BEN CROSS

(16 December 1947 - 18 August 2020)

The British actor Ben Cross, who has died after a short illness at the age of 72, will be remembered for playing the athlete Harold Abrahams in Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire (1981) as well as other film and stage works. Born Harry Bernard Cross in London to a Catholic family, he first worked as a labourer but then became a carpenter at the Welsh National Opera and then props-master at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre. He studied at Rada and then worked in repertory, joining the RSC in 1977, the year of his first film, Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far. His outstanding appearance as Billy Flynn in the stage musical of Chicago led to his casting in Chariots of Fire. However, after that film Cross rarely appeared in major films but worked mainly on TV and, having lived and worked all over the world, graced a collection of eccentric international movies. Apart from the Arthurian First Knight (1995) with Sean Connery and Star Trek (2009) with Chris Pine, his other films included The Assisi Underground with James Mason, The Unholy with Ned Beatty, Live Wire with Pierce Brosnan, Cold Sweat with Alec Baldwin, Turbulence with Ray Liotta, The Venice Project with Lauren Bacall, The Order with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Charlton Heston, Exorcist: The Beginning with Stellan Skarsgård, and Dolph Lundgren’s The Mechanik. He made many TV series including The Flame Trees of Thika, The Citadel, The Far Pavilions, 20,00 Leagues Under the Sea (as Captain Nemo), the lead in the Biblical story of Solomon, Spartacus (as Titus Glabrus), Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial (as Rudolph Hess), Ben Hur (as Tiberius), and William & Kate: The Movie (as Princes Charles), etc. Five more films are still in the pipeline. Ben Cross had three marriages, to Michele Moerth, Penelope Butler and Deyana Boneva Cross. With his second wife he fathered a daughter, Lauren, and a son, Theo.

MICHAEL DARVELL