11 Facts About Freddie Jones

Frederick Charles Jones was an English actor who had an extensive career in television, theatre and cinema productions for almost sixty years.

Freddie Jones was born on 12 September 1927 in Dresden, a suburb of the town of Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, the son of Ida Elizabeth and Charles Edward Freddie Jones.

Freddie Jones worked briefly at Creda, the consumer electrical goods vendors, in Longton before he joined the British Ceramic Research Association in Penkhull, where he worked for ten years.

Freddie Jones spent time in repertory theatre in Lincoln, before making his London debut in 1962 with the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing at the Arts Theatre in Afore Night Come.

Freddie Jones reprised his role for the Broadway production, and again for the film version.

Freddie Jones became more widely known to British audiences in 1968, after his appearance in the six-episode television series The Caesars, in which he played Claudius.

Apart from a brief spell in 2001, Freddie Jones retired from stage work in the early 1990s.

Freddie Jones had three appearances in Sherlock Holmes adaptations; as Chester Cragwitch in Young Sherlock Holmes, as Inspector Baynes in the "Wisteria Lodge" episode of The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and as a pedlar in "The Last Vampire" episode of The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

Freddie Jones played the character Sandy Thomas in ITV's Emmerdale from 2005 to 2018, when he left the programme.

Freddie Jones said he had been offered a contract extension but he declined as he felt it was the right time to move on.

Freddie Jones died on 9 July 2019, aged 91, in Bicester, Oxfordshire, following a short illness.