Alan Scarfe

Alan John Scarfe (8 June 1946 – 28 April 2024) was a British-Canadian actor, stage director, and author born in Harpenden, England, to Gladys Ellen (née Hunt) and Neville Vincent Scarfe, both university professors. His father, Neville Scarfe, served as the Founding Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia from 1956 to 1973. Scarfe trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art between 1964 and 1966, launching a career that would span classical theatre, film, television, and prose fiction across multiple continents.

His stage work encompassed more than 100 major roles performed in theatres throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States. European engagements took him to London, Liverpool, Coventry, Paris, Lille, Copenhagen, The Hague, Madrid, Warsaw, Kraków, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. In Canada he completed eight seasons at the Stratford Festival (1972–73, 1976–79, 1985, and 1992), two seasons at the Shaw Festival (1970 and 1974), and additional work in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax. He also served as an Associate Director of the Stratford Festival from 1976 to 1977 and held the same position at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool from 1967 to 1968. American engagements brought him to New York, Boston, New Haven, Stamford, Philadelphia, Seattle, Dallas, and Los Angeles. His classical roles included King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Iago, Brutus, Cassius, Petruchio, Prospero, Cyrano de Bergerac, Doctor Faustus, and Uncle Vanya, alongside roles such as Verlaine, John Barrymore in Sheldon Rosen's Ned and Jack, and Harras in Zuckmayer's The Devil's General. In 1988 he appeared on Broadway in Macbeth. As a director, his productions drew on works by Shakespeare, Albee, Brecht, Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter, Yevgeny Schwarz, and Preston Jones.

Scarfe accumulated significant recognition in Canadian film. He won the 1985 Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for The Bay Boy and received additional Genie nominations for best actor for Deserters (1984) and Overnight (1986). A Gemini Award nomination for best actor followed for his work in aka Albert Walker (2003), the same year he co-starred with his son Jonathan in Burn: The Robert Wraight Story. He won a Jessie Award for best actor in 2005 for his performance in Trying at the Vancouver Playhouse. In 2006 he received the Jury Prize for best supporting actor at the Austin Fantastic Fest for The Hamster Cage, as well as the Vancouver Film Critics Circle honorary award for lifetime achievement. On television he played NSA member Dr. Bradley Talmadge on the UPN series Seven Days and appeared in guest roles as two separate Romulan characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Magistrate Augris in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Resistance."

After returning to Canada from Los Angeles in 2002, Scarfe began writing novels under the pseudonym Clanash Farjeon, an anagram of his full name. His titles included A Handbook for Attendants on the Insane: the Autobiography of Jack the Ripper as Revealed to Clanash Farjeon, The Vampires of Ciudad Juarez, The Vampires of 9/11, and Vampires of the Holy Spirit. The first three were published in Italian by Gargoyle Books in Rome, translated respectively by Chiara Vatteroni and Stefania Sapuppo. All four novels were subsequently republished in revised editions by Smart House Books under his own name, retitled as The Revelation of Jack the Ripper and the Carnivore Trilogy, comprising The Vampires of Juarez, The Demons of 9/11, and The Mask of the Holy Spirit. The Vampires of Juarez received the 2018 BIBA Star, The Revelation of Jack the Ripper won the 2019 Best Indie Book Award, and The Mask of the Holy Spirit won the 2020 BIBA for Satire.

Scarfe was married to actress Barbara March from 1979 until her death from cancer in 2019. They had a daughter, Antonia (Tosia) Scarfe, a musician and composer. His son Jonathan Scarfe, from a prior relationship, is also an actor and director; Jonathan and Tosia collaborated on the short film Speak, which won the Grand Jury Prize in the Short Category at Dances with Films in Los Angeles in 2001. Scarfe had two brothers: Colin Scarfe, a professor of astronomy at the University of Victoria, and Brian Scarfe, a professor of economics who held positions at the University of Manitoba, the University of Alberta, and the University of Regina. Scarfe died of colon cancer at his home in Longueuil, Quebec, on 28 April 2024, at the age of 77.