Mr.LV
OG
David Warner, Convincing Big-Screen Villain in ‘Time Bandits,’ ‘TRON’ and ‘Time After Time,’ Dies at 80
www.hollywoodreporter.com
The busy British actor appeared in three films for Sam Peckinpah and did everything from Shakespeare and 'Star Trek' to 'Tom Jones' and 'Titanic.'
David Warner, the classically trained British actor renowned for his performances as polished villains in Time After Time, Time Bandits, TRON, Titanic and so much more, has died. He was 80.
Warner died Sunday at Denville Hall, a nursing home in London for those in the entertainment industry, his family told the BBC.
“Over the past 18 months he approached his diagnosis with a characteristic grace and dignity,” they said. “He will be missed hugely by us, his family and friends, and remembered as a kind-hearted, generous and compassionate man, partner and father whose legacy of extraordinary work has touched the lives of so many over the years. We are heartbroken.”
In the first film he made in the U.S., Warner portrayed the itinerant preacher Joshua Duncan Sloane in Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and the filmmaker brought him back to play the village idiot Henry Niles in Straw Dogs (1971) and the German officer Kiesel in Cross of Iron (1977).
Star Trek fans know Warner for portraying three different species in the franchise: the human Federation representative St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), the peaceful Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and the Cardassian officer Gul Madred on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1992.
Before he stood out as the vile Blifil in the Oscar best picture winner Tom Jones (1963), the lanky Manchester native studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and starred in several plays for Peter Hall at the then-fledgling Royal Shakespeare Company.
A bout with stage fright kept him away from the theater for nearly three decades until he returned to play munitions magnate Andrew Undershaft in the 2001 Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. He received a Theatre World Award in the process.
The self-effacing Warner also was the ill-fated photojournalist Keith Jennings in Richard Donner‘s The Omen (1976), the wacky scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter in Carl Reiner’s The Man With Two Brains (1983) and the ape Senator Sandar in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes (2001).
He rarely refused a role, as evidenced by his 220-plus acting credits on IMDb. “When others say no,” he once said, “I say yes.” Sometimes, he got the part because he was the “cheapest” one available, he joked.
After portraying the nefarious Jack the Ripper opposite Malcolm McDowell in Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time (1979) and the character aptly named Evil in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) — he said he got that gig because Jonathan Pryce was busy elsewhere — Warner turned it up a notch for Tron (1982).
BY MIKE BARNES
Plus Icon
JULY 25, 2022 7:41AM
David Warner in 1979's 'Time After Time' EVERETT
David Warner, the classically trained British actor renowned for his performances as polished villains in Time After Time, Time Bandits, TRON, Titanic and so much more, has died. He was 80.
Warner died Sunday at Denville Hall, a nursing home in London for those in the entertainment industry, his family told the BBC.
“Over the past 18 months he approached his diagnosis with a characteristic grace and dignity,” they said. “He will be missed hugely by us, his family and friends, and remembered as a kind-hearted, generous and compassionate man, partner and father whose legacy of extraordinary work has touched the lives of so many over the years. We are heartbroken.”
Related Stories
MUSIC NEWSAdele Unveils Rescheduled Dates for Vegas Residency
In the first film he made in the U.S., Warner portrayed the itinerant preacher Joshua Duncan Sloane in Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and the filmmaker brought him back to play the village idiot Henry Niles in Straw Dogs (1971) and the German officer Kiesel in Cross of Iron (1977).
Star Trek fans know Warner for portraying three different species in the franchise: the human Federation representative St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), the peaceful Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and the Cardassian officer Gul Madred on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1992.
Before he stood out as the vile Blifil in the Oscar best picture winner Tom Jones (1963), the lanky Manchester native studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and starred in several plays for Peter Hall at the then-fledgling Royal Shakespeare Company.
A bout with stage fright kept him away from the theater for nearly three decades until he returned to play munitions magnate Andrew Undershaft in the 2001 Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. He received a Theatre World Award in the process.
The self-effacing Warner also was the ill-fated photojournalist Keith Jennings in Richard Donner‘s The Omen (1976), the wacky scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter in Carl Reiner’s The Man With Two Brains (1983) and the ape Senator Sandar in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes (2001).
He rarely refused a role, as evidenced by his 220-plus acting credits on IMDb. “When others say no,” he once said, “I say yes.” Sometimes, he got the part because he was the “cheapest” one available, he joked.
After portraying the nefarious Jack the Ripper opposite Malcolm McDowell in Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time (1979) and the character aptly named Evil in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) — he said he got that gig because Jonathan Pryce was busy elsewhere — Warner turned it up a notch for Tron (1982).
David Warner in 1982’s ‘Tron’
In the groundbreaking Disney film, Warner played Ed Dillinger, the scheming ENCOM senior executive who swipes Kevin Flynn’s (Jeff Bridges) work and passes it off as his own; SARK, the malevolent living program inside the mainframe; and the voice of the rogue Master Control Program.
“It was very interesting to do it because you know we were all on black sets and with our costumes the way they were,” he said in a 2021 interview. “It was on film, not video, and they had to color every single frame. They put it together and it was quite extraordinary. Of course, I didn’t understand what was going on.”
Thirty-four years after he was in his first Oscar best picture winner, Warner was in another one, portraying the cutthroat Spicer Lovejoy, the loyal-to-a-fault valet/bodyguard who works for Billy Zane’s industrialist Cal Hockley, in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997).
There have been stories over the years that Warner was Wes Craven’s first choice (not Robert Englund) to play the sinister Freddy Krueger in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), but those were discounted by the actor in the 2016 book Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.
An only child, David Hattersley Warner was born out of wedlock on July 29, 1941. In what he described as a “messy” childhood, he was raised separately by his middle-class parents and struggled at eight different schools before being accepted into RADA.
“I became an actor only to get out of the house,” he said in an August 2021 episode of the David Morrissey podcast Who Am I This Time?
In 1962, he landed the minor role of Snout the tinker in a Royal Court Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Tony Richardson, who then gave Warner his first big-screen speaking role, as the conniving Blifil (half-brother of Albert Finney‘s title character) in Tom Jones.
He auditioned and got a three-year contract with the Royal Shakespeare Company and starred as King Henry VI in an adaption of four Shakespeare plays that made it to television as the 1965-66 miniseries The Wars of the Roses, directed by Hall.
David Warner, Convincing Big-Screen Villain in ‘Time Bandits,’ ‘TRON’ and ‘Time After Time,’ Dies at 80
The busy British actor appeared in three films for Sam Peckinpah and did everything from Shakespeare and 'Star Trek' to 'Tom Jones' and 'Titanic.'
www.hollywoodreporter.com
The busy British actor appeared in three films for Sam Peckinpah and did everything from Shakespeare and 'Star Trek' to 'Tom Jones' and 'Titanic.'
David Warner, the classically trained British actor renowned for his performances as polished villains in Time After Time, Time Bandits, TRON, Titanic and so much more, has died. He was 80.
Warner died Sunday at Denville Hall, a nursing home in London for those in the entertainment industry, his family told the BBC.
“Over the past 18 months he approached his diagnosis with a characteristic grace and dignity,” they said. “He will be missed hugely by us, his family and friends, and remembered as a kind-hearted, generous and compassionate man, partner and father whose legacy of extraordinary work has touched the lives of so many over the years. We are heartbroken.”
In the first film he made in the U.S., Warner portrayed the itinerant preacher Joshua Duncan Sloane in Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and the filmmaker brought him back to play the village idiot Henry Niles in Straw Dogs (1971) and the German officer Kiesel in Cross of Iron (1977).
Star Trek fans know Warner for portraying three different species in the franchise: the human Federation representative St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), the peaceful Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and the Cardassian officer Gul Madred on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1992.
Before he stood out as the vile Blifil in the Oscar best picture winner Tom Jones (1963), the lanky Manchester native studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and starred in several plays for Peter Hall at the then-fledgling Royal Shakespeare Company.
A bout with stage fright kept him away from the theater for nearly three decades until he returned to play munitions magnate Andrew Undershaft in the 2001 Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. He received a Theatre World Award in the process.
The self-effacing Warner also was the ill-fated photojournalist Keith Jennings in Richard Donner‘s The Omen (1976), the wacky scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter in Carl Reiner’s The Man With Two Brains (1983) and the ape Senator Sandar in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes (2001).
He rarely refused a role, as evidenced by his 220-plus acting credits on IMDb. “When others say no,” he once said, “I say yes.” Sometimes, he got the part because he was the “cheapest” one available, he joked.
After portraying the nefarious Jack the Ripper opposite Malcolm McDowell in Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time (1979) and the character aptly named Evil in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) — he said he got that gig because Jonathan Pryce was busy elsewhere — Warner turned it up a notch for Tron (1982).
BY MIKE BARNES
Plus Icon
JULY 25, 2022 7:41AM
David Warner in 1979's 'Time After Time' EVERETT
David Warner, the classically trained British actor renowned for his performances as polished villains in Time After Time, Time Bandits, TRON, Titanic and so much more, has died. He was 80.
Warner died Sunday at Denville Hall, a nursing home in London for those in the entertainment industry, his family told the BBC.
“Over the past 18 months he approached his diagnosis with a characteristic grace and dignity,” they said. “He will be missed hugely by us, his family and friends, and remembered as a kind-hearted, generous and compassionate man, partner and father whose legacy of extraordinary work has touched the lives of so many over the years. We are heartbroken.”
Related Stories
MUSIC NEWSAdele Unveils Rescheduled Dates for Vegas Residency
In the first film he made in the U.S., Warner portrayed the itinerant preacher Joshua Duncan Sloane in Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and the filmmaker brought him back to play the village idiot Henry Niles in Straw Dogs (1971) and the German officer Kiesel in Cross of Iron (1977).
Star Trek fans know Warner for portraying three different species in the franchise: the human Federation representative St. John Talbot in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), the peaceful Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and the Cardassian officer Gul Madred on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1992.
Before he stood out as the vile Blifil in the Oscar best picture winner Tom Jones (1963), the lanky Manchester native studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and starred in several plays for Peter Hall at the then-fledgling Royal Shakespeare Company.
A bout with stage fright kept him away from the theater for nearly three decades until he returned to play munitions magnate Andrew Undershaft in the 2001 Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. He received a Theatre World Award in the process.
The self-effacing Warner also was the ill-fated photojournalist Keith Jennings in Richard Donner‘s The Omen (1976), the wacky scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter in Carl Reiner’s The Man With Two Brains (1983) and the ape Senator Sandar in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes (2001).
He rarely refused a role, as evidenced by his 220-plus acting credits on IMDb. “When others say no,” he once said, “I say yes.” Sometimes, he got the part because he was the “cheapest” one available, he joked.
After portraying the nefarious Jack the Ripper opposite Malcolm McDowell in Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time (1979) and the character aptly named Evil in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) — he said he got that gig because Jonathan Pryce was busy elsewhere — Warner turned it up a notch for Tron (1982).
David Warner in 1982’s ‘Tron’
In the groundbreaking Disney film, Warner played Ed Dillinger, the scheming ENCOM senior executive who swipes Kevin Flynn’s (Jeff Bridges) work and passes it off as his own; SARK, the malevolent living program inside the mainframe; and the voice of the rogue Master Control Program.
“It was very interesting to do it because you know we were all on black sets and with our costumes the way they were,” he said in a 2021 interview. “It was on film, not video, and they had to color every single frame. They put it together and it was quite extraordinary. Of course, I didn’t understand what was going on.”
Thirty-four years after he was in his first Oscar best picture winner, Warner was in another one, portraying the cutthroat Spicer Lovejoy, the loyal-to-a-fault valet/bodyguard who works for Billy Zane’s industrialist Cal Hockley, in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997).
There have been stories over the years that Warner was Wes Craven’s first choice (not Robert Englund) to play the sinister Freddy Krueger in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), but those were discounted by the actor in the 2016 book Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.
An only child, David Hattersley Warner was born out of wedlock on July 29, 1941. In what he described as a “messy” childhood, he was raised separately by his middle-class parents and struggled at eight different schools before being accepted into RADA.
“I became an actor only to get out of the house,” he said in an August 2021 episode of the David Morrissey podcast Who Am I This Time?
In 1962, he landed the minor role of Snout the tinker in a Royal Court Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Tony Richardson, who then gave Warner his first big-screen speaking role, as the conniving Blifil (half-brother of Albert Finney‘s title character) in Tom Jones.
He auditioned and got a three-year contract with the Royal Shakespeare Company and starred as King Henry VI in an adaption of four Shakespeare plays that made it to television as the 1965-66 miniseries The Wars of the Roses, directed by Hall.