Dudley Sutton

Dudley Sutton (6 April 1933 – 15 September 2018) was an English actor born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, whose career spanned radio, stage, film, and television across more than five decades. He received his early education at a boys' boarding school in Lifton Park, Devon, and subsequently served in the Royal Air Force as a mechanic. He later enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which he was expelled for responding to rock-and-roll.

Sutton began his stage career with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop before moving into film work. Two early screen roles, both directed by Sidney J. Furie, established his reputation for unconventional characters: a teenager accused of murder alongside friends in The Boys (1962), and a gay biker in The Leather Boys (1964). At a reunion of surviving cast members from The Boys held at Elstree Studios on 17 September 2017, Sutton stated that he considered himself privileged to have appeared in films addressing two causes important to him — opposition to the death penalty and gay rights.

His Broadway career ran from 1960 to 1965 and included appearances in The Hostage and Entertaining Mr. Sloane. The latter production was the original staging of Joe Orton's play, in which Sutton performed the title role, subsequently transferring with the production to Broadway in 1965. In May 1966, he appeared in Tango, a play by Slawomir Mrozek, at the Aldwych Theatre under director Trevor Nunn, alongside Patience Collier, Peter Jeffrey, Mike Pratt, and Ursula Mohan.

Sutton accumulated an extensive film catalogue over the course of his career, with credits including Rotten to the Core (1965), Crossplot (1969), The Devils (1971), Madame Sin (1972), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), Fellini's Casanova (1976), Edward II (1991), and The Football Factory (2004). On television, he became most widely recognized for playing Tinker Dill in the BBC comedy-drama series Lovejoy, appearing in the show in 1986 and again from 1991 to 1994. His character's knowledge of the antique trade and his friendship with the title character formed a central element of the series. Among his other television roles were Mr. Carter in the Beiderbecke Trilogy, Oleg Kirov in Smiley's People (1982), Max Deller in The Sweeney episode "Golden Boy," and Reg Urwin — a prison trusty turned hostage-taker — in a 1976 Christmas special of Porridge, opposite Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale. In 2004, he played Wilfred Atkins, a conman, across sixteen episodes of EastEnders. Later television appearances included a role in the teenage drama Skins as Freddie's granddad, a guest appearance in Holby City broadcast on 15 March 2011, a role in the BBC comedy series Family Tree in July 2013, a guest appearance in Boomers in 2014, the character William Makepeace in Emmerdale in 2014, and a Roman Catholic rector in the Father Brown episode "The Upcott Fraternity" in 2015. He narrated the 2016 documentary The Future of Work and Death, and in November 2017 played the lead role in a video for the Tom Chaplin song "Midnight Mass."

In 1999, Sutton appeared in the BBC Radio play Cosmos the Mystic Dog. In 2003, he starred opposite Edward Hardwicke in David Bartlett's film The Goodbye Plane. That same year, drawing on a phrase he encountered online, he developed and performed a one-man show titled Killing Kittens at Edinburgh's Underbelly in August 2003. He followed it with a second autobiographical piece, Pandora's Lunchbox, in 2006. After portraying William Blake in Peter Ackroyd's BBC television series The Romantics, Sutton joined the cast of Albion Rising at St Giles in the Fields Church, London, in April 2007, and reprised the role in the film of the same name in 2009.

In his personal life, Sutton married American actress Marjorie Steele in 1961; Steele had previously been married to millionaire producer Huntington Hartford. The couple had one child together before divorcing in 1965. Sutton had two additional children. He died of cancer on 15 September 2018 at the age of 85.