Edward Woodward obituary

Popular actor known for his roles in Callan, The Equalizer and The Wicker Man

Edward Woodward, left, as the uptight police officer Howie with Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man, 1973. Photograph: Allstar/Sportsphoto

By Dennis Barker

Edward Woodward, who has died aged 79, was an actor with possibly far more potential than was ever realised on screen, but he became a popular television star in Callan and The Equalizer and enjoyed cult success with the film The Wicker Man. For many years, he was part of the comfortable community of jobbing actors, directors and producers which could be called the "Teddington set" – those who worked for the BBC, ABC and Thames TV studios in west London in their heyday – and so found it comparatively easy to get parts which were financially rewarding but not too stretching.

Presentable, but sombre in appearance, he played loners on the edges of society, and even sanity, who were in their different ways concerned with justice – either sympathetically or not. He was a man who, like many of his most memorable roles, never quite fitted into any comfortable category. Woodward could be greyness nice or nasty. He will be remembered by many as Callan, a seedy, disillusioned spy and hitman – one critic called him a lower-class James Bond – created originally by James Mitchell for a one-off Armchair Theatre programme in 1967. The show was then developed as a series which ran until 1972 and earned Woodward a Bafta award. In 1974 came a Callan feature film.

He was equally effective in a similar role as Robert McCall in The Equalizer (1985-89), playing a grey-suited do-gooder whose altruism took the form of removing, with a sawn-off shotgun or similar instrument of summary justice, villains and oppressors of the virtuous and vulnerable who could not otherwise be removed. This series, too obviously designed for a transatlantic audience, with an embittered ex-CIA man as the hero, made his face equally familiar on both sides of the pond, without bringing him parts to which he could have brought more depth. It won him a Golden Globe but, he said later, the hard-driving US schedules had nearly killed him.

Woodward was born in Croydon, then in Surrey, and as a child was bombed out of his home three times during the second world war. He attributed his ability to radiate personal danger, the suggestion of a hidden precipice within him, to the danger in which he lived in the war. He found it a very exciting time for children, though also horrifying. He saw buildings destroyed and he saw bodies. It was the era of the "you just had to get over it" school of thought.

Woodward went to Elmwood school in Wallington, Surrey, where he developed his interest in drama, and then arrived at Kingston commercial college at the age of 14 with the ambition of becoming a journalist. A stint as a shorthand typist for a sanitary engineers followed, before he went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at 16 and appeared on stage at Castle theatre, Farnham, in 1946. He spent several years in provincial rep, where he was not quite a glamorous juvenile lead but too interesting to play heroes' best friend parts.

His London debut was in Where There's a Will, at the Garrick in 1955. The late 1950s saw him distinguishing himself at Stratford, as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, and Laertes in Hamlet, then enjoying a popular success in Rattle of a Simple Man, opposite Sheila Hancock, at the Garrick in London in 1962. He went to Broadway with the play the following year and appeared there in two more shows in the mid-60s: High Spirits and The Best Laid Plans.

Woodward came back to Nottingham at a time when its new theatre, the Playhouse, was run by the distinguished actor John Neville, then making a reputation both for the classics and the experimental demands of the times. Woodward appeared there in Measure for Measure and Private Lives in 1965.

Money never appeared to be a prime motivator for Woodward. When he joined the National Theatre Company in 1969, after making a series of Callan and appearing at the Palace theatre in London in Two Cities, it was at great financial cost. But he explained that at the Old Vic – where the National Theatre was then located – he would have the right to fail, a concept foreign to the Americans, whose attitude was "enough to drive anyone right round the bend". His Flamineo in Frank Dunlop's 1971 production of The White Devil was well received, but he wanted to be a star.

High cheekbones and furrowed brow … Edward Woodward as Callan.
Photograph: FremantleMedia Ltd/Rex Features

The key to popular success, without sacrificing his family – he had two sons and one daughter by his first wife, Venetia Collett (the actor Venetia Barrett) – seemed to be television. His work in the medium included The Bass Player and the Blonde (1978); Winston Churchill – The Wilderness Years (1981), in which he was Sir Samuel Hoare; and the Cold War thriller Codename: Kyril (1988). There were also roles as F Scott Fitzgerald, the Ghost of Christmas Present (in a 1984 production of A Christmas Carol) and Sherlock Holmes.

On the big screen, Woodward will perhaps be best remembered for his role in the cult horror film The Wicker Man (1973), directed by Robin Hardy. Woodward played the uptight, strongly religious police sergeant, Howie, sent to a remote Scottish island to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a young girl. The film, which co-starred Christopher Lee as the island's formidable lord, had a troubled production and was heavily cut for its release. But its popularity grew and a restored, extended version sealed its reputation. A 2006 remake starred Nicolas Cage in Woodward's role.

In 1978 Woodward was appointed OBE. He took the title role as a court-martialled lieutenant in the Boer war film Breaker Morant (1980), directed by Bruce Beresford, and starred in the 1982 SAS thriller Who Dares Wins, a big UK hit. His work as a singer was less well known, but he made 12 records and three as a reader of poetry, in addition to an acting career which won him more than 20 top awards.

In 1987, following a divorce, he married the actor Michele Dotrice, 17 years his junior. 

Suffering a heart attack on returning to England after The Equalizer in the late 1980s, he cut out smoking and tried to relax more, but in 1996 suffered a further attack. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003. He continued to appear on TV and film and gently lampooned his screen persona as an overly zealous member of a neighbourhood watch group in the comedy Hot Fuzz (2007). He had a brief role in The Bill in 2008, and earlier this year he appeared in EastEnders, playing Tommy Clifford, a character harbouring a guilty secret.

He is survived by Michele and their daughter, and the three children of his first marriage.

* Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, actor, born 1 June 1930; died 16 November 2009

First published at The Guardian Australia, November 17, 2009

Academy Award-winning actress Katharine Hepburn dies at age 96

Katharine Hepburn was born in 1907, the second of six children (Image: GETTY)

On June 29, 2003, Katharine Hepburn—a four-time Academy Award winner for Best Actress and one of the greatest screen legends of Hollywood’s golden era—dies of natural causesat the age of 96, at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.

Hepburn was born into a well-to-do New England family, the daughter of a prominent surgeon, Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn, and his wife, Katharine Houghton, a suffragist and birth control advocate. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1928 and became a stage actress; her role in the 1932 Broadway production The Warrior’s Husband led to a Hollywood screen test and a contract with RKO studios. In Hepburn’s debut film, A Bill of Divorcement (1932), she starred opposite John Barrymore and was directed by George Cukor, who would become her close friend and helm many of her films (including 1933’s Little Women, 1935’s Sylvia Scarlett, 1938’s Holiday and 1949’s Adam’s Rib).

Heralded as a fresh, unconventional beauty and a talented actress, Hepburn won her first Best Actress Oscar for only her third film, Morning Glory (1933). A string of films made with RKO had mixed degrees of success, and Hepburn began earning a reputation as arrogant and self-absorbed on set, though she was always meticulously prepared for her roles. She also refused to play by the rules governing typical Hollywood starlets at the time, appearing publicly in pantsuits and without makeup and refusing to sign autographs or grant interviews. After modest successes with Stage Door (1937) and Bringing Up Baby (1938), Hepburn decided to buy out her contract with RKO, a move that gave her unusual control over her career for that time.

Her faltering image was revived by the success of The Philadelphia Story, which had originally been written for Hepburn to play on Broadway and was then adapted into a hit 1940 movie co-starring Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. Several years later, Hepburn met the actor Spencer Tracy while co-starring with him in Woman of the Year (1942). Though Tracy, a devout Catholic, remained married, the two began a romantic relationship that would last until Tracy’s death nearly three decades later. (Hepburn had divorced her husband of six years, Ludlow Ogden Smith, in 1934.) On-screen, they acted in nine films together, including Adam’s Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). Tracy died just weeks after shooting was completed on the last film, for which Hepburn would win her second Best Actress Oscar.

Hepburn was awarded her third Oscar for her starring turn in A Lion in Winter (1968). She continued to appear in films and on television (including an Emmy-winning performance in 1976’s Love Among the Ruins) throughout the next three decades, winning a fourth Best Actress statuette for 1981’s On Golden Pond. 

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards in her lifetime (a record that would stand until 2003, when Meryl Streep received her 13th nomination), Hepburn never attended the awards show to collect her honors in person. In 1986, she broke her longtime silence about her relationship with Tracy (his widow had died in 1983) in a televised tribute to the actor. She read aloud a poignant letter she had written to him about his drinking, and about their last years together. She later included the letter in her best-selling 1991 autobiography Me: Stories of My Life.

In her final screen appearance, in 1994’s Love Affair (a remake of the classic 1939 film), Hepburn appeared frail but composed as ever in her portrayal of the aristocratic aunt of Warren Beatty’s character. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) named Hepburn as the greatest female actress in the history of American cinema. When she died on June 29, 2003, the lights on Broadway were dimmed for an hour to mark the passing of one of entertainment’s brightest stars.

First published at This Day in History, November 13, 2009

Article: Artsound launches Radiothon

By Eric Pozza

ArtSound launched its Radiothon this weekend. Lounge suits were de rigueur, there were drinks and canapes and ArtSound’s patron and Viceregal consort, Michael Bryce, gave a few humourous words and formally opened the Radiothon.

Dave Rodriguez and Lachlan Coventry entertained in the background, and Tony Magee and Chris Deacon migrated to the Yamaha C6 grand in the studio for an impromptu concert.

I hadn't heard Tony before, although he's well known around town. He's got an impressive memory. Firstly Gershwin and Cole Porter then on to Moonlight Sonata. The Beethoven was lovely romantic stuff, nicely played and not too protracted, and it was all pretty much on call.

The Canberra Times social photographer, Lyn Mills, was also there and I managed a snap of she who is normally the other side of the lens.

Best of luck to ArtSound and their fund-raising. Feel free to ring and make a donation to a good cause or even just finally do the right thing and become a paying member. They do great work for jazz and all the arts in Canberra.

Originally published in Canberra Jazz, November 7, 2009