JOHN SESSIONS

(11 January 1953 - 3 November 2020)

The actor and comedian John Sessions, who has died from a heart attack at 67, was by his own account not an easy person to know, with doubts about his own talents which led to depression and self-hatred of his appearance. He nevertheless became popular on stage and in television and film. He was born John Gibb Marshall in Ayrshire in Scotland, but his family moved to England when John was three. Educated in Bedford, St Albans and Bangor University, he then studied for a PhD in Ontario but left before completing his degree. He was at Rada with Kenneth Branagh with whom he later worked. From the 1980s he played comedy clubs and had parts in films starting with the horror film The Sender (1982). He was in The Bounty with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, Whoops Apocalypse, Sky Bandits, Castaway and Branagh’s Henry V and In the Bleak Midwinter. His 1990s films included The Pope Must Die, My Night With Reg, Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night’s Dream (as Philostrate) and he played the Prince Regent in the historical comedy Princess Caraboo. Sessions worked with Martin Scorsese on Gangs of New York and with Robert De Niro on The Good Shepherd, but after that his career was mostly on television. He used his great facility for mimicry on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Spitting Image, Tall Tales and Likely Stories. In the brilliant Stella Street he played Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Mrs Huggett and did service in Doctor Who, The Comic Strip, Skins, Upstart Crow,The Loch, Mr Selfridge (as Conan Doyle), and Victoria (as Lord John Russell). Later films included The Iron Lady (as Edward Heath), Mr Holmes (as Mycroft), Legend (as Lord Boothby) and Finding Your Feet with Imelda Staunton.

MICHAEL DARVELL