LONDON — British actor Timothy West, who performed wartime chief Winston Churchill on three events and the basic titular Shakespeare roles of Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth, has died, He was 90.
In a press release, his kids mentioned that West died “peacefully” in his sleep “along with his family and friends on the finish.”
“After a protracted and extraordinary life on and off the stage, our darling father Timothy West died peacefully in his sleep yesterday night,” his kids Juliet, Samuel and Joseph mentioned.
Throughout his lengthy profession, West was a daily presence on stage and display, his versatility permitting him to play a broad vary of characters. He excelled as a number one actor in quite a few Shakespeare productions whereas recurring roles in British tv’s two hottest cleaning soap operas, “Coronation Avenue” and “Eastenders,” saved him within the public eye in later life.
West, who was born within the north England metropolis of Bradford, made his London stage debut in 1959, earlier than becoming a member of the Royal Shakespeare Firm within the Nineteen Sixties, the place he earned his performing chops.
On tv, he had roles in quite a few variations of Charles Dickens’ novels, together with “Arduous Occasions”, “Oliver Twist” and “Bleak Home”. “Arduous Occasions” was parodied in ITV’s “Brass” from 1982 to 1984, through which he performed a ruthless self-made businessman. He returned for a 3rd sequence in 1990,
West performed Churchill thrice, in 1979’s “From Churchill and the Generals”, “The Final Bastion” 5 years later and in “Hiroshima” in 1995.
He was married for 61 years to actress Prunella Scales, who was most well-known for her function as Sybil Fawlty within the basic Seventies BBC comedy “Fawlty Towers.”
The couple’s lengthy romance was showcased over 10 sequence of Channel 4’s “Nice Canal Journeys” between 2014 and 2021. This system, which ostensibly was a love letter to narrowboats and of the British countryside, was extensively praised for the way in which it truthfully depicted Scales’ sluggish deterioration with dementia.
West was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1984 for his providers to drama.
