Colin Blakely

Colin George Blakely (23 September 1930 – 7 May 1987) was a Northern Irish actor. He had roles in the films A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Equus (1977). Early life Born in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, Blakely 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, before going on to work as a timber-loader on the railways. In 1957, after a spell of amateur dramatics with the Bangor Drama Club, he turned professional with the Group Theatre, Belfast. Career In 1957, at the age of 27, Blakely made his stage debut as Dick McCardle in Master of the House. He also appeared in several Ulster Group Theatre productions, including Gerard McLarnon's Bonefire (1958) and Patricia O'Connor's A Sparrow Falls (1959). From 1957 to 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 Murderers Rock. In 1961, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon and from 1963 to 1968 was with the National Theatre at the Old Vic. On television, Blakely appeared in the "Armchair Theatre" series in 1962, episode "The Hard Knock" and director Charles Crichton unusually cast Blakely in two different roles during the same run of episodes of the 1967 series Man in a Suitcase. Also in 1967 he appeared in The Avengers in the episode "Murdersville" as Mickle. In 1969, Blakely's controversial role as an anguished Jesus Christ in Dennis Potter's Son of Man gained him wide recognition. From that time onwards, he was a regular on British television, and in the same year played the leading role in a BBC adaptation of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now.