Christopher Hewett

Christopher Hewett (5 April 1922 – 3 August 2001) was an English actor and theatre director born in Worthing, Sussex, to Christopher Fitzsimon Hewett, an army officer and descendant of Daniel O'Connell, and Eleanor Joyce Watts, an actress who performed professionally under the name Rhoda Cleighton. He received his education at Beaumont College and Wimbledon College, both Jesuit institutions. At the age of seven, he made his acting debut in a Dublin stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He joined the Royal Air Force at sixteen, departing in 1940, after which he became a member of the Oxford Repertory Company and made his West End debut in 1943.

Hewett's Broadway career spanned from 1956 to 1981 and encompassed both musicals and plays. His musical credits included My Fair Lady, First Impressions, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Music Is, and Kean, while his stage appearances in plays included Sleuth, The Affair, Hadrian VII, and Trelawny of the "Wells." During the 1979–80 season he played Captain Hook opposite Sandy Duncan in Peter Pan. His performance in Music Is earned him a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical in 1977. In addition to performing, Hewett directed the 1960 Broadway revue From A to Z, the 1967 Off-Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hart musical By Jupiter, and several other productions including The Marriage-Go-Round, Beyond the Fringe, and Camelot.

On screen, Hewett made his film debut in the 1951 crime drama Pool of London and subsequently appeared on television programs including Robert Montgomery Presents and DuPont Show of the Month. In 1967 he portrayed the flamboyant theatre director Roger DeBris in Mel Brooks's comedy The Producers. He played the bureaucrat Federov in the short-lived 1976 sitcom Ivan the Terrible, and from 1983 to 1984 appeared as Lawrence, the sidekick to Ricardo Montalbán's Mr. Roarke, during the final season of the ABC series Fantasy Island.

Hewett's most widely recognized role came when he was cast as Lynn Aloysius Belvedere, an English butler employed by a middle-class American family, in the ABC sitcom Mr. Belvedere, which ran from 1985 to 1990. Following the series, he made a guest appearance on the NBC teen sitcom California Dreams in 1994, and his final on-screen credit was a cameo on the Fox series Ned and Stacey in 1997.

A devout Catholic and lifelong bachelor, Hewett was an active member of St. Victor's Church in West Hollywood. In his later years he suffered from arthritis and diabetes. He died on 3 August 2001 at his Los Angeles home from complications of diabetes at the age of eighty. A memorial service was held at St. Victor's Church on 10 August 2001.