Alan Badel

Alan Fernand Badel (11 September 1923 – 19 March 1982) was an English actor born in Rusholme, Manchester, who built a career across stage, film, television, and radio. He was educated at Burnage High School and served as a paratrooper during the Second World War, seeing action in France and Germany on D-Day. During his service, a nearby shell explosion caused partial hearing loss.

Badel made his Broadway appearance in 1963, performing in the musical The Choir Rehearsal. That same year marked significant activity across multiple mediums: he appeared in the film Bitter Harvest as Karl Denny, an impresario, and took on the role of opposite Vivien Merchant in a television production of Harold Pinter's The Lover. His earliest screen credit of note came a decade earlier, when he portrayed John the Baptist in the 1953 Rita Hayworth film Salome, a production in which the narrative was rewritten to cast Salome as a Christian convert who dances before Herod to spare rather than condemn John. He played the composer Richard Wagner in the 1955 biopic Magic Fire.

In 1964, Badel took on the title role of Edmond Dantès in a BBC television adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. His film work continued with the 1966 thriller Arabesque, in which he played the antagonist Najim Beshraavi alongside Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. He appeared as the French Interior Minister in the 1973 political thriller The Day of the Jackal, centered on a fictional assassination attempt against President Charles de Gaulle. In the 1976 television drama Bill Brand, he portrayed David Last, an Employment Minister depicted as a left-wing MP who had spent thirty years as a backbencher before joining the front bench. Near the end of his career, he played Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg in the Paramount film Nijinsky (1980). A BBC adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, in which Badel played Count Fosco, aired in 1982 after his death.

Badel married actress Yvonne Owen in 1942, and the marriage lasted until his death from a heart attack in Chichester at the age of 58. Their daughter, Sarah Badel, also pursued a career as an actress.