Jeremyt Brett played the foppish Freddie Eynsford-Hill opposite Audrey Hepburn in the 1964 film version of My Fair Lady, and he had a long career on stage and screen. But Brett is best known for his portrayal of master detective Sherlock Holmes in a series of episodes for British television filmed between 1984 and 1994. His intense and acerbic Holmes was an immediate hit with audiences and remains popular in reruns.
By coincidence, Brett played Dr. Watson in a 1980 Los Angeles production of the play The Crucifer of Blood, with Charlton Heston as Holmes... Brett played poet Robert Browning in the 1982 TV movie The Barretts of Wimpole Street.
Career Highlights: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: The Creeping Man, Merchant of Venice, Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer
First Major Screen Credit: The Very Edge (1963)
Biography
Jeremy Brett was a gifted yet ultimately underappreciated Thespian whose symbiotic relationship with the character Sherlock Holmes has earned him a permanent place in the livelihood of the fictitious legend as well as Baker Street Irregulars and the like. (His portrayal of the character is, arguably, the most authentic and revered today.) Born Jeremy Peter William Huggins in Berkswell, Warwickshire, England, in 1933, Brett was the son of Henry and Elizabeth Huggins along with his three brothers, John, Patrick, and Michael. His father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army and did not want the family name associated with the dubious world of the theatrical, so young Brett plucked his stage name from the tag in his first suit, Brett & Co. He made his professional stage debut in Manchester, England, in the company of the Library Theatre in 1954. Brett's early work on the stage included everything from the classic to the avant-garde in nature; he was a diverse and multifaceted performer, who even worked alongside the likes of Charlton Heston (playing Dr. Watson oddly enough). He was still a fledgling at London's Central School of Speech and Drama when he made his first uncredited feature-film appearance in Svengali.
Brett's photograph in a British actors publication caught the eye of American filmmaker King Vidor, who subsequently cast him as Nicholai Rostov in his adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace (1956); the film marked his first encounter with future co-star Audrey Hepburn. After a stint in film, Brett returned to the London stage and joined the Old Vic theater company touring England and Canada, and it finally landed him right on Broadway in the U.S. Brett made his first U.S. television appearance on March 4, 1957, as Paris in an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. He continued to act in London plays and sing in musicals into his late twenties, including an important role as Hamlet in 1961. He married fellow Thespian Anna Massey in 1958; however, the marriage was short-lived. The couple had one son, David, for whom they continued to care for adequately in the aftermath of their divorce.
The early '60s found Brett collaborating with renowned British actor/director Laurence Olivier, who offered him supporting roles in his productions of Othello and Hamlet. Brett would have been more inclined to focus on these stage roles if he hadn't been distracted by the filming of My Fair Lady, in which he sang alongside Audrey Hepburn as Freddy Eynesford-Hill. Olivier did his best to get Brett to stay in London, but Hollywood and the West Coast were too alluring for the adventurous young man, who was always up for an adventure. After the filming of My Fair Lady finally ended, Brett partook in a number of theatrical pieces including Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy and Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Taking a nod from director Olivier and other patrons of London's National Theatre, Brett finally made his debut with the prestigious company in 1967 as Orlando in Shakespeare's As You Like It, which premiered with mixed reviews. He also appeared with the company in MacRune's Guevara (as Che Guavara, reportedly spending time hitchhiking around South America to fully understand his character), The Merchant of Venice, and Hedda Gabler, directed by Ingmar Bergman. The '70s attracted Brett more to television and radio with a few small intermissions on the stage; he was a player in the 1976 Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada. Television, however, brought him together with his second wife, producer Joan Sullivan (aka Joan Wilson), on the set of Rebecca. The two claim it was love at first sight, and they were married in November of 1977 until her untimely death from cancer in 1985. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes had begun filming that year, thanks to producer and Brett-enthusiast Michael Cox; Brett continued to work through his period of grief, performing in Aren't We All through the end of July and then showed up to start filming The Return of Sherlock Holmes in August of that same year. As he fought to belie his inward grief through continuous working, his emotions finally caught up with him, and he had a breakdown of sorts after finishing the first few episodes of the Return series in 1986. It was at this point that Brett was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a sickness which had gone mostly undocumented throughout his life and was played off as indiosyncracies of an impulsive actor amongst his friends and associates.
Aside from his loss and psychological demons at bay, Brett's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the Granada series was to be his most poignant work, partly due to the emotive energy he channeled into it from his personal standpoint. He approached the role with utter seriousness and respect for the detective; Brett was a staunch critic in keeping true to the historical and literary keynotes from the stories, which resulted in a stylish, witty, and sophisticated interpretation of the singular friendship between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. At the same time, Brett articulated facets of Holmes that went beyond the stories, creating a fresh and more vibrant (and sometimes more comical) Holmes than had been seen before. The Granada anthology includes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes; four feature films were also produced from the short novels -- A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Master Blackmailer (adapted from Doyle's The Valley of Fear).
Brett was not only manic depressive, but he also had a continually failing heart; his condition was further compromised by heavy smoking, a grueling work schedule, and an already weakened heart from a spout with rheumatic fever as a child. He had become compulsive and brooding like the Holmes he portrayed in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, a centennial commemorative play written by his good friend, Jeremy Paul, the man who also wrote a number of Holmes episodes for Granada. The Secret ran a rigorous year in the U.K. and finally came to a close in late 1989. By then, Brett's health was waning; his last appearances were on the set of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street. He passed away on September 12, 1995, in his sleep at his home in Clapham Common. His career legacy is still treasured to many, and his portraiture of the famous detective hero will always remain in the hearts of Sherlockians everywhere. ~ All Movie Guide
Brett was born at Berkswell Grange in Berkswell, Warwickshire, England and was educated at Eton College. Brett later claimed that he was an "academic disaster" at Eton and attributed his learning
difficulties to dyslexia. However, he excelled at singing and was a member of the choir at
Eton.
Acting career
Brett trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and
Drama in London. He made his professional acting debut at the Library Theatre in Manchester in 1954, and made his London stage
debut with the Old Vic company in 1956. He went on to play many classical roles on stage,
including numerous Shakespearean parts in his early career with the Old Vic and
later with the Royal National Theatre. Brett made his first television appearance
in 1954 and his first feature film appearance in 1955.
From the early 1960s, Brett was rarely absent from British television screens. He starred in many serials, notably as
D'Artagnan in the 1966 adaptation of The Three
Musketeers. A few of his appearances were in comedic roles, but usually with a classic edge, such as Captain Absolute
in The Rivals. In 1973, Brett portrayed Bassanio in a televised production of
William Shakespeare's The Merchant of
Venice, in which Laurence Olivier portrayed Shylock and Joan Plowright Portia. (Brett, Olivier and Plowright had
previously played the same roles in a Royal National Theatre production of the
play.) Brett joked that, as an actor, he was rarely allowed into the 20th century and
never into the present day.
Although Brett's feature film appearances were relatively few, he did play Freddie Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 blockbuster film
version of My Fair Lady. His singing voice was dubbed in the film, but Brett
could still sing, as he later proved when he played Danilo in The Merry Widow on
British television in 1968.
Notable in all of Jeremy Brett's roles is his precisely honed diction. Brett was born with a speech impediment that kept him
from pronouncing the "R" sound correctly. Corrective surgery as a teenager, followed by years
of practising, gave Brett an enviable pronunciation and enunciation. He later claimed he practised all of his speech exercises
daily, whether he was working or not.
Although he appeared in many different roles during his 40-year career, Brett is now best remembered for portraying
Sherlock Holmes in the 1984–94 series of Granada
Television films, adapted by John Hawkesworth and other writers from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (see The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). Even though he reportedly feared being typecast, Brett appeared in 41 episodes of the
Granada series. After taking on the demanding role, Brett made few other acting appearances and he is now widely considered to be
the definitive Holmes of his era, just as Basil Rathbone was during the 1940s.
Interestingly, Brett had played Doctor Watson on stage opposite
Charlton Heston as Holmes in the 1980 Los Angeles production of The Crucifer of Blood, making him one of only three actors to play both Holmes and Watson professionally
(the other two are Reginald Owen and Patrick
Macnee).
Illnesses and death
Brett suffered from bipolar disorder (commonly known as manic depression), which
worsened after the death of his second wife, Joan Wilson, on July 4, 1985. She died shortly after Brett finished filming Holmes’
"death" in The Final Problem. He took a break from filming the Holmes series. When he returned to film new episodes
in 1986, however, grief and the stressful shooting schedule aggravated his disorder. He suffered a full-blown manic depressive
crisis and was hospitalized. During the last decade of his life, Brett was treated in hospital several times for his mental
illness, and his health and appearance visibly deteriorated by the time he completed the later episodes of the Sherlock
Holmes series.
There were plans to film all the Holmes stories, but Brett died of heart failure at his
London home before the project could be completed. Brett's heart had been damaged by a childhood case of rheumatic fever and was apparently further weakened by his heavy smoking. In an interview,
Edward Hardwicke (the second actor to play Dr. Watson in Brett's Holmes series) claimed that Brett would buy 60 cigarettes on
his way to the set and smoke them all throughout the day. After his heart problem was diagnosed, Brett reportedly quit smoking
for a short while, but began smoking again shortly before his death at the age of 61 on September
12, 1995.
Jeremy Brett's final, posthumous on-screen credit was as the "Artist's Father" in Moll
Flanders, with Robin Wright Penn in the title role. This American feature
film (not to be confused with the ITV adaptation starring Alex Kingston) was released in
the summer of 1996, nearly a year after Brett's death.
Family
In 1958, Brett married the actressAnna Massey (daughter of Raymond Massey), but they divorced in 1962.
Their son, David Huggins, born in 1959, is now a successful British cartoonist, illustrator and
novelist. Years later, Brett and Massey appeared together in the BBC's dramatization of
Rebecca (1978), with Brett playing the haunted hero, Max de Winter, and Massey
playing the sinister housekeeper, Mrs Danvers. (David Huggins also played an uncredited bit part in the film.) In 1977 Brett
married American PBS producer Joan Wilson,
but she died of cancer in 1985. Brett was devastated by Wilson's death and did not marry again.
Brett was related to another noted British actor, Martin Clunes (of Men Behaving Badly fame) Clunes' mother was Brett's first cousin.
Tribute to Jeremy Brett Lots of photos, wallpapers and captures etc. Captures from roles aside from Holmes:
Bloodlines, Protectors, Dorian Gray, The Ferryman, Florence Nightingale, Battlestar Galactica and Macbeth. Candid and publicity
shots.
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