Robert Stephens

Robert Graham Stephens was born on 14 July 1931 in Shirehampton, Bristol, the eldest of three children of Reuben Stephens, a shipyard labourer and costing surveyor, and Gladys Millicent Stephens, a chocolate-factory worker. At eighteen, he won a scholarship to Esme Church's Bradford Civic Theatre School in Yorkshire, where he met Nora, a fellow student who became his first wife.

Stephens began his professional career with the Caryl Jenner Mobile Theatre before moving in 1951 to repertory work at the Royalty Theatre in Morecambe, where he took on more demanding roles. Seasons of touring and work at the Hippodrome in Preston followed. A performance at the Royalty Theatre was seen by London director Tony Richardson, which led to Stephens joining the first season of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court in 1956.

His Broadway career spanned from 1958 to 1976. During the 1958–59 season he appeared in Epitaph for George Dillon, a credit that earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play. He later returned to Broadway in Sherlock Holmes. His stage work in Britain during this period included playing Atahuallpa in the original 1964 National Theatre production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and appearing alongside Maggie Smith in The Recruiting Officer at the Old Vic.

Stephens's film work began in the early 1960s with A Taste of Honey (1961) and Cleopatra (1963). He played Prince Escalus in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968) and starred opposite Smith in the 1969 film version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. He took the title role in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and appeared in the gothic horror film The Asphyx (1972). His departure from the National Theatre in 1970 and the breakdown of his marriage to Smith in 1973 preceded a difficult period in his career marked by heavy drinking and a personal breakdown.

Stephens continued working across stage, film, and television through the 1970s and 1980s. He appeared in the National Theatre's The Mysteries in 1986, played Abner Brown in the 1984 BBC television dramatisation of The Box of Delights, and had a role as the Master of an Oxford college in an episode of Inspector Morse. In 1985 he directed the British premiere of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea by John Patrick Shanley at the Gate Theatre in London. He also provided the voice of Aragorn in the 1981 BBC Radio serialisation of The Lord of the Rings, and appeared in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V and the 1988 film The Fruit Machine, released in the United States as Wonderland.

His professional resurgence came in the 1990s when the Royal Shakespeare Company cast him as Falstaff in Henry IV, directed by Adrian Noble and opening in April 1991. Later that year he played the title role in Julius Caesar, directed by Steven Pimlott, and in May 1993 returned to work with Noble on King Lear. His performance as Falstaff earned him the Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor in 1993.

Stephens was married four times: to Nora Ann Simmons in 1951, with whom he had one child and divorced in 1952; to Tarn Bassett in 1956, with whom he had one child and divorced in 1967; to actress Maggie Smith in 1967, with whom he had two sons, the actors Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, divorcing in 1975; and to Belfast-born Patricia Quinn in 1995. He was knighted as a Knight Bachelor in the 1995 New Year Honours List for services to drama. Stephens died on 12 November 1995, aged 64, from complications during surgery, less than a year after receiving his knighthood.