Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy was an English actor who had a long career in theatre, film and television.
27 Facts About Robert Hardy
2.
Robert Hardy began his career as a classical actor and later earned widespread recognition for roles such as Siegfried Farnon in the BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small, Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter film series and Winston Churchill in several productions, beginning with the Southern Television series Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years.
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Robert Hardy was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Actor for All Creatures Great and Small in 1980 and Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years in 1982.
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Robert Hardy was born in Cheltenham in 1925 to Henry Harrison Robert Hardy, MBE, of Old Farm, Bishop's Cleeve, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and Edith Jocelyn, daughter of Rev Sydney Dugdale, rector of Whitchurch, Shropshire, a member of a landed gentry family of Wroxall Abbey, Wroxall, Warwickshire.
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Henry Robert Hardy was the headmaster of Cheltenham College and later of Shrewsbury School, and a Major in the Rifle Brigade.
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Robert Hardy was educated at Rugby School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where his studies were interrupted by service in the Royal Air Force during World War II.
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Robert Hardy trained as a pilot, receiving part of his instruction in the British Flying Training School Program in Terrell, Texas.
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Robert Hardy subsequently appeared as Sicinius opposite Laurence Olivier in Coriolanus at Stratford-upon-Avon, directed by Peter Hall.
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Robert Hardy then appeared in Shakespeare's Henry V on stage and in television's An Age of Kings, and subsequently played Coriolanus in The Spread of the Eagle and Sir Toby Belch for the BBC Television Shakespeare production of Twelfth Night in 1980.
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Robert Hardy's first continuing role in a TV series was as businessman Alec Stewart in the award-winning oil company drama The Troubleshooters for the BBC, which he played from 1966 to 1970.
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Robert Hardy won further acclaim for his portrayal of the mentally-unhinged Abwehr Sgt.
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In 1975, Robert Hardy portrayed Albert, Prince Consort in the award-winning 13-hour serial Edward the Seventh, which he regarded as one of his best performances.
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Robert Hardy was seen as the irascible senior veterinary surgeon Siegfried Farnon in the long-running All Creatures Great and Small, an adaptation of James Herriot's semi-autobiographical books.
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In 1993 Robert Hardy appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse, playing Andrew Baydon in "Twilight of the Gods".
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Robert Hardy played Churchill most notably in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award, but in The Sittaford Mystery, Bomber Harris and War and Remembrance.
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Robert Hardy played Roosevelt in the BBC serial, Bertie and Elizabeth, and in the French TV mini-series, Le Grand Charles, about the life of Charles de Gaulle.
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Robert Hardy played Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in Elizabeth R and took the role of Sir John Middleton in the 1995 film version of Sense and Sensibility.
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Robert Hardy's voice was the voice of D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers and of Frederic Chopin, in The Story of Chopin.
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Robert Hardy was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1981 Birthday Honours.
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From this marriage, which ended in 1986, Robert Hardy had two other children, one of whom is Justine Robert Hardy, a journalist, activist and psychotherapist who founded Healing Kashmir.
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Robert Hardy was a close friend of actor Richard Burton, whom he met at Oxford University.
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Robert Hardy shared some memories of their wartime friendship and read extracts from Burton's newly published diaries at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in 2012.
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Robert Hardy wrote two books on the subject of the longbow, Longbow: A Social and Military History and The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose with Matthew Strickland.
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Robert Hardy was one of the experts consulted by the archaeologist responsible for raising the Mary Rose.
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Robert Hardy was Master of the Worshipful Company of Bowyers of the City of London from 1988 to 1990.
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In February 2013, Robert Hardy withdrew from his scheduled performance as Winston Churchill in Peter Morgan's play, The Audience, after suffering cracked ribs as the result of a fall.
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Robert Hardy died on 3 August 2017, aged 91, at Denville Hall, a home for retired actors.