Michael Elphick

Michael John Elphick (19 September 1946 – 7 September 2002) was an English actor who worked in film, television, and theatre, including a Broadway appearance in 1969. Born in Chichester, Sussex, where his family operated a butcher's shop, Elphick was educated at Lancastrian Secondary Modern Boys School, where he participated in school productions of Noah and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He initially considered a career in the Merchant Navy and worked at a local boatyard during school holidays. His path toward acting began at age 15, when he took a job as an apprentice electrician at the Chichester Festival Theatre during its construction. Observing performers including Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, and Sybil Thorndike sparked his interest in the profession. Olivier personally advised him to attend drama school and provided him with two audition speeches. Elphick was accepted at several institutions but chose the Central School of Speech and Drama in Swiss Cottage, in part because Olivier had trained there.

Following his graduation, Elphick made his screen debut in the Italian-produced First World War film Fraulein Doktor around 1968. His stage and screen career developed through his association with director Tony Richardson, for whom he played the Captain in the 1969 film version of Hamlet. On stage, Elphick performed the roles of Marcellus and the Player King in Richardson's theatrical production of Hamlet, which ran at the Roundhouse Theatre and transferred to Broadway that same year. He later returned to the play in a different capacity, taking the role of Claudius opposite Jonathan Pryce in a production of Hamlet at the Royal Court Theatre directed by Richard Eyre.

His film work included appearances in O Lucky Man! (1973), directed by Lindsay Anderson; The First Great Train Robbery; The Elephant Man; and Quadrophenia (1979), in which he played Phil Daniels' father. He portrayed Pasha in Gorky Park (1983), a performance that earned him a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1984 he took the lead role of Fisher in Lars von Trier's Palme d'Or-nominated debut film The Element of Crime, playing a British detective who recalls under hypnosis his pursuit of a serial killer across a dystopian Europe. He also appeared as the poacher Jake in Withnail and I (1987), and had cameo roles in The Krays (1990) and Let Him Have It (1991).

On the stage, Elphick appeared in the Ray Davies and Barrie Keeffe musical Chorus Girls at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in 1981, and in The Changing Room at the Royal Court Theatre, directed by Lindsay Anderson. His final West End appearance came in 1997, when he played Doolittle in a production of Pygmalion directed by Ray Cooney at the Albery Theatre.

Television brought Elphick his widest recognition. He played three separate characters in the Granada series Crown Court between 1973 and 1983, including the recurring role of barrister Neville Griffiths Q.C. He appeared briefly in Coronation Street in 1974 as Douglas Wormold, and took the title role in the six-part comedy-drama Private Schulz (1981), playing a German forger conscripted into SS Counter Espionage during the Second World War alongside Ian Richardson. He appeared as Irish labourer Magowan in the first series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1983) and starred in the sitcom Pull the Other One (1984) before playing Sam Tyler across four series of Three Up, Two Down from 1985 to 1989. His most prominent television role came with Boon (1986–92, 1995), in which he played Ken Boon, a retired fireman who establishes a motorbike despatch business and later works as a private investigator. The series ran for seven series and drew audiences of up to 11 million viewers. In 1993 he starred in Harry as a former Fleet Street journalist running a news agency in Darlington. He played Billy Bones in a televised version of Treasure Island (1995) and Barkis in David Copperfield (1999). In 2001 he joined EastEnders as Harry Slater, a character whose storyline involved the sexual abuse of his niece Kat Slater.

Elphick met his long-term partner, schoolteacher Julia Alexander, in 1963. The couple had a daughter together. Alexander died of cancer in 1996, after which Elphick acknowledged that his drinking had intensified and that he had contemplated suicide. He made his first attempt to stop drinking in 1988 and later sought help from Alcoholics Anonymous in the early 1990s. He was admitted to the Priory Hospital in Roehampton in an effort to address his addictions. At the height of his alcohol dependency, he acknowledged consuming two litres of spirits per day. His drinking affected his work on EastEnders, and the character was written out of the series. On 7 September 2002, Elphick collapsed at his home in Willesden Green, London, and died of a heart attack shortly before his 56th birthday. His funeral was held at Chichester Crematorium.