27 Facts About Nicholas Courtney

William Nicholas Stone Courtney was an Egyptian-born British actor.

Nicholas Courtney was best known for his long-running role as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.

Nicholas Courtney was born 16 December 1929 in Cairo, Egypt, the son of Major Geoffrey William Courtney, a British army officer and diplomat, and Evelyn.

Nicholas Courtney was raised by his father and stepmother Anne, who married Geoffrey Courtney in 1938.

Nicholas Courtney was educated in France, Kenya and Egypt and attended a public school in Kent.

Nicholas Courtney performed national service in the British Army, leaving after 18 months as a private, not wanting to pursue a military career.

Nicholas Courtney moved to England to join London's Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art.

Nicholas Courtney made guest appearances in several cult television series, including The Avengers, "The Man in Room 17", The Champions, Randall and Hopkirk and as a racing driver in Riviera Police, and briefly appeared as a TV panel chairman in the film Take a Girl Like You, hosting a debate between John Bird and John Fortune.

Nicholas Courtney made his final appearance in the 1989 serial Battlefield.

Nicholas Courtney appeared with Jean Marsh in both his first and last regular Doctor Who television appearances.

Marsh appeared in the earlier story The Crusade for which Nicholas Courtney had been considered.

Nicholas Courtney played Lethbridge-Stewart, either on television or in spin-off audio plays, alongside every subsequent Doctor up to and including Paul McGann, as well as substitute First Doctor Richard Hurndall.

Nicholas Courtney did not act in the revived series, but appeared in archive footage.

Fifteen years after Dimensions in Time, Nicholas Courtney returned as Lethbridge-Stewart, freshly returned from Peru, in Enemy of the Bane, a two-part story in the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, starring Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith.

The Sarah Jane Adventures production team intended that Nicholas Courtney would reappear in the following year's The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith so that Lethbridge-Stewart would meet the Tenth Doctor, but Nicholas Courtney was recovering from a stroke and unable to take part.

The Brigadier was mentioned several times in the series' golden anniversary episode, "The Day of the Doctor", and quoted once; and, with a prominent close-up of his archival portrait, Nicholas Courtney is the only individual to appear in all the Doctor Who anniversary stories prior to "The Day of the Doctor".

Nicholas Courtney had a regular role in the comedy French Fields between 1989 and 1991.

In 1985, Nicholas Courtney played 'The Narrator' in The Rocky Horror Show.

Nicholas Courtney appeared in the Big Finish Productions audio drama Earthsearch Mindwarp, based on a James Follett novel, broadcast on the digital radio station BBC 7.

Nicholas Courtney starred as Inspector Lionheart opposite fellow Doctor Who actor Terry Molloy in the audio series The Scarifyers, from Cosmic Hobo Productions.

Nicholas Courtney appeared in three episodes of Kaldor City as the newscaster Danl Packard.

Nicholas Courtney regularly made personal appearances at science fiction conventions and in 1997 was made the honorary president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society.

Nicholas Courtney recorded his memoirs, subtitled A Soldier in Time for release on CD in 2002 by Big Finish.

Nicholas Courtney's updated autobiography, Still Getting Away With It, was published in 2005, with co-author Michael McManus.

Nicholas Courtney's death was reported by SFX and The Stage early in the morning of 23 February 2011.

Doctor Who audio play producers Big Finish, with whom Nicholas Courtney had worked on several releases in his continuing role as the Brigadier, confirmed the date of his death as 22 February 2011.

Baker wrote "We shall miss him terribly" in a newsletter on his website, in which he indicated that Nicholas Courtney had been battling cancer for a few months prior to his death.