Brent Carver

Brent Carver (November 17, 1951 – August 4, 2020) was a Canadian actor born in Cranbrook, British Columbia, of Welsh and Irish heritage. The third of seven children, Carver was the son of Lois (Wills), a clerk, and Kenneth Carver, who worked in the lumber business. He sang from an early age alongside his father, who played guitar, and though he nearly pursued a career in teaching, he continued working in theatre. Carver attended the University of British Columbia from 1969 to 1972. His favourite actors were Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis.

Carver's Broadway career spanned from 1993 to 2013, though the majority of his professional life was devoted to Canadian stages, film, and television. He made his U.S. debut in 1979 at the Los Angeles Mark Taper Forum, playing Ariel opposite Anthony Hopkins's Prospero in The Tempest. His association with Canada's Stratford Festival began in the 1980s and continued for more than thirty years, encompassing a wide range of Shakespeare roles as well as notable musical productions, including the Pirate King in the 1985 production of The Pirates of Penzance and Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in 2000. In 1982, Carver won the first of his four Dora Awards for his portrayal of Horst in Bent at Toronto's Bathurst Street Theatre.

The role that brought Carver international recognition was Molina in Kander and Ebb's Kiss of the Spider Woman. He originated the part in 1992 at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto, earning a Dora Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He then played the role at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End, where he received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination, before bringing the performance to Broadway in 1993. His Broadway debut in the role earned him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. Carver dedicated his Tony Award victory to the late Canadian actress Susan Wright, who had died two years earlier in a fire at his home in Stratford, Ontario.

Carver returned to Broadway in 1998 to portray Leo Frank in Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry's musical Parade at Lincoln Center. The performance earned him a second Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical. In 2003, he appeared Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in My Life With Albertine, playing older Marcel and the Narrator in a production that received a Drama League Award nomination as Distinguished Production of a Musical. His final Broadway credit came in 2013, when he appeared as Friar Laurence in Romeo + Juliet. He also appeared on Broadway as Edgar in King Lear, which transferred from the Stratford Festival to Lincoln Center in 2004.

Beyond Broadway, Carver's stage work included originating the role of Gandalf in the Toronto production of The Lord of the Rings at the Princess of Wales Theatre in 2006, and appearing in multiple Soulpepper Theatre Company productions, among them Don Carlos and The Wild Duck. His screen credits included the CBC television series Leo and Me, which aired from 1977 to 1978 and co-starred Michael J. Fox, as well as the 1999 television film The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in which he portrayed Ichabod Crane, and the 2002 production Leonardo: A Dream of Flight, in which he played Leonardo da Vinci. His film work included The Wars, Lilies, and Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love.

In May 2014, Carver received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts, in recognition of his lifetime contribution to Canadian theatre. In 2016, he performed in Walk Me to the Corner at the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company in Toronto. Carver died on August 4, 2020, at his home in Cranbrook at the age of 68. The cause of his death was not made public.