John Moffatt

Albert John Moffatt, born on 24 September 1922 in Badby, Daventry, Northamptonshire, and died on 10 September 2012, was an English character actor and playwright whose career spanned stage, radio, television, and film across six decades. The son of Ernest Moffatt and his wife Letitia, née Hickman, who served Queen Alexandra at Marlborough House and Sandringham, Moffatt was educated at East Sheen County School in west London. Following his schooling he spent three years as a bank clerk in the City of London, attending drama classes in the evenings at Toynbee Hall under John Burrell while keeping the lessons concealed from his parents, who regarded the theatre as an insufficiently secure profession.

Moffatt made his first stage appearance in 1944 at the Liverpool Playhouse, playing the Raven in a touring children's production of The Snow Queen. He entered regular theatre the following year at the Perth Repertory, where his colleagues included Alec McCowen, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. Over the subsequent five years he performed more than 200 parts in repertory companies at Oxford, Windsor, and the Bristol Old Vic. During his time at Oxford he and the young Tony Hancock appeared together as Ugly Sisters. Moffatt retained a lasting affection for pantomime, becoming a celebrated Dame and authoring five pantomimes.

His first London appearance came in 1950, when he played Loyale in Tartuffe at the Lyric, Hammersmith. At the same theatre he played the sinister waiter in Anouilh's Point of Departure alongside Dirk Bogarde, making his West End debut when the production transferred to the Duke of York's. In 1951 he appeared in the revue Late Night Extra and was subsequently spotted by Binkie Beaumont, head of H M Tennent, who placed him in prominent West End productions. Through Beaumont's patronage Moffatt appeared alongside John Gielgud in The Winter's Tale in 1951 and Much Ado About Nothing in 1952, and with Noël Coward in The Apple Cart in 1953.

As a member of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court, Moffatt appeared in Nigel Dennis's Cards of Identity and Brecht's The Good Woman of Szechuan, and drew considerable attention for his portrayal of Mr Sparkish in Wycherley's The Country Wife. That production transferred to the West End and then to Broadway, marking his first appearance on the New York stage in 1957. In September 1959 he joined the Old Vic company, taking roles in As You Like It, Richard II, Saint Joan, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V, and Barrie's What Every Woman Knows. He also played Algy in The Importance of Being Earnest on a tour of Britain, Poland, and Russia.

In 1962 Moffatt received the Clarence Derwent Award as best supporting actor of the season for his portrayal of Cardinal Cajetan in John Osborne's Luther at the Royal Court. That production also transferred to the West End and to Broadway, where Moffatt appeared in 1963, completing his Broadway career, which had run from 1957 to 1963. The following year he took his first starring role, playing Lord Foppington in Virtue in Danger, a musical adaptation of Vanbrugh's The Relapse. In 1969 he joined Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company at the Old Vic, where his roles included Fainall in The Way of the World, Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler with Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens directed by Ingmar Bergman, Menenius in Coriolanus, Cardinal Arragon in The White Devil, and Sir Joshua Rat in Adrian Mitchell's Tyger.

In 1972 Moffatt served as narrator and principal performer in the revue Cowardy Custard at the Mermaid, a compilation of the words and music of Noël Coward, who attended the premiere. He later played the playwright Garry Essendine in Coward's Present Laughter. In 1975 he appeared in Ben Travers's The Bed Before Yesterday opposite Joan Plowright, and in 1979 played a monocled theatre director in P. G. Wodehouse's adaptation of Ferenc Molnar's The Play's The Thing at Greenwich. William Gaskill's 1983–84 production of The Way of the World at Chichester and the Haymarket featured Moffatt as Witwoud alongside Maggie Smith. In 1985 he appeared in Ronald Harwood's Interpreters with Maggie Smith and Edward Fox, and his final West End appearance came in 1988 in Peter Luke's Married Love, in which he played Bernard Shaw.

Moffatt began broadcasting on BBC Radio in 1950, appearing in Mrs Dale's Diary, and made his television debut in 1953 as Grebeauval in The Public Prosecutor. His radio work encompassed a wide range of classical roles, including Oswald to Gielgud's King Lear, Lord Chief Justice to Timothy West's Falstaff, Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop, and both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson in separate BBC adaptations. His most enduring radio role was Hercule Poirot in 25 adaptations of Agatha Christie's detective stories, beginning with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd on 24 December 1987 and concluding with Dead Man's Folly on 27 August 2007. On television he played Joseph Surface in The School for Scandal, Malvolio and Sir Andrew in two separate productions of Twelfth Night, and appeared in Love in a Cold Climate in 1980. In 1982 he played West London gangster Freddie Baker in the Minder episode "Looking for Micky," and in 1992–93 he played M. Comeliau, the Examining Magistrate, in ITV's Maigret starring Michael Gambon. Between 1956 and 1987 he appeared in twelve films. Throughout much of the 1980s he was a member of the BBC's Radio Drama Company.