Peter Donat

Pierre Collingwood Donat, known professionally as Peter Donat, was born on January 20, 1928, in Kentville, Nova Scotia, and died on September 10, 2018, in Point Reyes Station, California, at the age of 90. His mother, Marie, was Canadian, and his father, Philip Ernst Donat, a landscape gardener, was British. His paternal grandfather, Ernst Emil Donat, had emigrated to England from Prussia. His younger brother Richard was also an actor, and his uncle was the Oscar-winning British actor Robert Donat. Donat became a naturalized United States citizen during his lifetime.

Donat completed his undergraduate studies at Acadia University before enrolling at the Yale School of Drama, where he first drew notice as a stage actor by taking the lead in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac. A chance encounter with director Tyrone Guthrie led to his casting in his Broadway debut, The First Gentleman, which earned him a Theatre World Award in 1957. His Broadway career extended from 1957 to 1972 and included The Chinese Prime Minister, the comedy The Country Wife, the drama The Entertainer, and There's One in Every Marriage.

Beyond Broadway, Donat built a substantial stage career at the Stratford Festival, where he performed in numerous Shakespearean productions including A Midsummer Night's Dream, Troilus and Cressida, Julius Caesar, and Falstaff. In 1961, he appeared in a leading role in Donald Jack's The Canvas Barricade, the first Canadian play staged at the Stratford Festival. He was a co-founding company member of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where he remained a prominent presence for several years. In 1988, he took on his first singing role, playing Professor Higgins in the Cabrillo Stage production of My Fair Lady. He played Prospero in The Tempest at the Atlantic Theatre Festival in 1995, and in 2003 he starred as Hirst in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land for Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre.

Donat's film work spanned several decades and included prominent roles in The Hindenburg (1975), F.I.S.T. (1978), The China Syndrome (1979), The War of the Roses (1989), Skin Deep (1989), and The Game (1997). He had been shortlisted to play Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972), a role that ultimately went to Robert Duvall, but he later appeared in The Godfather Part II (1974) as Senate Committee lawyer Questadt. He worked again with director Francis Ford Coppola on Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), in which he played Otto Kerner. In 1974, he starred as the title character in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac for the PBS anthology series Theatre in America. He was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Bay Boy (1984). He also narrated The Hero's Journey: A Biographical Portrait (1987), a biographical film about mythologist Joseph Campbell, and moderated the multi-volume video series The World of Joseph Campbell: Transformation of Myths Through Time (1989).

On television, Donat played Vince Conway in the 1965 series Moment of Truth, the only Canadian serial ever broadcast on a commercial television network in the United States. He was a regular cast member of the primetime serial Flamingo Road from 1981 to 1982, playing Elmo Tyson. He played the recurring role of William Mulder, the father of Fox Mulder, on The X-Files from 1995 to 1999. His additional television credits include Mission: Impossible, Banacek, The Waltons, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Charlie's Angels, Lou Grant, Captains and the Kings, Rich Man Poor Man Book II, Dallas, Hill Street Blues, Simon & Simon, Murder She Wrote, and Time Trax, among others.

Donat married actress Michael Learned in 1956; they divorced in 1972 and had three children together: Caleb, Christopher, and Lucas. From 1983 until his death, he was married to his second wife, Marijke. He died from complications of diabetes.