Gareth Hunt

Gareth Hunt, born Alan Leonard Hunt on 7 February 1942 in Battersea, London, was a British actor whose career spanned television, film, and stage, including a Broadway appearance in 1989. He died on 14 March 2007 at the age of 65 at his home in Redhill, Surrey, following two years of illness from pancreatic cancer. He was married three times and had one son by each marriage; his youngest son, Jason, was born to his final wife, Amanda.

Hunt's early life was marked by significant disruption. His father died in the Second World War when Hunt was two years old, and he was subsequently raised by his mother, Doris, and his stepfather. At fifteen he enlisted in the Merchant Navy, serving for six years before jumping ship in New Zealand, where he worked in a car plant for a year. He was caught, served three months in a military prison, and was deported to Britain. While taking a BBC design course, he held a range of jobs including stagehand, road digger, butcher's assistant, and door-to-door salesman. He later trained formally at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, after which he performed in repertory theatre across the United Kingdom and joined both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre in the early 1970s. His stage work included productions of Twelfth Night, Oh! What a Lovely War, and West Side Story.

Hunt's television career began in 1968 with a role as Private Kitson in the UK series Frontier. Early television appearances followed in For the Love of Ada and A Family at War in 1972, and in Doctor Who's Planet of the Spiders and Bless This House in 1974. That same year he appeared in the Upstairs, Downstairs episode "Missing Believed Killed" as Trooper Norton, batman to James Bellamy. Though the role was minor, producers John Hawkesworth and Alfred Shaughnessy invited him to return as a regular for the fifth series in 1975, in which he played footman Frederick Norton until the eleventh episode, "Alberto." His performance in Upstairs, Downstairs directly led to his casting in The New Avengers, where he starred alongside Joanna Lumley and Patrick Macnee from 1976 until the series concluded in December 1977. In that show he played secret agent Mike Gambit. These two roles became the performances most closely associated with his name.

During the late 1970s Hunt appeared in the films Licensed to Love and Kill, in which he portrayed secret agent Charles Bind, and The World Is Full of Married Men, both released in 1979. Through the 1980s he made television appearances in Sunday Night Thriller, Minder, and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, and appeared alongside Julia McKenzie in That Beryl Marston...! in 1981. Film credits from that decade include Funny Money (1983), Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984), and the children's film Gabrielle and the Doodleman. In 1988 he appeared in the Pet Shop Boys' film It Couldn't Happen Here, playing multiple parts including Uncle Dredge. Hunt was also widely recognized during this period for a series of television advertisements for Nescafé instant coffee, in which his signature gesture involved shaking a closed fist and opening it to reveal coffee beans.

In 1989, Hunt appeared on Broadway in Run for Your Wife, bringing his London origins to the New York stage. That same year he appeared in the films A Chorus of Disapproval, in which he played Ian Hubbard, and The Lady and the Highwayman, in which he played a coachman. From 1992 to 1993 he held a leading role in the sitcom Side by Side. In 2001 he joined the cast of EastEnders for two episodes as Ritchie Stringer, a crime boss connected to the shooting of Phil Mitchell, and also appeared in the short-lived soap opera Night and Day. Later film appearances included Fierce Creatures (1997), The Incredible Adventures of Marco Polo (1998), Parting Shots (1998), and The Riddle (2007), the last of which served as his final film role. Hunt suffered a heart attack in December 1999 and collapsed while performing on stage in Bournemouth in July 2002. At one point he stepped away from acting to develop a computer system called Interactive Casting Universal, designed to present actors' details and showreels.