Leonard Rossiter

Leonard Rossiter was an English actor born on 21 October 1926 in Wavertree, Liverpool, the second son of John and Elizabeth Rossiter. His father operated a barber's shop beneath the family home. Rossiter attended Liverpool Collegiate School from 1939 to 1946, and when the Second World War began in September 1939, he was evacuated with his schoolmates to Bangor in north Wales, where he remained for eighteen months. His ambition at the time was to study modern languages at university and pursue a career in teaching, but the death of his father — who served as a voluntary ambulanceman and was killed during the May Blitz air raid of 1941 — made that path impossible. With family responsibilities to meet, Rossiter completed his National Service as a sergeant, serving first in the Intelligence Corps and then in the Army Education Corps, spending considerable time in Germany writing correspondence on behalf of fellow soldiers. Following his demobilisation, he spent six years working as an insurance clerk in the claims and accident departments of the Commercial Union Insurance Company.

Rossiter came to acting after an actress girlfriend challenged him to attempt it, having mocked the amateur group she belonged to. He joined the Wavertree Community Centre Drama Group and made his first appearance with the Adastra Players in Terence Rattigan's Flare Path, with a local critic noting that he was particularly outstanding, though prone to speaking too quickly at moments. He left his insurance career to enrol at Preston repertory theatre, making his professional stage debut on 6 September 1954 in Joseph Colton's The Gay Dog. He became a professional actor at the age of 27. In his first nineteen months in the profession he took on approximately 75 roles, later serving as assistant stage manager at Preston before moving on to repertory companies in Wolverhampton and Salisbury.

Between 1957 and 1958, Rossiter appeared in the musical Free as Air and subsequently toured in Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. He joined the Bristol Old Vic, where he worked for two years from 1959 to 1961, a period he described as the bedrock of his career. Further stage work followed in productions including The Strange Case of Martin Richter, Disabled, The Heretic, and The Caretaker. In 1963, Rossiter appeared on Broadway in the play Semi-Detached, bringing his stage work to New York. His performance in the 1969 premiere of Michael Blakemore's production of Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui earned significant critical acclaim.

Rossiter's film career began with A Kind of Loving in 1962, followed by Billy Liar in 1963, in which he played the title character's employer. His first major television role came as Detective-Inspector Bamber in the long-running police series Z-Cars. He also appeared in guest roles across series including The Avengers in 1963 and Steptoe and Son in 1964 and 1972. Four early films placed him under the direction of Bryan Forbes: King Rat (1965), The Wrong Box (1966), The Whisperers (1967), and Deadfall (1968). In 1968 he played Mr Sowerberry in the film adaptation of Lionel Bart's musical Oliver!, and in the same year took a supporting speaking role as the Russian scientist Smyslov in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. He worked with Kubrick again in Barry Lyndon (1975), playing Captain John Quin, and appeared opposite Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) as Superintendent Quinlan.

Television brought Rossiter his widest public recognition. From 1974 to 1978 he starred as Rupert Rigsby, the landlord of a converted house of shabby bedsits, in the ITV series Rising Damp, reprising a role he had originated in the stage production The Banana Box. Concurrently, from 1976 to 1979, he played Reginald Perrin in the BBC series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, adapted by David Nobbs from his own comic novels. In 1975, Rossiter was the subject of a surprise tribute on This Is Your Life. He reprised the role of Rigsby for a 1980 film version of Rising Damp, making him one of the few performers to have played the same character on stage, television, and film. His final television sitcom role was as a supermarket manager in ITV's Tripper's Day in 1984, and his last major television dramatic role was the title part in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of The Life and Death of King John, also in 1984. His final film appearance came in Water, released in 1985.

From 1978 to 1983, Rossiter appeared in ten television commercials for Cinzano, created by director Alan Parker. At Rossiter's suggestion, the advertisements were built around a music hall joke in which his character repeatedly spills a drink on his wife, played by Joan Collins. Rossiter also contributed to radio, narrating works including an abridged version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol on cassette in 1979, appearing on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 1980, and hosting an episode of With Great Pleasure in 1981 alongside his wife, actress Gillian Raine, and actor James Grout. He narrated two series of satirical monologues written by Barry Pilton for BBC Radio 3 — a seven-part series in 1981 titled In a Nutshell, followed by an eight-part second series in 1982. In voice work, he provided the voice of Boot the dog in the 1979 animated adaptation of The Perishers, and voiced the King of Hearts in two episodes of Anglia Television's Alice in Wonderland, broadcast in April 1985, six months after his death.

Rossiter died on 5 October 1984, eighteen days before his fifty-eighth birthday.