Britain is a country which hardly says "Happy Birthday" to an old film director called Ken Loach, unfeted at home but lauded abroad

Ken, whose films are noted for there social realism and driven by his left political wing views, is 77 today.

For me, he will always be remembered for his wonderful film, 'Kes,' which he made in 1969 when I was 22 and he was 33. Forty four years on and it still makes me smile :

The football match :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUCQhertnbU and the caning :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZB0i0NzOe0

What you possibly didn't know about Ken, that he :

* was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire and from the age of 11 attended King Edward VI Grammar School, left and served two years national service in the Royal Air Force, then studied law at St Peter's College, Oxford University and performed comedy in the 'Oxford Review'.

* made 10 BBC' 'Wednesday Plays', including the docudramas 'Up the Junction' in 1965 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILTTL4JoQJA, 'Cathy Come Home' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KSAkX1YDTs dealing with the issues of homelessness, unemployment and the working of social services in '66 whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws.

* directed the feature films for the cinema, 'Poor Cow' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYOsXumc6-E
in '67 and 'Kes' recouhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRYvUpsrqmg , the story of a troubled boy and his kestrel and listed as Number 7 by the British Institute in the list of 'Best British films of the Twentieth Century',


*  made the 'The Gamekeeper' in 1968, but was less successful in the 1970s, suffered from poor distribution, lack of interest and political censorship and found his 1967 documentary : 'The Save the Children Fund Film' so disliked by the charity that it attempted to have the negative destroyed and wasn't screened publicly until 2011.

* made 'Looks and Smiles' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtNnJcxMcNA
in 1981 and was commissioned by Channel 4 to make 'Questions of Leadership', a documentary series on the response of the British trade union movement to the challenge posed by the policies of Margaret Thatcher's Government and concluded that the decision not to screen the programmes, 'politically motivated'.

* directed 'Which Side Are You On?' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6kpwAZwzVE in 1985 about the songs and poems of the Miners Strike commissioned by ITV's, 'The South Bank Show' also withdrawn from transmission.only to see it broadcast only after it won a major prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

* in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, made the critically acclaimed, 'Hidden Agenda' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYmGjSCw5ck dealing with the political troubles in Northern Ireland, 'Carla's Song' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyVd-oePe2U set partially in Nicaragua.

* saw 'Land and Freedom' in 1995 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfGM5EQtMTg, examining the Republican resistance in the Spanish Civil War, with its quintessential 'Loach sequence' of a political discussion amongst villagers trying to decide whether or not smallholdings should be collectivized, win the 'Ecumenical Jury Prize' at Cannes and become a box-office hit in Spain, where it sparked intense debate about its subject matter. 

* often saw his films achieve more popularity in mainland Europe than in either Britain or the the USA where 'Riff-Raff' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ0kCxY73cM in 1991 won the 'Felix Award for Best European Film' receive less acclaim in the USA where it was shown with subtitles because of its English dialect and in  2006, won the 'Palmed'Or' at Cannes for 'The Wind That Shakes the Barley' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtX11mUh6kA , about the Irish War of Independence against the British the Irish Civil War during the 1920s.

* saw his most recent 'commercially successful' 2009, 'Looking for Eric' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j852L4afUJs , featuring a depressed postman's conversations with the ex-Manchester United football star, Eric Cantona,  played by himself, fail to get wide release and only make £12,000 profit, despite receiving critical acclaim.

* in 2011, released 'Route Irish' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNIiF51RNo , an examination of private contractors working in the Iraqi occupation and saw his most recent film, 'The Angel's Share' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcQIvmR21VU about a young Scottish troublemaker, given one final opportunity to stay out of jail receive the 'Jury Prize' at the Cannes.

* in the series,'The Film That Changed My Life', in the Observer newspaper in 2010, Loach cited Vittorio De Sica's 'The Bicycle Thief' made in 1948, as the movie that 'most inspired him to pursue a career in filmmaking'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_lJbSJoIuw

Ken, actors and critics talking about his films :
https://www.youtube.com/user/KenLoachFilms

Ken on film making : "A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage".

Britain is still a country for and says "Happy Birthday" to the old movie actor who became a classic villain, Malcolm McDowell

By coincidence I featured Malcolm, who is 70 years old today, in my post yesterday.

What you possibly did not know about Malcolm, that he :

* was born Malcolm John Taylor, in 1943 during the Second World War in Horsforth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of  Edna, née McDowell, a hotelier and Charles Taylor, a publican.


* was packed off to boarding school at the age of 11 because his father was keen to give him 'a good start in life', first to  Tunbridge Boarding School and then Cannock House School school in Orpington, Kent (above) where he took part in his first school production playing Feste the clown in Midsummer Night's Dream in 1956 and decided that he wanted to become an actor.

*  left school and attended the London Academy of Music and Art and also worked at his parents' pub but lost his job when the pub went bankrupt after his father drank all the profits and then had a variety of jobs, from messenger
 to coffee salesman,  a job which later inspired his film, 'Oh Lucky Man'.

* secured work as an extra with the Royal Shakespeare Company before making his screen debut in a lead role, at the age of 25 in 1968, as the public school rebel Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's 'If'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqoGcC4S5jk

* followed up with 'Figures in a Landscape' in 1970 and 'The Raging Moon'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8dbTpi8Ko in '71, before Stanley Kubric cast him as  Alex, in 'A Clockwork Orange',https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7fO3bzPeBQ a young hoodlum who is brainwashed by a dystopian British Government in the near future in a process which destroys his love of Beethoven and raises the ethical issues Anthony Burgess had posed in his novel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMfVkPqbh0Y

* after winning great acclaim and a nomination for a 'Golden Globe, wqrked with Lyndsay Anderson again in a film based on his own idea, 'Oh Lucky Man', at the age of 30 in 1973, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54QlegtNfSw followed by 'Among Thieves' in 1977 and his Hollywood debut as H.G.Wells in 'Time After Time' in '79.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD39rK1uSww

* started playing villains with 'Caligula' in 1979 at the age of 36 and 11 years into his film career and wasn't quite accurate when he later remarked on his playing film villains: "I suppose I'm primarily known for that but in fact, that would only be half of my career if I was to tot it all up."

* starred in the 1982 remake of 'Cat People' and at the age of 40 in 1983, was busy with the action film, 'Blue Thunder', starred in as Reggie Wanker in 'Get Crazy' , a parody of Mick Jagger and as the Wolf in 'Little Red Riding Hood' with his wife of the time, Mary Steenburgen.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXOwAwGBqmo

* by the mid-1980s, found that years of alcohol and drug abuse, including $1000 a week on cocaine, caught up with him, his black hair was grey and looking older than he was, nobody wanted to cast him for playing younger roles and he did many B-rated movies and later reflected that : " The best thing I did was abuse myself when younger, I dabbled in everything, cocaine, booze, women, because now I don't have to do it anymore."

*  in the 1990s, was back on form as 'the man who killed Captain Kirk', the mad scientist Dr.Tolian Soran in the 1994 'Star Trek Generation' and in 1995, co-starred with actress and artist Lori Petty in the action/science fiction/comedy film, 'Tank Girl' as the villain Dr. Kesslee, the evil director of the global Water and Power Company, whose main goal in the story was to control the planet's entire water supply on a future desert-like, post-apocalyptic Earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3iEgKjh3Nk

* appeared in an episode of the animated series 'South Park' playing the real-life narrator of the story introducing himself  as 'a British person', in a parody of 'Masterpiece Theatre' and its ex-host, Alistair Cooke.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtS8IMN1P1c

*  played himself in Robert Altman's,'The Player' in which he chastised the protagonist, played by Tim Robbins, for badmouthing him behind his back and worked with Altman again in 2003 in 'The Company' as 'Mr. A.', the fictional director of the 'Joffrey Ballet of Chcago' based on real-life director Gerald Arpino.

* in 2006, portrayed radio mogul Jonas Slaughter on 'Law & Order : Criminal Intent' and the following year, portrayed the villainous Mr Linderman on the first season of the NBC series, 'Heroes'.

* in his 60's, appeared as Dr Sam Loomis in remakes of 'Halloween' and 'Halloween II'. played Desmond LaRochette in Robert Whitlow's 'The List' and Irish patriarch Enda Doyle in 'Red Roses and Petrol' at the age of 65 in 2008.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2OAR6MDoWE

* today, despite the fact that he lives in Los Angeles and likes the Ameican 'no nonsense' ways, still does not have US citizenship, owns a home in Britain and remains one of its more remarkable old men.

Britain is a country where old men who are baby boomers are rightfully chastised by an old Bishop of London for absorbing too much tax payer's money in this time of austerity

When I read that the 65 year old Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres had criticised his own Baby Boomer generation because they are now " absorbing more than their fair share of taxpayers’ money",  I was reminded of the scene in Lyndsay Anderson's 1968 film, 'If'. Set in a boys' public school, 16 year old sixth form pupil, Mick, played by Malcolm McDowell and two of his companions are beaten by another boy, the Head of House, 18 year old Rowntree, for their 'general attitude'. Rowntree had not been elected by the pupils in the house but chosen by the house master.

Rowntree : "Good evening. I imagine you know why you're here ?"
Mick : "No."
Rowntree : "For being a nuisance. A general nuisance in the house."
Mick : "What do you mean, 'being an nuisance' ? What have we done ?"
Rowntree : "Done ? It's your general attitude. You know exactly what I mean."
Mick : "Attitude?."
Rowntree : "We've decided to beat you for it."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqoGcC4S5jk

The beating, which takes place in the gym involved Rowntree running at Mick and caning him on the backside and repeating this ten times. At the end of the punishment, Mick, smarting with tears shakes the hand of his punisher and says : "Thank you Rowntree". 

So, up before the 'head of house', the 65 year old Bishop, chosen by a convoluted process involving the other lords of the Church and not elected by his London parishioners in the Church of England, how might the conversation between the Bishop and the errant 65+ boomers go ?

Boomers : "What have we boomers done ?"
Bishop : "Done ? You are  'fortunate generation' because you  have enjoyed huge improvements in standards of living during your lifetimes."
Boomers : "And ?"
Bishop : "Well, there are ‘severe questions’ about the share of government spending allocated to you as a group. I've made my comments about you in a lecture organised by religious broadcaster and publisher, 'Premier Christian Media' and hope that I've added fuel to the debate over 'whether the elderly can be protected from further austerity cuts'."
Boomers : "But why pick on us ?"
Bishop : "Because public spending has rocketed from £260 billion in 1997 to £695 billion last year. Much is this has been absorbed by you ways which raise questions of intergenerational equity. Questions of distributive justice continue to be of vital concern for our political leaders and so they should be for Christian citizens,"
Boomers : "Thank you Bishop, for putting us straight and using your position to highlight the burden we are selfishly placing on the shoulders of our fellow citizens."
 

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Goodbye" to an old comic novelist called Tom Sharpe who gave it Wilt and much more in a life 'drawn in bold colours and lived vibrantly to the end'

Tom Sharpe, comic novelist, whose bawdy style, savage pen and biting turns of phrase helped to earn him the title of the 'Master of British Farce', has died aged 85.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndV5iioTBbU

What you possibly didn't know about Tom, that he :

* was born in Croydon, South London, before the Second World War, his mother and South African and his father was a Unitarian minister in his religion and a fascist, a follower of Oswald Mosley (right) and believer in Adolf Hitler in his politics and when the War broke out in 1939, moved continuously with his family to avoid his father being interned with other British Nazis.

* went to school at Lancing College, West Sussex and later said that the most significant thing that happened was a friendly master giving him Waugh's 'Decline and Fall' to read which had, he said, a tremendous influence when he came to write his own comedies and was also influenced by the writing of P.G. Wodehouse.

* at school, wore a German army belt with 'Gott Mit Uns' on the buckle and when he went to the seaside, used to daydream of scrambling over the barbed wire and swimming across the Channel to occupied France to "join the good guys".course and came close to having a nervous breakdown when he saw the newsreels liberation of the Nazi death camps at the end of the War.

* at the age of 18 in 1946, did his national service for two years in the Royal Marines and then went to Pembroke College, Cambridge where he studied history and social anthropology.

* in 1951 at the age of 23, went to South Africa, where he did social work for the 'Non-European Affairs Department' and witnessed the horrors inflicted on the black population through the apartheid regime and then taught in Natal for a time before setting up a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg in 1957.

* wrote a play, 'The South Africans', which criticised the country's racial policy and, although it only a small production in London, was enough to bring down on him the wrath of the 'Bureau of State Security' and hounding by the secret police, spent Christmas 1960 in jail before being deported back to Britain for sedition in 1961 and was questioned and intimidated by the police when the ship docked at ports along the coast.

* on returning to Britain, took a position as a history lecturer at the Cambridge College of Ats and Technology and after some years started his writing career in 1971 and in just three weeks, wrote the novel 'Riotous Assembly', set in South Africa and describing the chaos that ensues after an innocent black man is blown apart by an elephant gun in a comic send-up of the South African police, to whom he dedicated the book 'whose lives are dedicated to the preservation of western civilisation in southern Africa'.

*  continued his crusade against racism with 'Indecent Exposure' in 1973, in which Kommandant van Heerden is under the mistaken impression that he had been given 'the heart of an English gentleman' in a transplant operation and starts to read the British novelist Dornford Yates.

* gained a large readership as a bestseller author who, in 1976 introduced his most popular character: Henry Wilt, a mild-mannered teacher of literature at the fictional 'Fenland College of Arts and Technology', who gets involved in a murder investigation and claimed that the account of teaching day-release apprentice butchers and tradesmen in classes timetabled as 'Meat One' and 'Plasterers Two', were based on his own experiences as a college lecturer.
Quote : 'The man who said the pen was mightier than the sword ought to have tried reading The Mill on the Floss to Motor Mechanics.'

* continued his dissection of English life with 'Blott on the Landscape' in 1975, then returned to Wilt, the long-suffering lecturer seen as his alter ego, 'an insignificant little man to whom things happened and for whom life was a chapter of indignities', with 'The Wilt Alternative' in 1979, 'Wilt on High' in 1984.

* found that the film of Wilt, starring Griff Rhys Jones in 1989, brought him an even wider audience, as did the tv adaptations of his novels, ' Blott on the Landscape', starring David Suchet in 1985 and 'Porterhouse Blue' starring Ian Richardson and David Jason in 1987 (right).
Quote : 'I have yet to meet a liberal who can withstand the attrition of prolonged discussion of the unessentials.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTUOSMt5QM

* found that ill health forced him into the long silence, after suffering a heart attack live on tv in Spain, from his 'Wilt on High' in 1984 to 'Grantchester Grind' in 1995 followed by 'The Midden' in '96 and later said that he kept writing every day of those 11 years, but did not think the work good enough.
Quote form Wilt : 'There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to a highly trained intelligence leapfrogging common sense and coming to the wrong conclusions. It gives me renewed faith in parliamentary democracy.'

* from 1995, with his American wife, Nancy, divided his time between Cambridge and their home in Llafranc, Spain, where he wrote 'Wilt in Nowhere' in 2004, of which Will Hammond in the 'Observer' said that he gave : 'voice to a deep-rooted part of English culture', and 'confirmed once again that his position at the heart of British comedy is as assured as that of the seaside postcard. Over the course of his prolific career, he has been hailed as the king of slapstick, a satirist in the line of Wodehouse, and a major craftsman in the art of farce (a spoonerism he would no doubt enjoy). In 'Wilt in Nowhere', he shows himself to be all these and more: vengeful, chaotic, Swiftian in his tastes, cartoonish in his extremes, and above all wild and amusing.'

* gave an interview on Spanish tv in 2009, with his doctor to explain how she saved him when he fell ill with peritonitis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axBT7C9jKbg

* produced his last book, 'The Wilt Inheritance' in 2010 and died this week in Spain, where he spoke neither Spanish nor Catalan saying : "I don't want to learn the language. I don't want to hear what the price of meat is."

His friend, the former 'Guardian' editor. Peter Preston said : "Tom never forgot or quite broke free from his roots. His father's influence and politics were a constant, conflicted, almost obsessional memory. He could remember every detail of his life in South African prison. I saw him last only a few weeks ago, recovering from a stroke and starting to read his own books as therapy. He was still funny, still irascible, still interested in everything. It was a life drawn in bold colours and lived vibrantly to the end."

Susan Sandon, his editor at Random House, said of Tom, that he was a man who was : "warm, supportive and wholly engaging and one of our greatest satirists and a brilliant writer. Witty, often outrageous, always acutely funny about the absurdities of life."

What better obituaries could an old Brit wish to have ?


 

Britain is no country for old men retiring from work and into a life below the poverty line

 

This is Seebohm Rowntree, sociological researcher, social reformer and industrialist, who 112 years ago  published his study, 'Poverty in York'. It became a seminal work of sociology and for the first time used the concept of the 'poverty
line', showing that, in their lives, labourers lived below the poverty line when they were children, when they had their own children and when they were old and 'past work'.

Of the 46,000 people Rowntee surveyed, his study revealed that 20,000 were living in poverty; defined by falling below a calculated minimum weekly sum of money 'necessary to enable families to secure the necessities of a healthy life'.
His findings proved instrumental in changing public perception of the causes of poverty, and are widely regarded as a significant catalyst in the Liberal reforms from 1906 to 1914 which provided the foundation for the modern-day welfare state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rN3WG1SMss
Fast forward 112 years and we find that Britain still has many people and in particular old men and women living 'below the poverty line', surviving on an income of less than £8,254 a year.

The Prudential's 'Class of 2013' research, based on interviews with 1,007 people retiring this year, found that many are facing a bleak financial outlook and :

* one in five of the old men and women retiring this year will fall below the poverty line.

* nearly one old man in ten (14%), will depend solely on the state pension, currently a maximum of £110.15 a week, as they have no other pension arranged and among old women the figure rises to over two in ten (23%).

* many overestimate just how much they will receive from the state, on average 'guessing' at a figure that is £600 a year more than they will actually receive and around one in 10 said they have 'no idea what the state pension will pay.'.

* old Welsh men and women are the worst-off, with 25% of them below the poverty line compared to 14% in London.

Vince Smith-Hughes, retirement income expert at Prudential, has said :
"Against a backdrop of rising living costs, the basic state pension alone is not nearly enough to provide a comfortable standard of living. While it's a very valuable source of additional income for millions of pensioners, the state pension should ideally only represent a part of someone's retirement income, not all of it."

According to separate research by pension consultants 'Hymans Robertson', many old men will now have to work long past their state pension age to maintain a decent standard of living. It found that as employers have axed generous 'final salary schemes' and many employees no longer have sufficient savings to be able to afford to retire.

Poor stock market returns, worsening annuities and improved longevity have combined to make the task of saving enough for retirement a near impossibility for many people. In April, the Office of National Statistics said that the pension fund needed to buy an income of £5,000 year in retirement had risen by 29% in hust three years to £152,800.

David Smith, Wealth Manager at 'BestInvest' said:
" The vast majority of people simply can't afford to save enough to a defined contribution pension plan to secure retirement at age 65 or earlier."
Based upon current annuity rates a 65-year-old male would need a pension pot of roughly £500,000 to generate a pension income of £25,000 per annum gross and this is without allowing for the impact of inflation.

Britain : no place for old men below the poverty line in 1901 and no place for old men below the same line in 2013.

Britain is no country for larger and larger numbers of old men, drinking more and more, to ill result

First the bad news. You old men in Britain have :

* had more admissions to hospitals in England for alcohol-related injuries and illness than the young 16 to 24 year olds and have entered in larger numbers, with a 62% increase in the last five years.

* those of you in the 55-74 age group, died in the largest numbers from alcohol-related deaths.

* had Dr Sarah Wadd, Programme Director for 'Substance Misuse and Ageing' research at the Institute of Applied Social Research at the University of Bedfordshire say of you that :
 "Evidence suggests that Britain may be facing an epidemic of alcohol-related harm among older people. An estimated 1.4 million people aged 65 and over currently exceed recommended drinking limits and the large numbers born in the post-Second World War economic boom period, the so-called 'baby-boomers', are moving into old age drinking relatively high levels of alcohol compared with previous generations."
 
* have had Dr Tony Rao, a Consultant Old-Age Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, find that between 2002 and 2012 hospital admissions among you 60-74 year olds for 'mental and behavioural disorders 'due to the use of alcohol rose by 150%. from 3,247 to 8,120.

* had experts advise you to refrain from drink on at least two days a week, yet more of you are drinking for six or seven days a week than any other age group.

* have had a recent report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists say that you should drink less than other age groups, a maximum of 1.5 units of alcohol a day, because you are less able to process alcohol and the drink might also interact with medication you may be taking.

* a tendency, when you drink, to lose your sense of balance and are probably unaware that your liver is becoming less efficient at breaking down alcohol.
 
* one in five of you are drinking enough to harm yourselves, a rise of 40% in the past 20 years.

* possibly got reasons for your alcohol abuse in either your bereavement, loneliness, pain, ill health, disability or depression.

Now a little bit of good news for you baby boomer old men and women who drink too much, you have a friend in the 'Big Lottery Fund', which has announced an investment of £25million in the 'Rethink Good Health Programme', to tackle your late-onset alcohol misuse and It is looking for a partner to manage the project, which would set up 15 to 20 help centres across the country.

Peter Ainsworth, the Big Lottery Fund Chairman said :
"Most older people drink moderately and nobody is suggesting for a moment that older people should be discouraged from enjoying a well-earned pint or a glass of wine relaxing with family or friends. But while it is young people who are often stigmatised for their drinking habits, a silent story is evolving among older people as they experience life-changing events such as retirement, redundancy or bereavement. Today's Big Lottery Fund £25m investment will help call time on this trend by supporting evidence-based preventive approaches to alcohol misuse among older people."

My earlier post :
Tuesday, 11 September 2012

Britain is a country where more and more old men drink more and more in their old age

http://britainisnocountryforoldmen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/britain-is-country-where-more-and-more.html

Britain is still a country for and says "Happy Birthday" to a trio of old actors, the Welshman Jonathan Pryce, the Scot Brian Cox and the Lancashireman Robert Powell

JUNE 1st 2013

Jonathan is 66 today, Brian 67 and Robert 69.

What you possibly didn't know about these old thespians, that :

They were born and educated :

* Jonathan in Carmel in Wales,the son of Margaret and Isaac, a former coal miner who, along with his wife, ran a small  grocery shop, had two elder sisters and was educated at Holywell Grammar School and, at the age of 16, went to art college and then started training to be a teacher at Edge Hill College in Ormskirk.

* A year earlier, Brian was born in Dundee in Scotland, the youngest of 5 children the son of  Mary Ann, a spinner who worked in the jute mills abd suffered several nervous beakdowns during his childhood and Charles , a butcher and later shopkeeper, who died when Brian was eight and was subsequently brought up by his four elder sisters

* In the Second World War in 1944, Robert was was born in Salford, Lancashire and was  educated at Manchester Gammar School where one of his classmates was the later actor, Ben Kingsley.

Started acting :

* Jonathan took part in a college theatre production and impressed his tutor who suggested he became an actor and gained a scholarship to Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where, despite finding it "straight laced"  and being told by his tutor  that he could never aspire to do more than playing villains in the police tv series, 'Z-Cars', graduated and joined the Everyman Theatre Liverpool Company where he became 'Artistic Director'.
http://bigthink.com/users/jonathan-pryce

* Brian got into acting at an early age and joined the Dundee Repertory Theatre at 14 and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, left in 1965 and joined the Lyceum Company in Edinburgh, followed by two years with the Birmingham Rep, where his parts included the title role in 'Peer Gynt'  in 1967 and made his London debut as Orlando in 'As You Like It' at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1967 at the age of 21.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHESzaoWqsY

* Robert was an undergraduate at Salford University and aspiring to becoming a lawyer, studied at the Manchester College of Commerce, where he took part in the College Revue of Comedy Sketches to see which role gave him "the best laughs" and then joined a repertory theatre in Stoke-on-Trent.

Rose to fame in the 1970s :

* Jonathan joined the director Richard Eyre at the Nottingham Playhouse and starred in the Trevor Giffiths play, 'Comedians' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdDzrmmbb8Q and reprised the role at London's Old Vic Theatre and in 1976 on Broadway, for which he won the 1977 Tony Award for 'Best Featured Actor in a Play' and appeared in his first movie role in 'Voyage of the Damned' starring
Faye Dunaway and from 1978 to '79 and in three Royal Shakespeare Company productions.

* Brian had taken the lead role at the age of 22 in the tv 'The Year of the Sex Olympics'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9NP5F9X2F8in 1968 and his had first film appearance was as Leon Trotsky (right), in 'Nicholas and Alexandra' in 1971 and then in 1978, played King Henry II  in the acclaimed BBC tv drama serial, 'The Devil's Cown'.

* Robert became a tv regular with roles in BBC's science fiction series, 'Doomwatch' and starring roles in adaptations of the novels 'Sentimental Education' at the age of 26 in 1970 and 'Jude the Obscure' in '71 and made forays into film, as the Austrian composer in the Ken Russell biopic 'Mahler' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWvgMgiBfkw and Captain Walker in his 'Tommy' in 1975 and then played Jesus Christ in Zeffirelli's 'Jesus of Nazareth' in 1977
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw3zMXCTnuA&feature=related
and then took the leading role of Richard Hannay in the third film version of 'Thirty Nine Steps'.

In the 1980s :

* Jonathan's performance in the title role of 'Hamlet' in 1980 at the Royal Court Theatre won him an Olivier Award and in 1983, played the role of the sinister Mr. Dark (left), in 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmRdHVkqS_k followed by appearances in tv films, 'The Ploughman's Lunch' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgnJvmK7Stw and 'Martin Luther, Heretic' and then the protagonist Sam Lowry in Terry Gilliam's 1985 film, 'Brazil' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wh2b1eZFUM and then followed by Gene Wilder's 'Haunted Honeymoon' while on stage in Chekhov's 'The Seagull'  and from 1986 to 1987 'Macbeth' in the Royal Shakespeare Company production.

* Brian later said that the greatest stage performance he'd ever given was in the title role of 'Titus Andronicus' at the Royal Shakespeare Company and played Burgundy opposite Laurence Olivier in 'King Lear' in 1983, then went on to play King Lear at the National Theatre and in film in 1986, played Hannibal Lecktor in 'Manhunter'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccPeC-uRI2c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USNWRCi1Npg

*in 1980 Robert appeared in the title role of the film 'Harlequin' and won the .Best Actor Award. at the Paris Film Festival. and in 1982,  'Best Actor' at the Venice Film Festival for his role in 'Imperativ', then agreed to a request from his old friend and golf partner, comedian Jasper Carrot taking the part of an incompetent detective in a succession of sketches that formed part of Carrott's tv series followed by the sitcom 'The Detectives'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-k_LBtIgHk , then in 1984, made his US film debut in 'What Waits Below'  known as 'Secrets of the Phantom Caverns' and in 1986, narrated and co-starred in the  mini series 'Shaku Zulu' with soccer legend Henry Cele in the title role.

In the 1990s :

* In 1991, Brian played the part of Owen Benjamin, the father of a gay man, in the BBC  production of  'The Lost Language of Cranes' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfeftWthC00 appeared in episodes of 'Sharpe' and 'Inspector Morse' and in film in ' Rob Roy', 'Braveheart'  in 1995 and 'Troy' and 'The Bourne Supremacy.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq295Mg6PHg

* Jonathan plated the Engineer, a Eurasian pimp (right), in the West End musical 'Miss Saigon'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJx5XjB9tw
and won the Olivier and Variety Club awards and saw the production's transfer to Broadway court controversy because his casting as a Caucasian actor made up to appear Asian was said to be an affront to the Asian community but went on to win a Tony Award for his performance ; in 1993 featured in the BBC mini-series 'Mr Wroe's Virgins' ; in 1995 gained the Best Actor Award atht eh Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of the gay writer Lytton Strachey in 'Carrington' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njvKTxtrdcM and in '96 starred as Juan Peron with Madonna in his first musical film, 'Evita' ; went on to play Elliot Caver in the 1997 James Bond film, 'Tomorrow Never Dies' http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/tomorrowneverdiesmediamogulmontage.mov/viewand during the rest of the decade played to his newly acquired fame as a villain, playing an assassin in 'Ronin' a corrupt cardinal in 'Stigmata'

* In 1992, Robert starred in the New Zealand World War I film 'Chunuk Bair' as Sgt Maj Frank Smith and in 1993-'95,  was the voice actor of Dr. Livesey in 'The Legend of Treasure Island'.

2000 onwards :

* Jonathan has continued to play in movies and the London stage production of 'My Fair Lady' and his portrayal of Professor Henry Higgins was acclaimed by the media and in 2003 returned to the non-musical stage with 'A Reckoning', written by American dramatist Wesley Moore.and in the same year landed a role in 'Pirates of the Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl' as the fictional Governor of Jamaica (right), a movie he described as "one of those why-not movies"; went on to appear in his second musical film 'De-Lovely' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AGCGPj2w-Y and 'The Brothers Grimm', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3hYbDHwBJY his third film with Terry Gilliam and in 2004 on stage played Martin, a goat-lover who has to face the recriminations of his cheated-on wife, played by his real life wife Kate Fahy in 'The Goat or Who is Sylvia ?'

* In 2002, Brian appeared in 'Adaption' as the real-life screenwriting teacher, Robert McKee, giving advice to Nicholas Cage in both his roles, as Charlie Kaufman and Charlie's fictional twin brother Donald and in 2008, starred in 'Red' and played an institutionalized convict and then starred in the Ridley Scott produced 'Tell Tale', a film based on the short story 'The Tell Tale Hear't by Edgar Alan Poe.

* Robert has appeared less in person less often, but his distinctive voice has been heard as narrator of tv programmes such as 'Great Crimes and Trials' and 'The World at War' and in 2005 played a part in the film, 'Colour Me Kubric',
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZXY5pGkizA the true story of a man who posed as director Stanley Kubrick during the production of Kubrick's last film, 'Eyes Wide Shut', and in the same year became a regular in the UK TV medical drama, 'Holby City' where he remained for six years before departing to return to theatre in 2008 to perform as narrator in Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf' with the Huddersfield Philharmonic Orchestra.
So Britain says "Thanks" to three old Brits who have collectively devoted about 120 years of their lives giving pleasure on stage and screen !