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Leo McKern
Life Time
16 March 1920 - 23 July 2002
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British character actor Leo McKern was born on March 16, 1920 in Sydney, Australia. He studied at a technical school as an engineer, later worked as an artist. During World War II, from 1940 to 1942, he served as a corporal in the Australian Armed Forces in the Engineering Corps. In 1944, he made his first appearance on the stage in Sydney, and two years later he and his wife, actress Jane Holland, moved to the UK, where he soon began playing at the London Old Vic Theatre and the Stradford Shakespeare
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British character actor Leo McKern was born on March 16, 1920 in Sydney, Australia. He studied at a technical school as an engineer, later worked as an artist. During World War II, from 1940 to 1942, he served as a corporal in the Australian Armed Forces in the Engineering Corps. In 1944, he made his first appearance on the stage in Sydney, and two years later he and his wife, actress Jane Holland, moved to the UK, where he soon began playing at the London Old Vic Theatre and the Stradford Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Despite a strong Australian accent and glass eye (the result of a childhood injury), over time, the actor managed to achieve some success on the British stage. He proved himself well in the plays “Volpone”, “Per Gunt”, “Uncle Vanya” and outplayed many roles of the classical Shakespearean repertoire.
In 1952, McKern began working in cinema. He starred in the crime thriller Ruthless Time (1957, dir. Joseph Lowsey), in the film adaptation of Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities (1958, dir. Ralph Thomas) with Dirk Bogart and in the satirical comedy The Mouse That Growled (1959, directed by Jack Arnold) with the celebrated comedian Peter Sellers. In addition, in 1958, director Gerald Thomas filmed a detective play by McKern “The Chain of Events”. After the actor appeared in Richard Lester's musical comedy Help! (1965) with The Beatles, he played the ambitious Lord Thomas Cromwell in the historical drama Man for All Time (1966, Fred Zinneman) based on a play by Robert Bolt. This film also starred stars such as Paul Scofield, Orson Welles and Robert Shaw. This role was followed by two more remarkable acting work - Cardinal Leone in the Michael Anderson film "Fisherman's Shoes" (1968) and the cowardly and immoral innkeeper in David Lean's drama "Ryan's Daughter" (1970). However, the love of the audience McKern brought not the roles he played in the movies. In 1975, the British television series "Rampole from Bailey" began, in which for many years (the series ended in 1992), he played the grumpy, irritable, but kind-hearted lawyer Horace Rampole, who became the favorite of millions of viewers both in the UK and in the United States and as a consequence - the most successful role of McKern in his entire career.
In the future, the actor starred in the horror film Richard Donner "Omen" (1976), the romantic drama Karl Reisch "The Woman of the French Lieutenant", and as a starring in the television role of Laurence Olives in 1984. A year earlier, Leo McKern was waiting for recognition at home: he was awarded the rank of officer of the Order of Australia. His last notable acting success was with the Australian melodrama Journey to the North (1987, Karl Schultz). McKern's character in this film is an elderly man whose best days are long gone, and his wife goes in search of a better life. For this role, he received awards from the Australian Film Institute and the Montreal Film Festival as best actor. McKern continued acting until the late nineties and died on July 23, 2002 in Bath, Somerset. One of his daughters from marriage to Jane Holland, Abigail McKern, became an actress.
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