Ian Charleson

After graduating in 1970 from the University of Edinburgh – where he played leads in dozens of productions, including numerous Shakespeare plays[14][12][15] – Charleson won a place in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where he studied for two years.[16][17]

From LAMDA, Charleson was hired by Frank Dunlop's Young Vic Theatre Company. He made his professional stage debut in 1972 with the Young Vic, as one of the brothers in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1972), which was also televised in the UK that same year by Granada Television.[18] In 1973, he starred as Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, and that year he was also Hamlet and later Guildenstern in the first revival of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Also as part of the Young Vic company, he was Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing in 1974. He traveled with the company to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York that same year, to appear as Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew, Ottavio in Scapino, and Brian Curtis in French Without Tears.

In 1975, he played the title role in Hamlet in a Cambridge Theatre Company touring production. The performance garnered good reviews; nevertheless Charleson felt he had not done the notoriously difficult role complete justice.

Charleson made his West End debut in 1975, in a long-running production of Simon Gray's Otherwise Engaged at the Queen's Theatre. In it he played Dave, a surly Scottish lodger, opposite Alan Bates.

He next appeared at the National Theatre, where he performed Octavius in Julius Caesar in 1977. That year he also played Peregrine in the classic play Volpone, opposite John Gielgud, and Captain Phoebus in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Charleson then spent a year in Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company 1978–79. There he performed a hauntingly voiced Ariel in The Tempest; Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew; and Longaville in Love's Labour's Lost opposite Richard Griffiths as the King – all both in Stratford and at the Aldwych Theatre in London. Also with the RSC, he was Lawrence Vail in an acclaimed production of Once in a Lifetime (1979) at the Aldwych Theatre, and he played Pierre in the Jane Lapotaire vehicle Piaf, giving a performance which caught the eye of the filmmakers of Chariots of Fire.

At the National Theatre, in 1977 Charleson appeared in Julius Caesar, Volpone, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. His acclaimed starring roles there were in Guys and Dolls, Fool for Love, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Hamlet, all in the 1980s.

In the 1980s, Charleson won particular critical and popular acclaim for his starring roles at the National Theatre. He was a glowingly reviewed Sky Masterson in Richard Eyre's enormously successful revival of the musical Guys and Dolls (1982), opposite Julie Covington as Sister Sarah, with Bob Hoskins as Nathan Detroit and Julia McKenzie as Adelaide.

Charleson received an Olivier Award nomination for Actor of the Year in a New Play as Eddie in Sam Shepard's gritty and very physical two-person drama, Fool for Love (1984–85), opposite Julie Walters as his on-again off-again love object. And he was a highly praised Brick, the repressed homosexual protagonist in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1988), opposite Lindsay Duncan.

Shortly before his death, while seriously ill from AIDS, from 9 October to 13 November 1989 Charleson performed his second run of Hamlet, this time at the National Theatre – giving a definitive performance which garnered major accolades.[19][20] Director Richard Eyre, with some initial misgivings based on Charleson's health, had brought him in to replace Daniel Day-Lewis, who had abandoned the production.

In a lengthy review praising Charleson's performance, John Peter wrote in the Sunday Times:

[T]he masterful new Hamlet: Ian Charleson. .... Technically he employs clarity combined with a powerful dramatic drive. His delivery is steely but delicate. The words move with sinuous elegance and crackle with fire. His Hamlet is virile and forceful. ... He oozes intelligence from every pore. ... The way Charleson can transform a production is a reminder that actors are alive and well, that directors can only draw a performance from those who have one in them and that in the last analysis the voice of drama speaks to us through actors.[21]

The day following Charleson's final Hamlet performance, when Ian McKellen was given the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for his Iago in Othello, McKellen offered thanks, but said having seen "the perfect Hamlet" at the National Theatre the previous night, he thought that not he but Ian Charleson was truly the Best Actor of 1989.[22][23]

In 1979, producer David Puttnam and director Hugh Hudson had done months of searching for the actor to play the lead of the evangelical Scot Eric Liddell in their upcoming film about the Olympics. They then saw Charleson performing the role of Pierre in Piaf, and knew immediately they had found their man. Unbeknownst to them, the actor had heard about the film from his father, and desperately wanted to play the part, feeling it would "fit like a kid glove".[24] This mutual affinity led to Charleson's best-known film role and success – as the athlete and missionary Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire (1981). He prepared for the role by studying the Bible intensively, and he himself wrote Liddell's stirring post-race address to the workingmen's crowd.[25] This film and role made him an international celebrity.[26]

Charleson had a similar success the following year, playing Mahatma Gandhi's closest friend and collaborator, the Anglican priest Charlie Andrews, in Gandhi (1982), opposite Ben Kingsley. Like Chariots of Fire, the film Gandhi won numerous Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

After these two major successes in these two Best Picture Oscar–winning films, Charleson's film career did not, however, follow the same progressive arc that his stage career did. Good feature Hollywood scripts did not pour in after Chariots of Fire; nor did he choose to move to Hollywood to capitalize on his success.[27][28] Also affecting his film career was the fact that he was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, and thereafter lacked enthusiasm to do feature films,[29][30] although he was not symptomatic until the autumn of 1988.[31] His drive to pursue a rich stage career focusing on Shakespearean leads, however, remained strong.

Charleson's other feature film roles are: punk-era Angel in his film debut Jubilee (1977) directed by Derek Jarman; Lt. Ryder in the Golden Bear-winning "Irish question" film Ascendancy (1982), which starred Julie Covington; a small role as the abusive drunk Jeffson Brown in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984); a comedic turn as Gerald Spong in the rather ill-fated Car Trouble (1985), opposite his friend Julie Walters; and opera director Marco in Dario Argento's horror film Opera (1987).

Charleson performed in three BBC Television Shakespeare films: as Fortinbras in Hamlet (1980) starring Derek Jacobi; the protagonist Bertram in the acclaimed production of All's Well That Ends Well (1981); and Octavius Caesar in Antony & Cleopatra (1981) opposite his frequent co-star Jane Lapotaire as Cleopatra.

His other notable made-for-television film roles include: the titular Lieutenant Dorfrichter in M. Fagyas's Austro-Hungarian pre-war mystery The Devil's Lieutenant (1983); Rakitin in Turgenev's A Month in the Country (1985) opposite Eleanor Bron; Kyril in the spy thriller Codename: Kyril (1988) opposite Edward Woodward, Richard E. Grant, and Peter Vaughan; and the protagonist Major Brendan Archer in the faithful screen adaptation of J. G. Farrell's Booker Award-winning Troubles (1988), opposite Ian Richardson.

Charleson's notable starring television roles in the 1970s include: Anthony in A Private Matter (1974), his first starring screen role, opposite Rachel Kempson; slick and cruel John Ross preying on Scottish immigrants to the New World in O Canada (1975) in the anthology series Churchill's People; and one of two British soldiers who find military life nearly unbearable in The Paradise Run (1976), directed by Michael Apted.

In the 1980s his notable starring TV roles included: Alexander the Great's close companion Hephaistion in the PBS miniseries The Search for Alexander the Great; serial killer Neville Heath in an episode of the murder-trial reenactment series Ladykillers (1981); naive Scot turned powerful South African magnate Jamie MacGregor in the miniseries Master of the Game (1984); romantic lead Clarence Dandridge in the period miniseries Louisiana (1984) opposite Margot Kidder; and protagonist Victor Geary in the stylish and clever Oxbridge Blues (1984), written by Frederic Raphael, directed by James Cellan Jones, and co-starring Amanda Redman, Rosalyn Landor, and Malcolm Stoddard.