nominee.
According to the British Film Institute, Blakely's "chunky form and rumpled, good-natured features tended to direct him towards hero's-friend roles, but there was also an impressive toughness and intensity about his work."
Blakely was born in Bangor, County Down, the son of Victor and Dorothy Blakely (née Ashmore). His mother was a singer in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his father owned a sports retail shop in Belfast. He attended Sedbergh School in Yorkshire (now Cumbria), England.
At the age of 18, he started work in his family's sports goods shop in Belfast. After a spell of amateur dramatics with the Bangor Operatic Society, he turned professional aged 27.
In 1958, Blakely made his Belfast stage debut as Dick McCardle in Stanley Houghton's Master of the House. He also appeared in several Ulster Group Theatre productions, including Gerard McLarnon's The Bonefire (1958) and Patricia O'Connor's The Sparrow's Fall (1959). From 1959 he was at the Royal Court Theatre, appearing in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance and, to critical approval, The Naming of Murderer's Rock. In the Royal Court production of Saint Joan, starring Joan Plowright, he had the small but prominent role of the English Soldier. Blakely himself said, about his transfer to working in England,
I was lucky then because the Royal Court were looking for actors like me at that time. Arden, Wesker, and so forth were writing for your plebians with rough knocked-about looking faces, so I got a job quite easily.
In 1961, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, before joining the National Theatre for its opening in 1963 at the Old Vic; he was part of the NT cast that toured Moscow in 1965, the first time a foreign company was allowed to perform at the Kremlin. Critics and theatre historians have numbered Blakely among the actors like Maggie Smith and Derek Jacobi whose talent emerged in the NT's early years; Laurence Olivier specifically named him as an example of the "Versatile... deeply enthusiastic, courageous, gifted" actors he had sought to hire as director.
Among the many stage plays in which he appeared were The Recruiting Officer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Filumena Marturano, Volpone and Oedipus. He returned to the Royal Shakespeare in 1971 in Harold Pinter's Old Times and was subsequently in many West End plays.