Actor: Born January 10, 1933; Died December 1, 2007. ANTON Rodgers, who has died aged 74, was never a film-star pin-up or action-man hero, but during a career spanning half a century he became one of the most familiar faces in British television and films and was the star of several TV series. He had been a professional actor since his early teens: he was Hardy in Carry on Jack (1963) and Number Two to Patrick McGoohan's Number Six in The Prisoner (1967). He appeared in more than 100 films, TV shows and plays in the UK and abroad and enjoyed considerable success in musicals, mainly on stage.
Balding, bespectacled, unassuming, it was only really in later years that he attained a degree of fame as the star of the sitcoms Fresh Fields (1984-86), the follow-up French Fields (1989-91) and May to December (1989-94).
Although he is best known for comedy, his resume is surprisingly diverse, from Shakespeare and Ibsen via thrillers and war films to the lamentable Son of the Pink Panther (1993).
Born in the Cambridgeshire market town of Wisbech in 1933, Rodgers began acting professionally in his early teens and had a decade's experience on stage by the time he appeared in the BBC comedy series The Sky Larks (1958).
By the early 1960s he was working regularly in television and films. He turned up as guest star on most of Lew Grade's contemporary thriller series, including Danger Man (1964-65) and The Saint (1967). He was a German officer in Where Eagles Dare (1968) and one of the assassin's victims in The Day of the Jackal (1973).
But it was TV that gave him his biggest roles. He played the eponymous conman in the PG Wodehouse series Ukridge (1968), he was a detective who teams up with an astrologer in Zodiac (1974), another policeman in Murder Most English (1977) and Lillie Langtry's weak and cuckolded husband in Lillie (1978).
He was married to Elizabeth Garvie, who played Elizabeth Bennet in the 1980 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. They appeared together in an adaptation of Elizabeth Jane Howard's Something in Disguise (1982) and several stage productions.
As well as his wife, Rodger is survived by three sons from that marriage, and two children from an earlier marriage.
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