John Stride

John Edward Stride (11 July 1936 – 20 April 2018) was an English actor born in London, the son of Margaret (née Prescott) and Alfred Teneriffe Stride. He received his formal training at RADA, where he met Virginia Thomas, who became his first wife. His secondary education took place at Alleyn's School in Dulwich.

Stride made his West End debut in February 1959 in Five Finger Exercise at the Comedy Theatre, a production directed by John Gielgud that also featured a then-17-year-old Juliet Mills in her own debut. The production ran for 608 performances. His first screen appearance came the following year, uncredited, in the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck! He subsequently took on the role of Bob the barman in Bitter Harvest (1963), adapted from Patrick Hamilton's trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky.

His stage work at the Old Vic established him as a significant classical actor. He played Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli's long-running 1960 production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Judi Dench, and also appeared as Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1. Later in the decade he took the role of Rosencrantz in the National Theatre Company's production of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Stride brought his classical stage work to New York during the 1962–63 Broadway season, appearing in three productions: The Lady of the Camellias, in which he starred, as well as Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. His Broadway debut earned him a Theatre World Award in 1962.

His screen career extended into major film and television productions across several decades. He played Ross in Roman Polanski's 1971 film adaptation of Macbeth, and was cast in the title role of the BBC Television Shakespeare production of Henry VIII in 1979. On television, Stride became most closely associated with the Yorkshire Television legal drama The Main Chance (1969–75), in which he played solicitor David Main across four series. He later starred alongside Julia Foster in Wilde Alliance (1978), a single-series ITV production from the same franchise. In 1992 he played Alun Weaver, the lead character, in the BBC's adaptation of Kingsley Amis's novel The Old Devils.

Stride died on 20 April 2018, at the age of 81, in a care home following his discharge from Sandford Ward at the Fulbrook Centre in Oxford.