1. Max Adrian was a founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.
21 Facts About Max Adrian
1. 2.
Max Adrian was born in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, Ireland, the son of Edward Norman Cavendish Bor and Mabel Lloyd Thornton.
3.
Max Adrian was born in the provincial Bank of Ireland branch in Kilkenny, where his father was the bank manager, into a Church of Ireland family, the seventh of eight children.
4.
Max Adrian was educated at the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, whose past pupils included Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett.
5.
Max Adrian began his career as a chorus boy at a silent moving-picture house, coming on as part of the chorus line while the reels were being changed.
6.
Max Adrian made his stage debut in the chorus of Katja the Dancer in 1925.
7.
Max Adrian then toured with Lady Be Good and The Blue Train.
Related searches
Samuel Beckett Oscar Wilde Peggy Ashcroft Peter O'Toole Diana Rigg Dorothy Tutin Ken Russell 8.
Max Adrian made his West End debut in The Squall at the Globe Theatre in December 1927.
9.
Away from the classics, Max Adrian played the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz at the Phoenix Theatre in 1943.
10.
When revue became less popular in the mid-1950s, Max Adrian went to America in 1956 to appear as Dr Pangloss and Martin in Leonard Bernstein's operetta Candide on Broadway.
11.
Max Adrian remained in the US, working in summer stock in roles as varied as Doolittle in Pygmalion, Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal.
12.
In 1960, Max Adrian joined Peter Hall's newly formed Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, together with such actors as Peggy Ashcroft, Peter O'Toole and Diana Rigg.
13.
Max Adrian played Jaques in As You Like It, Feste in Twelfth Night, Pandarus in Troilus and Cressida, the Cardinal in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Father Barre in The Devils, as well as a range of smaller parts.
14.
Max Adrian starred with Dorothy Tutin, Richard Johnson and John Barton in The Hollow Crown, an anthology of prose and verse about the monarchs of England, devised by Barton and frequently revived in later years.
15.
Max Adrian was one of the original members of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1963, and appeared as Polonius in the opening production of Hamlet, in which Peter O'Toole played the Prince.
16.
Max Adrian appeared in Dr Terror's House of Horrors as the vampire Dr Blake, The Deadly Affair, and in several Ken Russell films: The Music Lovers, The Boy Friend and The Devils.
17.
Max Adrian was featured in Russell's acclaimed award-winning 1968 Omnibus television film Song of Summer, as the blind and paralysed composer Frederick Delius.
18.
Max Adrian once said that, of all the roles he had ever played, he had never had such difficulty in ridding himself of involvement in a character as that of Delius in Song of Summer.
19.
Max Adrian appeared in the Doctor Who story The Myth Makers as King Priam.
20.
Max Adrian played the part of the Baron de Charlus in the BBC radio plays Six Proust Reconstructions by Pamela Hansford Johnson.
21.
Max Adrian died at age 69 from a heart attack, at his and Lister's home, Smarkham Orchard, Shamley Green, near Guildford, Surrey, after returning from the television studios where he had been recording Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle for the BBC.