David Warner (actor)

David Hattersley Warner (29 July 1941 – 24 July 2022) was an English actor. Warner's lanky, often haggard appearance lent itself to a variety of villainous characters, as well as more sympathetic roles, in a career spanning six decades across stage and screen. His accolades include a Primetime Emmy Award and nominations for a BAFTA Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Warner trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), with whom he made his stage debut in 1962 and, in 1964, played Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses cycle at the West End's Aldwych Theatre. The RSC then cast him as Prince Hamlet in Peter Hall's 1965 production of Hamlet. Warner made his Broadway debut in the 2001 revival of Major Barbara.

He gained prominence as the lead in the film Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (Karel Reisz, 1966), for which he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. His other roles include those in The Omen (1976), Time After Time (1979), Time Bandits (1981), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Tron (1982), A Christmas Carol (1984), Seven Servants (1996), Titanic (1997), Scream 2 (1997), Ladies in Lavender (2002), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). He is also known for his roles in the films Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

For his work in television, Warner received two Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie nominations, for his portrayals of Reinhard Heydrich in the NBC miniseries Holocaust (1978) and Pomponius Falco in the ABC miniseries Masada (1981); he won for the latter.

Warner was born on 29 July 1941, in Manchester, Lancashire, the son of Ada Doreen Hattersley and Herbert Simon Warner, a nursing home proprietor. He was born out of wedlock and frequently taken to be brought up by each of his parents, eventually settling with his stepmother and his father, a Russian Jew. At 18 years of age he started at RADA, from which graduated in 1961 with an Acting (RADA Diploma).

Warner made his professional stage debut at the Royal Court Theatre in January 1962, playing Snout, a minor role in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Tony Richardson for the English Stage Company. In March 1962, at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, he played Conrad in Much Ado About Nothing, following which in June he appeared as Jim in Afore Night Come at the New Arts Theatre in London.

He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1963 to play Trinculo in The Tempest, and Cinna the Poet in Julius Caesar, and in July was cast as Henry VI in the John Barton adaptation of Henry VI, Parts I, II and III, which comprised the first two plays from The Wars of the Roses trilogy. At the West End's Aldwych Theatre in January 1964, he again played Henry VI in the complete The Wars of the Roses history cycle (1964). Returning to Stratford in April, he performed the title role in Richard II, Mouldy in Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry VI. At the Aldwych in October 1964, he was cast as Valentine Brose in the play Eh? by Henry Livings, a role he reprised in the 1968 film adaptation Work Is a Four-Letter Word.

He first played the title role in Hamlet for the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1965. This production transferred to the Aldwych Theatre in December of that year. In the 1966, Stratford season, his Hamlet was revived and he also played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night. Finally at the Aldwych in January 1970, he played Julian in Tiny Alice.