Michael Hordern

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Place of birth of Sir Michael Hordern: The Poplars, Berkhamsted , Hertfordshire

Sir Michael Murray Hordern (born October 3, 1911 in Berkhamsted , Hertfordshire , England , † May 2, 1995 in Oxford , England) was a British stage and film actor .

life and career

Hordern began his artistic career as an actor on the stages of various amateur theaters. In 1937 he made his debut as a professional stage actor in a production of William Shakespeare's Othello . Numerous, mostly tragicomic, roles in Shakespeare's productions were to follow, such as Polonius in Hamlet and Malvolio in Was ihr wollt . In his more than 50 years of acting on the stage, Hordern has shown a wide range from buffalo parts to tragic character roles. In 1983 he was raised to the nobility for his services to the stage.

In addition, Hordern played in numerous film and television productions. He made his feature film debut as early as 1939. Thirteen years later he starred in a film about the Avenger from Sherwood Forest : Robin Hood, rebel of the king , played by Richard Todd . In his more than 50-year film career, Hordern starred in literary adaptations such as A Christmas Story (as Marley after Charles Dickens ), Ivanhoe (after Walter Scott ), period films such as Alexander the Great (as the Greek speaker Demosthenes ), I Accuse (about the Dreyfus Affair ), Richard Attenborough's Gandhi and Cleopatra (as Cicero ), dramas like Hotel International (alongside Elizabeth Taylor ), war films like The Last Ride of Bismarck and Agents Die Lonely (based on Alistair MacLean ), agent thrillers like The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold ( after John le Carré ) and The MacKintosh Man (next to Paul Newman ), comedies such as Richard Lester's Plautus adaptation Toll drove the old Romans , Lester's end-of-time comedy After (with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore ), Graham Chapman's Treasure Island- Persiflage Dotterbart , Horror films like Theater des Grauens (alongside Vincent Price and Diana Rigg ) and large-scale television productions like James Clavell's Shogun . He also made guest appearances on television series such as Inspector Morse .

As a rule, Hordern was used in supporting roles, to which he gave a distinctive profile. The tall character actor with the high forehead was an unmistakable appearance and played even the smallest roles with a strong presence.

Hordern also acted as the narrator for Stanley Kubrick's Thackeray adaptation Barry Lyndon , lent his voice to cartoons (including Richard Adams ' Watership Down ) and radio productions, among others. a. 1981 as Gandalf in a BBC production of The Lord of the Rings and as Merlin in an adaptation of Terence Hanbury White's Merlin in The Sword and the Stone .

Sir Michael Hordern died on May 2, 1995 in his retirement home in Oxfordshire of acute kidney failure .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Michael Hordern  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biographical data of Michael Hordern in: The New York Times
personal data
SURNAME Hordern, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hordern, Sir Michael Murray
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British stage and film actor
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Berkhamsted , Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1995
Place of death Oxford , England, UK