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Michael Elphick
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Michael Elphick
Michael John Elphick (19 September 1946 – 7 September 2002) was an English film and television actor. He played the eponymous private investigator in the ITV series Boon and Harry Slater in BBC's EastEnders. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1983 film Gorky Park. With his gruff Sussex accent and lip-curling sneer, he often played menacing hard men.
Elphick struggled with an addiction to alcohol; at the height of his problem, he admitted to consuming two litres of spirits a day, which contributed to his death from a heart attack in 2002.
Michael John Elphick was born on 19 September 1946 and grew up in Chichester, Sussex, where his family had a butcher's shop. He was educated at Lancastrian Secondary Modern Boys School in Chichester, where he took part in several school productions including Noah and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He initially considered joining the Merchant Navy and helped out in his local boatyard during school holidays.
It has been reported that he stumbled upon acting by chance when, at the age of 15, he took a job as an apprentice electrician at the Chichester Festival Theatre while it was being built. He gained an interest in acting whilst watching stars such as Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Sybil Thorndike. Olivier advised Elphick to go to drama school and gave him two speeches to use at auditions. Elphick was offered a number of places but decided to train at the Central School of Speech and Drama, in Swiss Cottage (aged 18), because Olivier had attended there.
After graduating from drama school Elphick was offered roles primarily as menacing heavies. He made his debut in Fraulein Doktor (an Italian-made First World War film circa 1968). He went on to play the Captain in Tony Richardson's version of Hamlet (1969); landed parts in cult films such as The First Great Train Robbery and The Elephant Man and appeared in Lindsay Anderson's allegorical O Lucky Man! (1973). He was also seen as Phil Daniels' father in the cult film Quadrophenia (1979), as Pasha in Gorky Park (1983) and as the poacher, Jake, in Withnail & I (1987). In 1984 he played the lead, Fisher, a British detective recalling under hypnosis a dystopian, crumbling Europe and his hunt for a serial killer, in Lars von Trier's Palme D'Or nominated debut film, The Element of Crime.
On stage, Elphick played Marcellus and the Player King in Tony Richardson's stage version of Hamlet at the Roundhouse Theatre and on Broadway and he later played Claudius to Jonathan Pryce's Hamlet at the Royal Court Theatre, directed by Richard Eyre. In 1981 he appeared in the Ray Davies/Barrie Keeffe musical Chorus Girls at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East and he was also seen in The Changing Room, directed by Lindsay Anderson, at the Royal Court Theatre. His last West End stage appearance was in 1997 as Doolittle in Pygmalion directed by Ray Cooney at the Albery Theatre.
However, it was for his television roles that Elphick became best known. He briefly appeared in Coronation Street (1974) as Douglas Wormold, son of the landlord Edward, who for many years owned most of the properties in the road. Douglas unsuccessfully tried to buy the newsagent shop The Kabin from Len Fairclough. He played three characters in the popular Granada Television series Crown Court: in 1973 as a defendant; in 1975 as a witness (Frank Hollins, private secretary to a female soprano in the episode Songbirds out of Tune); and from 1975 to 1983 as the barrister Neville Griffiths Q.C.
He played one of the main roles in the film Black Island in 1978 for the Children's Film Foundation, played a villain in The Sweeney episode "One of Your Own" (1978) and played a policeman in The Professionals episode "Backtrack" (1979) and had a minor role in Hazell (1979), and appeared in the Dennis Potter play Blue Remembered Hills (1979). Elphick took the title role in Jack Pulman's six part comedy-drama Private Schulz (1981). Here he played alongside Ian Richardson the German forger Gerhard Schulz, who is conscripted into SS Counter Espionage during the Second World War to destroy the British economy by flooding it with forged money.
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Michael Elphick
Michael John Elphick (19 September 1946 – 7 September 2002) was an English film and television actor. He played the eponymous private investigator in the ITV series Boon and Harry Slater in BBC's EastEnders. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1983 film Gorky Park. With his gruff Sussex accent and lip-curling sneer, he often played menacing hard men.
Elphick struggled with an addiction to alcohol; at the height of his problem, he admitted to consuming two litres of spirits a day, which contributed to his death from a heart attack in 2002.
Michael John Elphick was born on 19 September 1946 and grew up in Chichester, Sussex, where his family had a butcher's shop. He was educated at Lancastrian Secondary Modern Boys School in Chichester, where he took part in several school productions including Noah and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He initially considered joining the Merchant Navy and helped out in his local boatyard during school holidays.
It has been reported that he stumbled upon acting by chance when, at the age of 15, he took a job as an apprentice electrician at the Chichester Festival Theatre while it was being built. He gained an interest in acting whilst watching stars such as Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Sybil Thorndike. Olivier advised Elphick to go to drama school and gave him two speeches to use at auditions. Elphick was offered a number of places but decided to train at the Central School of Speech and Drama, in Swiss Cottage (aged 18), because Olivier had attended there.
After graduating from drama school Elphick was offered roles primarily as menacing heavies. He made his debut in Fraulein Doktor (an Italian-made First World War film circa 1968). He went on to play the Captain in Tony Richardson's version of Hamlet (1969); landed parts in cult films such as The First Great Train Robbery and The Elephant Man and appeared in Lindsay Anderson's allegorical O Lucky Man! (1973). He was also seen as Phil Daniels' father in the cult film Quadrophenia (1979), as Pasha in Gorky Park (1983) and as the poacher, Jake, in Withnail & I (1987). In 1984 he played the lead, Fisher, a British detective recalling under hypnosis a dystopian, crumbling Europe and his hunt for a serial killer, in Lars von Trier's Palme D'Or nominated debut film, The Element of Crime.
On stage, Elphick played Marcellus and the Player King in Tony Richardson's stage version of Hamlet at the Roundhouse Theatre and on Broadway and he later played Claudius to Jonathan Pryce's Hamlet at the Royal Court Theatre, directed by Richard Eyre. In 1981 he appeared in the Ray Davies/Barrie Keeffe musical Chorus Girls at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East and he was also seen in The Changing Room, directed by Lindsay Anderson, at the Royal Court Theatre. His last West End stage appearance was in 1997 as Doolittle in Pygmalion directed by Ray Cooney at the Albery Theatre.
However, it was for his television roles that Elphick became best known. He briefly appeared in Coronation Street (1974) as Douglas Wormold, son of the landlord Edward, who for many years owned most of the properties in the road. Douglas unsuccessfully tried to buy the newsagent shop The Kabin from Len Fairclough. He played three characters in the popular Granada Television series Crown Court: in 1973 as a defendant; in 1975 as a witness (Frank Hollins, private secretary to a female soprano in the episode Songbirds out of Tune); and from 1975 to 1983 as the barrister Neville Griffiths Q.C.
He played one of the main roles in the film Black Island in 1978 for the Children's Film Foundation, played a villain in The Sweeney episode "One of Your Own" (1978) and played a policeman in The Professionals episode "Backtrack" (1979) and had a minor role in Hazell (1979), and appeared in the Dennis Potter play Blue Remembered Hills (1979). Elphick took the title role in Jack Pulman's six part comedy-drama Private Schulz (1981). Here he played alongside Ian Richardson the German forger Gerhard Schulz, who is conscripted into SS Counter Espionage during the Second World War to destroy the British economy by flooding it with forged money.