106 Facts About Michael Hordern

Sir Michael Murray Hordern CBE was an English actor whose career spanned nearly 60 years.

Michael Hordern is best known for his Shakespearean roles, especially that of King Lear, which he played to much acclaim on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1969 and London in 1970.

Michael Hordern often appeared in film, rising from a bit part actor in the late 1930s to a member of the main cast; by the time of his death he had appeared in nearly 140 cinema roles.

Michael Hordern went on to Brighton College where his interest in the theatre developed.

Michael Hordern came to prominence in the early 1950s when he took part in a theatrical competition at the Arts Theatre in London.

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Michael Hordern's performance was praised by critics and he reprised the role four years later.

Michael Hordern was appointed a CBE in 1972 and was knighted eleven years later.

Michael Hordern suffered from kidney disease during the 1990s and died from it in 1995 at the age of 83.

Four years after the birth of Peter, a pregnant Margaret returned to England, where Michael Hordern, her third son, was born on 3 October 1911 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.

Michael Hordern stayed at Windlesham House for nine years, later describing his time there as "enormous fun".

Michael Hordern was 14 when he left Windlesham House to continue his schooling as a member of Chichester House at Brighton College.

Hassall, who went on to have a successful stage career, was, as Michael Hordern noted, instrumental in his decision to become an actor.

In 1925 Michael Hordern moved to Dartmoor with his family where they converted a disused barn into a farm house.

For Michael Hordern the move was ideal; his love of fishing had become stronger and he was able to explore the remote landscape and its isolated rivers.

Michael Hordern left Brighton College in the early 1930s and secured a job as a teaching assistant in a prep school in Beaconsfield.

Michael Hordern joined an amateur dramatics company and in his spare time, rehearsed for the company's only play, Ritzio's Boots, which was entered into a British Drama League competition, with Hordern in the title role.

Michael Hordern won the case and left Box liable for the proceeding's expenses.

Years later the two men met on a film set where Box, much to Michael Hordern's surprise, thanked him for helping to kick-start his career in film making, as he had received a lot of publicity as a result of the court case.

Michael Hordern briefly took a job at a prep school but fell ill with poliomyelitis and had to leave.

Michael Hordern admired Daltry's acting ability and later admitted to him being a constant influence on his Shakespearean career.

Michael Hordern enjoyed his time there, despite the tiresome commute between Sussex and London, and stayed with the company for five years.

Michael Hordern moved into a small flat at Marble Arch and became one of the many jobbing actors eager to make a name for themselves on the London stage.

On nights when he was not required, Michael Hordern would be called upon to undertake the duties of assistant stage manager, for which he was paid £2.

Michael Hordern employed Hordern in both with the first being the more successful.

The play, about Sir Christopher Wren's time in the Royal Navy, was cancelled on the day Michael Hordern was due to start work, with "unforeseen problems" cited as the reason by its producers.

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Michael Hordern's first acting role within the company was as Uncle Harry in the play Someone at the Door.

Michael Hordern considered his experience with the Rapier Players to be invaluable; it taught him how a professional theatre company worked under a strict time frame and how it operated with an even stricter budget.

Michael Hordern was allowed two minutes to study each page of the script, but because of the frequent mistakes and many stalled lines, rehearsals became long and laborious.

Michael Hordern described the company's props as being made to a very high standard, despite being bought on a shoe-string budget.

The main part went to Henry Ainley whom Michael Hordern described as "a great actor, who, sadly, was past his best".

Michael Hordern then made a return to Bristol to prepare for the following season with the Rapier Players.

Michael Hordern was cast in the supporting role of Seth, a part he described as being fun to perform.

The modernised script was "adored" by the cast, according to Michael Hordern, but loathed by the audience who expected it to be exactly like the book.

Michael Hordern was accepted but soon grew frustrated at not being able to conduct any rescues because of the lack of enemy action.

Michael Hordern decided that it was "not a very good way to fight the war" and enlisted instead as a gunner with the Royal Navy.

In 1940, after a minor role in Without the Prince at the Whitehall Theatre, Michael Hordern played the small, uncredited part of a BBC official alongside James Hayter in Arthur Askey's comedy film Band Waggon.

Michael Hordern found that although his middle class upbringing hindered his ability to make friends on board the ship, it helped with his commanding officers.

Michael Hordern later said the post was owed to his clear diction and deep vocal range.

Michael Hordern was apprehensive about performing in the new medium and found the rehearsal and live performance to be exhausting; but he was generously paid, earning £45 for the entire engagement.

Dear Murderer thrilled the critics and Michael Hordern was singled out by one reporter for the Hull Daily Mail who thought that the actor brought "sincerity to a difficult role".

Towards the end of April 1947, Michael Hordern accepted the small part of Captain Hoyle in Richard Llewellyn's comic drama film Noose.

Michael Hordern liked the piece, calling it "bitter and interesting", but the press, who extensively reported on the competition throughout each stage, thought differently and condemned it for winning.

Michael Hordern cited Saint's Days negative publicity as having done his career "the power of good" as it brought him to the attention of the director Glen Byam Shaw, who cast him in a series of plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1951.

Michael Hordern claimed to know very little about the bard's works and sought advice from friends about how best to prepare for the roles.

The fact that Michael Hordern's different reading can now stand beside the other does credit to a player who will be a Stratford prize.

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Michael Hordern called it "the perfect play with which to open the season" as it featured "fine strong parts for everyone and [was] a good showpiece for an actor's latent vanity".

Michael Hordern noted his colleague's "likeability, charm and charisma" but thought that Burton had a tendency to get easily "ratty" with him in social situations.

Michael Hordern described King John as being "a difficult play in the sense that it has no common purpose or apparent theme".

In early 1955 Michael Hordern was asked by the British theatre manager and producer Binkie Beaumont to take the lead in Andre Roussin's comedy Nina, directed by Rex Harrison.

Michael Hordern regretted his decision to take part in Roussin's Nina, but admitted that the allure of appearing alongside Evans had got the better of him.

Michael Hordern viewed the 1950s as a good decade to appear in film, although he did not then particularly care for the medium.

Michael Hordern preferred radio because the audience only heard his voice, which he then considered his best attribute.

Michael Hordern enjoyed the challenge of earning as much value as possible out of a scene and revelled in being able to hit "the right mark for the camera".

Michael Hordern was appearing in three to four films a year by 1953, a count that increased as the decade progressed.

Michael Hordern appeared in two other films the following year; the medical drama No Time for Tears, and the thriller Windom's Way.

Michael Hordern said the conflict took up a large part of people's lives; "whether it be one of love, loss, nostalgia or tragedy", everybody, according to the actor, had a story to tell and could relate to the situations that were being depicted before them on screen.

Michael Hordern found his earlier naval experience to be an asset when cast in many war films, including The Man Who Never Was, Pacific Destiny, The Baby and the Battleship, all in 1956, and I Was Monty's Double two years later.

Michael Hordern was cast in John Mortimer's 1957 play The Dock Brief in which Michael Hordern played the barrister.

Michael Hordern made a return to stage at the Old Vic in Arthur Wing Pinero's The Magistrate in which he played Mr Posket.

Wearing, Michael Hordern was miscast, while a reporter for The Stage, thought he gave a "convincing portrayal".

Michael Hordern received equally critical notices when he took to the stage to play the title character in Macbeth, opposite Beatrix Lehmann.

On 9 October 1959, Michael Hordern made his debut on Broadway at the Cort Theatre in Marcel Ayme's comedy Moonbirds, alongside the comedian Wally Cox.

Michael Hordern was unsure why the play failed, and attributed it to clashes of personality between cast and management.

Michael Hordern played the Roman orator Cicero and was hired on an eight-week contract which due to various setbacks, including cast sickness and adverse weather conditions, was extended to nine months.

In 1993 Michael Hordern claimed the incident had "cleared the air" between them and they eventually became friends.

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Michael Hordern featured in the Roman farce A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1966.

Michael Hordern first met the British theatre director Jonathan Miller in 1968.

Miller, who had long been an admirer of Michael Hordern, offered him the part of the agonistic Professor Parkin in his forthcoming television drama Whistle and I'll Come to You.

Michael Hordern, who had heard positive things of Miller from theatrical friends, likewise thought highly of the director, and was quick to take up location filming in Norfolk that year.

Michael Hordern came to like Miller's way of working, such as having the freedom to improvise instead of adhering to the strict rules of a script; the actor wrote in his autobiography that he had never experienced that degree of professional freedom.

Miller and Michael Hordern's collaboration continued into 1969 with King Lear at the Nottingham Playhouse.

Michael Hordern immediately accepted the title role but later said that it was a character he never much cared to play.

Michael Hordern played Lear once more that decade, in 1975, which was televised by the BBC for their series Play of the Month.

Michael Hordern was to play George Moore, a bumbling old philosophy professor, who is employed at a modern university and who, throughout the play, is in constant debate with himself over his moral values.

Michael Hordern, though thinking the play was brilliant, disliked the script on the initial read-through as he did not understand its complex situations and strange dialogue.

Michael Hordern vented his frustrations on Wood who agreed to leave his character alone and instead to cut many of the other scenes.

The problems had ceased by the opening performance the following evening; it was a night which Michael Hordern called "unbelievable, one of the highlights of my career".

In 1974, Michael Hordern narrated several other, one-off programmes for the broadcaster, including The Honest Broker, The Last Tsar, and Tell the King the Sky Is Falling.

In 1975 Michael Hordern played the judge in Howard Barker's play Stripwell at the Royal Court Theatre.

Michael Hordern described the character as "a man wracked by guilt, full of self-doubt and pessimism".

Michael Hordern and Eve soon reconciled, but it was a time which he was keen to forget, including the play.

Later, in 1975, Michael Hordern narrated Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick's filmed adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon.

In 1976 Michael Hordern joined the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he appeared as Prospero for Trevor Nunn in The Tempest, an engagement which the actor found to be unpleasant because of his poor relationship with the show's director, Clifford Williams.

Michael Hordern was the oldest member of the company and found it difficult to adjust to the behaviour and attitudes of some of the younger and less experienced actors.

Michael Hordern found it different from the 1950s: non-intimate, characterless, and lacking in morale because management preferred discipline rather than offering guidance and assistance to their young actors.

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Michael Hordern compared it to the 1972 version by saying: "It is unquestionably a busy little number, and my first impression of the piece, back in 1972, was that it had more decoration than substance, and that the decoration was more chaotic than coherent.

In 1981 Michael Hordern played the role of Gandalf in the BBC radio adaptation of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

The author Joseph Pearce, writing in 2008, claimed that Michael Hordern played the king "straight up with no gloss" and made a "reliable and workmanlike Lear" who is "forceful when he should be forceful, compassionate when he should be compassionate, [and] sorrowful when he should be sorrowful".

In January 1983 Michael Hordern was knighted, an honour which the actor called "a great thrill and [a] surprise to us all".

Michael Hordern then spent the rest of 1983 appearing as Sir Anthony Absolute in The Rivals for Peter Wood at the Royal National Theatre and received excellent notices.

Michael Hordern was nominated for an award at that year's Olivier Awards for best comedy performance of the year, but lost out to Griff Rhys Jones.

Michael Hordern's required constant care but recovered enough to become partially self-sufficient.

Michael Hordern was devastated and became consumed in self-pity, in part because of his guilt at the extramarital affairs he had had with many of his leading ladies during the marriage.

In 1986, John Mortimer, a writer whom Michael Hordern respected greatly, engaged the actor in Paradise Postponed, an eleven-part drama which took a year to make and cost in excess of £6 million.

Michael Hordern made a return to the London stage in 1987 after a four-year absence.

Michael Hordern enjoyed the play immensely and was thrilled at its successful run.

Michael Hordern's engagement gave him a chance to reunite with some old friends, including Irene Worth, Michael Denison and Frank Middlemass, all of whom were in the cast.

Michael Hordern admitted that, on the whole, the experience made him feel "a little happier" about life.

Michael Hordern's roles were mostly those of ageing teachers, bank managers, politicians and clergymen.

The film received excellent notices and Michael Hordern's performance was described as outstanding by the critic Neil Sinyard.

In January 1995 Michael Hordern was invited back to his old college in Brighton, where a room was named in his honour.

Michael Hordern died of kidney disease at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, on 2May 1995, at the age of 83.

Michael Hordern did not regret his lack of formal acting training, and attributed his abilities to watching and learning from other actors and directors.

Michael Hordern said: "I am bored of the intellectual view of the theatre.

The author Martin Banham thought that many of Michael Hordern's characters shared a general identity of "an absent-minded, good-hearted English eccentric".

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The American journalist Mel Gussow, writing in Hordern's obituary in The New York Times in 1995, described the actor as being "a classical actor with the soul of a clown", while the actors John Hurt and Michael Bryant described Hordern as being "the Austin Princess among British actors", which implied to the author Sheridan Morley that Hordern possessed an element of "reliability but [with] a faint lack of charisma".