Alec McCowen

Alexander Duncan McCowen was born on 26 May 1925 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the son of Mary McCowen, a dancer, and Duncan McCowen, a shopkeeper. He attended The Skinners' School in Tunbridge Wells, where he was known among friends as "Squeaker," and later trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He died on 6 February 2017.

McCowen's stage career began in August 1942 at the Macclesfield repertory theatre, where he played Micky in Paddy the Next Best Thing. Repertory work in York and Birmingham followed from 1943 to 1945, after which he toured India and Burma with the Entertainments National Service Association in Kenneth Horne's comedy Love in a Mist. He continued in repertory from 1946 to 1949, including a season in St John's, Newfoundland. His London debut came on 20 April 1950 at the Arts Theatre, where he appeared as Maxim in Chekhov's Ivanov. In 1954 he played Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Moulin Rouge at the New Theatre, Bromley, and Barnaby Tucker in The Matchmaker at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. After appearing as Dr Bird in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial at the London Hippodrome in 1956 and as Michael Claverton-Ferry in T. S. Eliot's The Elder Statesman at the Edinburgh Festival in 1958 and subsequently at the Cambridge Theatre, he joined the Old Vic Company for its 1959–60 season, taking the title role in Richard II. He remained for the 1960–61 season, playing Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Malvolio in Twelfth Night.

McCowen joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in September 1962, appearing at Stratford-upon-Avon as Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors and as the Fool opposite Paul Scofield's King Lear. Both productions transferred to the Aldwych Theatre in December 1962, and he reprised the roles on a British Council tour of the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States from February to June 1964. Also with the RSC, he played Father Riccardo Fontana in Rolf Hochhuth's The Representative at the Aldwych in December 1963.

A career breakthrough came in April 1968 at the Mermaid Theatre, where McCowen played Fr. William Rolfe in Hadrian the Seventh, earning his first Evening Standard Award as Best Actor for the London production and a Tony nomination following the Broadway transfer. His New York stage career had begun considerably earlier: he made his first Broadway appearances at the Ziegfeld Theatre on 19 and 20 December 1951, as an Egyptian Guard in Caesar and Cleopatra and as the Messenger in Antony and Cleopatra, launching a Broadway presence that extended through 1992.

In August 1970 at the Royal Court, McCowen took the title role in Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist, playing Philip, a philologist whose compulsive reluctance to hurt others' feelings inverts the premise of Molière's The Misanthrope. The production transferred to the Mayfair Theatre, where it ran for three years, becoming the Royal Court's most successful straight play. McCowen and co-star Jane Asher brought the production to Broadway in March 1971, where it earned him the 1971 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. He had previously received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in 1969 as well.

At the National Theatre's Old Vic productions, McCowen co-starred with Diana Rigg in Molière's The Misanthrope in February 1973, winning his second Evening Standard Award. That same year, in July 1973, he originated the role of psychiatrist Martin Dysart in the world premiere of Peter Shaffer's Equus. In January 1978 he devised and performed a solo staging of the complete text of St. Mark's Gospel, opening first at the Riverside Studios before a West End season at the Mermaid and Comedy theatres. The production traveled to New York, where he performed it at the Marymount Manhattan and Playhouse theatres, earning him another Tony nomination. Thames Television broadcast the performance for Easter 1979.

At the Mermaid in 1982, McCowen appeared in Christopher Hampton's stage adaptation of George Steiner's The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., delivering a final speech as Adolf Hitler that earned him his third Evening Standard Best Actor Award, a record at that point equalled only by Laurence Olivier and Paul Scofield. Two years later, again at the Mermaid, he portrayed the British poet Rudyard Kipling in a one-man play by Brian Clark, set in a recreation of Kipling's study at Bateman's in Sussex. The Kipling production transferred to Broadway and was also broadcast on Channel 4 television in 1984. In November 1987 he played Vladimir opposite John Alderton's Estragon in Michael Rudman's production of Waiting for Godot at the National Theatre. That same autumn he directed Martin Crimp's trilogy Definitely the Bahamas at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames. His Broadway appearances continued into 1992 with Someone Who'll Watch Over Me.

McCowen also directed for the stage, including a 1972 revival of Terence Rattigan's While the Sun Shines at the Hampstead Theatre. On television he appeared as Malvolio in Twelfth Night and as Chorus in Henry V for the BBC Television Shakespeare series, and from 1984 to 1985 starred in ten episodes of Mr Palfrey of Westminster as a spy catcher working under a female superior played by Caroline Blakiston. His film work began with The Cruel Sea in 1953 and included roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), Travels with My Aunt (1972), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, and the James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983), in which he played the quartermaster Q. Additional film credits include The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Personal Services (1987), and Henry V (1989).