Actor listed in Guinness Book of Records for Game of Thrones
Born: May 26, 1923;
Died: October 16, 2017
ROY Dotrice, who has died aged 94, had a long and varied acting career that took in Shakespeare, Spider-Man and Game of Thrones, and earned him a place in the Guinness Book of Records not once, but twice.
He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company back in the days when it was simply the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, but his career really gathered momentum with the one-man stage show Brief Lives, in which he played the gossipy 17th century diarist John Aubrey.
It opened at the Hampstead Theatre Club in 1967, but Dotrice went on to reprise the role in the London West End, Broadway and elsewhere – 1,782 performances, which earned him his first Guinness entry for the most performances in a one-man play.
His second entry was for voicing 224 characters in the audio book of Game of Thrones. On TV he was cast as Grand Maester Pycelle in the first series of Game of Thrones, but had to withdraw because of ill health. He appeared in two episodes in the second series as Hallyne.
The son of a baker, Dotrice was born on Guernsey. He escaped to the mainland when the Germans invaded during the Second World War, lied about his age to join the RAF as a gunner, was shot down and spent much of the war in POW camps, where he became involved in revues and pantomime.
After the war he went into repertory theatre. He married actress Kay Newman and they tried to set up a repertory company in Guernsey without much success.
Dotrice joined the Shakespeare Memorial company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1957, worked his way up from “spear-carrier” roles to Caliban and Edward IV, but director Peter Hall told him he would never play the truly great Shakespearean roles.
However Patrick Garland was sufficiently impressed by his performance as a vain and decrepit Justice Shallow in Henry IV Part II that he wrote Brief Lives for him.
It took him to the US, where he also enjoyed considerable success in another one-man show Mister Lincoln, in which he appeared on Broadway in 1980.
In between he played the title character in the British drama series Dickens of London (1976). And he was Mozart’s father in the Oscar-winning film Amadeus (1984).
But it was in America that he enjoyed his greatest success, starring in several Broadway productions, winning a Tony award for A Moon for the Misbegotten in 2000 and playing some of the great Shakespearean roles that had eluded him in England, including Falstaff.
He made guest appearances in several hit American television shows, appeared in the films The Scarlet Letter (1995) and Hellboy II (2008) and was also in demand for voice work, voicing Destroyer in the animated Spider-Man series (1997).
His wife died ten years ago. He is survived by three daughters – Michelle, who was Betty in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em; Karen, who played one of the children in Mary Poppins; and Yvette, whose credits include a recurring role in Crossroads in 1978-79 when she and her mother played mother and daughter on screen.
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