Gawn Grainger

Gawn Grainger (12 October 1937 – 17 May 2025) was a Scottish actor, playwright, and screenwriter born in Glasgow. The son of Charles Neil Grainger and Elizabeth Grainger (née Gall), he received his education at Westminster City School in Victoria, London, and subsequently trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. His earliest stage appearance came in 1949, when he played in Where the Rainbow Ends opposite Anton Dolin at the Comedy Theatre, London, followed by his stage debut as the Boy King in King's Rhapsody at the Palace Theatre in 1950.

Grainger launched his professional acting career at Dundee Rep in 1961, then spent two years at Ipswich from 1962 to 1964, before moving to the Bristol Old Vic from 1964 to 1966. At Bristol, his roles included the title part in Kean, Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World, Romeo, Laertes in Hamlet, and Claudio in Measure for Measure. He toured internationally in the last three of those roles, making his New York debut as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet at the City Center Theatre in February 1967.

His Broadway career extended from 1967 to 1975. Later that same year, in October 1967, he appeared as Jimmy in the comedy There's a Girl in My Soup at the Music Box. He returned to Broadway in March 1975 as Oronte in The Misanthrope, performed at the St. James Theater as part of a United States tour by the National Theatre company.

Between those two Broadway engagements, Grainger built an extensive stage career on both sides of the Atlantic. In London, he played Cyril Bishop in The Giveaway at the Garrick Theatre in April 1969 and James Boswell in The Douglas Cause at the Duke of York's in November 1971. He joined Laurence Olivier's National Theatre at the Old Vic in 1972, where he remained for many years, accumulating a large body of work. His National Theatre credits included McCue in The Front Page (July 1972), Macduff in Macbeth (November 1972), Oronte in The Misanthrope (February 1973), and Roberto in Saturday, Sunday, Monday (October 1973), among numerous others spanning the 1970s. Later National Theatre appearances included roles in The Iceman Cometh (1980), The Crucible (March 1981), and productions at the Cottesloe, Olivier, and Lyttelton stages across multiple decades.

Grainger was a close friend of Laurence Olivier and assisted him in writing his second book, On Acting, published in 1986. After a period in the 1980s during which he concentrated on writing while his children grew up, Grainger returned to acting in the 1990s at the encouragement of Harold Pinter. His subsequent stage work included productions at the Almeida, Donmar Warehouse, Hampstead Theatre, and the National Theatre, among other venues. Notable later credits included No Man's Land at the Almeida (1992) and Comedy Theatre (1993), Taking Sides at the Minerva in Chichester (1995) and the Criterion (1995), and Garret Fitzmaurice in Give Me Your Answer Do at the Hampstead Theatre (1998) and the Gramercy Theatre in New York (1999). In 2012, he played Mr. Balance in The Recruiting Officer at the Donmar Warehouse, the first production under incoming artistic director Josie Rourke. His final credited stage role was Don Juan's father in Don Juan in Soho at the Wyndham Theatre in 2017.

As a playwright, Grainger authored Four to One (1976), Vamp Till Ready (1978), Lies in Plastic Smiles (1979), and Paradise Lost (1980). In the 1980s he also wrote scripts for the BBC1 drama series Big Deal, created by Geoff McQueen and starring Ray Brooks. He had begun writing for the stage before his professional acting debut, with his first play performed when he was twenty-one.

His television work included the role of the Apostle Andrew in Dennis Potter's Son of Man (1969), the Earl of Kildare in The Shadow of the Tower (1972), George Stephenson in the Doctor Who serial The Mark of the Rani (1985), and Lesley Flux in the Midsomer Murders episode The House in the Woods (2005). He also appeared as an occasional panelist on the syndicated New York-based program What's My Line? in 1968, 1969, and 1970.

In his personal life, Grainger's second marriage was to actress Janet Key in 1970; together they had two children. Key died of cancer in July 1992. His third marriage, from November 1994 until his death, was to American-British actress Zoë Wanamaker. Grainger died on 17 May 2025 at the age of 87.