DAVID WARNER
(29 July 1941 – 24 July 2022)
Hailed as one of the best Hamlets of our time in 1965, the English actor David Warner, who has died from lung cancer aged 80, perhaps never fulfilled the promise of his early career. Peter Hall had cast the 24-year-old actor in what is considered to be one of the milestones in a stage actor’s development. He had joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 and appeared as Henry VI in The Wars of the Roses cycle of Shakespeare plays and then went on to appear in more Shakespeare and other theatre works but for much of his career he was involved in the cinema and television.
David Hattersley Warner was born out of wedlock in Manchester in north England to Herbert Simon Warner and Ada Doreen Hattersley. He had an unhappy childhood as his parents separated and he subsequently lived with his father and stepmother who often moved home so that David’s education suffered. He secured a place at Rada but was not happy there. However, having played Snout in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Court in London, it led him to join the RSC. Following his outstanding Hamlet, he was cast in Karel Reisz’s film of Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, based on David Mercer’s television play about a working class artist with an upper class wife (Vanessa Redgrave, Oscar-nominated) who is seeking a divorce. Warner, Redgrave and Reisz were all Bafta award nominees.
Warner had made his film debut uncredited in Wendy Toye’s We Joined the Navy with Kenneth More and then he played Blifl in Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones with Albert Finney. Subsequent films included Sidney Lumet’s The Deadly Affair, Jack Gold’s The Bofors Gun and Peter Hall’s Work Is a Four-Letter Word, the last co-starring Cilla Black in her only film role. He also worked with Hall on the bank job film Perfect Friday. The Fixer was John Frankenheimer’s adaptation of the Bernard Malamud novel, with Warner as Count Odoevsky. He played Treplev in Lumet’s adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, was Helmer in Joseph Losey’s version of Ibsen’s A Doll's House, with Jane Fonda as Nora, and appeared as Lysander in Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was also in Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue and the controversial Straw Dogs.
Warner was getting good films by notable directors such as Alain Resnais’ Providence but then they began to become more obviously commercial with The Omen, Cross of Iron, Silver Bears, Time After Time, The Thirty-Nine Steps and Airport ‘79. However, there was gold among some of the more commercial titles such as the Monty Python fantasy Time Bandits in which Warner played Evil, Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Carl Reiner’s The Man with Two Brains, and Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves. On the other hand were Disney’s Tron, My Best Friend Is a Vampire, Office Party, Star Trek V and VI, Mortal Passions and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II.
Of Warner’s later films, Titanic and Ladies in Lavender were arguably his best. His final role was Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins Returns in 2018. He also had a thriving TV career, winning an Emmy for the miniseries Masada in 1981. He made audio recordings of projects such as Doctor Who, and recorded some video games, too. Later on he returned to the stage, after thirty years away, for Major Barbara on Broadway, King Lear at Chichester, Night Sky at The Old Vic and Falstaff at the RSC.
David Warner was married to Harriet Lindgren from 1969 to 1972 when they divorced. He married Sheilah Kent in 1979 and they have two children, Melissa and Luke. They divorced in 2005.
MICHAEL DARVELL