Richard Easton

Richard Easton (March 22, 1933 – December 2, 2019) was a Canadian actor who worked across stage, television, and film throughout a career spanning more than seven decades. Born John Richard Easton in Montreal, Quebec, he was the son of Mary Louise (née Withington) and Leonard Idell Easton, a civil engineer. He began acting in a children's theatre group and played Hamlet while still in high school, studying under Eleanor Stuart. His professional debut came at the Brae Manor Playhouse in 1947, and in 1951 he relocated to Ottawa to join the Canadian Repertory Theatre. Two years later, at seventeen, he took part in the Stratford Festival's inaugural season and its inaugural production, playing Sir Thomas Vaughan in Richard III.

Easton's stage work in the mid-1950s included a 1955 appearance at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, where he played Edgar in King Lear, followed by six productions at Toronto's Crest Theatre between 1956 and 1958, among them The School for Scandal, The Italian Straw Hat, The Three Sisters, Antony and Cleopatra, She Stoops to Conquer, and Salad Days. His first New York appearance came in 1957 in an off-Broadway production by the Phoenix Theatre, after which he performed at the Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare Festival. He appeared with the APA Repertory in Hamlet in 1961, playing the title role, and returned to the company for Exit the King in 1967, in which he played Berenger, and The Misanthrope in 1969, playing Alceste.

His Broadway credits include a 1965 appearance in Mr. Pickwick. He also appeared on Broadway in a 1969 Lyceum Theatre production of Hamlet, playing Claudius. In 2001, Easton won both the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of A. E. Housman, aged 77, in Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love. That same year he appeared in a Royal National Theatre production of Noises Off as Selsdon Mowbray. In 2003 he played Henry IV in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 at Lincoln Center, and in 2006 he took on multiple roles — Alexander Bakunin, Leonty Ibayev, and Stanislaw Worcell — in Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater. During the second preview of that production, on October 18, 2006, Easton suffered a heart attack and collapsed on stage. His heart stopped, and a stagehand performed CPR after co-star Martha Plimpton alerted the audience. He was revived by defibrillation and underwent a procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia before returning to the production. His final Broadway credit was the 2010 production of Elling, in which he played Alfons.

After his work with the APA Repertory, Easton spent years in British repertory theatre before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company, with whom he worked until 1986. That year he joined the Renaissance Theatre Company, playing Jaques in As You Like It and Claudius in Hamlet. On television, he is perhaps best known for portraying Brian Hammond in the BBC serial The Brothers, a role he held from 1972 to 1976. He also made guest appearances on Doctor Who, L.A. Law, Frasier, and Ed. In 2002, he starred in the title role of the three-part PBS documentary Benjamin Franklin, and between 2005 and 2011 he reprised the role of Franklin in a series of commercials and videos produced for the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts A.F. & A.M. In 2011 he appeared as Jackson Parkhurst in the Boardwalk Empire episode "Gimcrack & Bunkum." He also provided the voice of Nigel in the video game Grand Theft Auto V. Easton was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. He died on December 2, 2019, at the age of 86.