Hugh Armstrong (actor)

Armstrong was born in 1944 and educated in Bedford at Bedford Modern School.[4] After a brief spell in the army he decided to take up acting, initially training at the Rose Bruford drama school.[4]

Armstrong's first major role was as Ted the chauffeur in the 1968 film Prudence and the Pill, starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr.[5][4][6] His next major role was playing the monster in Death Line alongside Donald Pleasence and Christopher Lee; his performance was said to have achieved the impossible by making a 'grotesque violent cannibal seem pitiful and sympathetic'.[7][8]

Following his role in the 1972 film, Eagle in a Cage, Armstrong spent many years travelling the world, spending several years in India.[9][4] He formed a theatre company at the Pune ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and under his direction the company toured India, at one point performing before Indira Gandhi.[4] As a member of the Rajneesh movement he left India for the United States, but left before the movement's scandalous collapse in Oregon.[4]

Armstrong returned to the UK to work in film and television productions.[4] He appeared as Jun Priest in the 1982 film, The Beastmaster, and played Harry Wax in How to Get Ahead in Advertising alongside Richard E. Grant.[10][11] He took part in a number of television series throughout the 1990s and his final role was in the 2007 TV movie, Stuart: A Life Backwards.[12]

In addition to his work in film and television, Armstrong was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and later the National Theatre.[4] In 1975 he played R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool alongside Bill Nighy and Julie Walters.[4][13]

Armstrong died on 26 January 2016.[4] In the magazine of Armstrong's old school, Clive Akass wrote: 'Life was Hugh's theatre. He was a travelling entertainment and until the illness that marred his later years, and sometimes even then, he brought laughter wherever he went'.[4]

• Hugh Armstrong at IMDb