Robert Hardy

Hardy was born in Cheltenham on 29 August 1925 to Henry Harrison 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. Henry Hardy was the headmaster of Cheltenham College and later of Shrewsbury School, and a Major in the Rifle Brigade. 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. He trained as a pilot, receiving part of his instruction in the British Flying Training School Program in Terrell, Texas. Although he visited Los Angeles when on leave from flight training at Terrell, his later acting career never gained a foothold in Hollywood. After service in the RAF, he returned to gain a BA (Hons) in English. On BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, he described the degree he obtained as "shabby", although he treasured the time spent studying under C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Hardy began his career as a classical actor, and made an early Hollywood film appearance in a minor role opposite Glenn Ford in the 1958 war film Torpedo Run. In 1959, he appeared as The King of France in All's Well That Ends Well in April 1959, directed by Tyrone Guthrie at Stratford-upon-Avon, with Vanessa Redgrave and Diana Rigg indicated as supporting extras. He subsequently appeared as Sicinius opposite Laurence Olivier in Coriolanus at Stratford-upon-Avon, directed by Peter Hall. In this production, Ian Holm featured as a "Third Aufidious Servant", Vanessa Redgrave as Valeria, and Diana Rigg as a "Roman Citizen". Albert Finney featured as a "First Roman Citizen". Hardy then appeared in Shakespeare's Henry V on stage and in television's An Age of Kings (1960), and subsequently played Coriolanus in The Spread of the Eagle (BBC, 1963) and Sir Toby Belch for the BBC Television Shakespeare production of Twelfth Night in 1980. Over the years, Hardy played a range of parts on television and film. His 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. He won further acclaim for his portrayal of the mentally-unhinged Abwehr Sgt. Gratz in LWT's 1969 war drama Manhunt. In 1975, Hardy portrayed Albert, Prince Consort in the award-winning 13-hour serial Edward the Seventh (known as Edward the King to the American audience), which he regarded as one of his best performances. "I thought I'd done a good job there, although I believe the Royal Family didn't like it all. There are always people who don't like what one does." He was seen as the irascible senior veterinary surgeon Siegfried Farnon in the long-running All Creatures Great and Small (1978–90), an adaptation of James Herriot's semi-autobiographical books. Hardy also made an appearance in the 1986–88 ITV comedy series Hot Metal, in which he played the dual roles of newspaper proprietor Twiggy Rathbone (who bore more than a passing resemblance to Rupert Murdoch) and his editor, Russell Spam. In 1993 Hardy appeared in an episode of Inspector Morse, playing Andrew Baydon in "Twilight of the Gods". In 1994, he played Arthur Brooke in the BBC production of Middlemarch. In 2002, he played the role of pompous and eccentric Professor Neddy Welch in a WTTV/WGBH Boston co-production of Lucky Jim, adapted from the novel by Kingsley Amis. It aired originally as part of the Masterpiece series on PBS in the U.S. and starred Stephen Tompkinson in the title role of Jim Dixon, a luckless lecturer at a provincial British university. Hardy played both Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, each on more than one occasion. He played Churchill most notably in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981), for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award, but also in The Sittaford Mystery, Bomber Harris and War and Remembrance. On 20 August 2010, he read Churchill's famous wartime address "Never was so much owed by so many to so few" at a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the speech. He 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. He also 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. His big screen roles included Professor Krempe in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge in the 'Harry Potter' films. His voice performance as Robin Hood in Tale Spinners For Children, an LP from the 1960s, is considered one of the best Robin Hood renditions. His voice was also the voice of D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers and of Frédéric Chopin, in The Story of Chopin.