Tom Courtenay

Tom Courtenay
Tom Courtenay, 1974
Born	Thomas Daniel Courtenay 25 February 1937 (1937-02-25) (age 74) Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1962–present
Spouse	Cheryl Kennedy (1973-1982) Isabel Crossley (1988-present)

Sir Thomas Daniel "Tom" Courtenay (pronounced /ˈkɔrtni/; born 25 February 1937) is an English actor who came to prominence in the early 1960s with a succession of films including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Billy Liar (1963), and Dr. Zhivago (1965). Since the mid-1960s he has been known primarily for his work in the theatre. Courtenay received a knighthood in February 2001 for forty years' service to cinema and theatre. Courtenay is the President of Hull City A.F.C.'s Official Supporters Club. In 1999, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Hull University.

Early life

Courtenay was born in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, the son of Annie Eliza (née Quest) and Thomas Henry Courtenay, a boat painter.^[1] He attended Kingston High School there. Courtenay studied drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London.

Career

Courtenay made his stage début in 1960 with the Old Vic theatre company at the Lyceum, Edinburgh, before taking over from Albert Finney in the title role of Billy Liar at the Cambridge Theatre in 1961. In 1963 he would play that same title role in the film version, directed by John Schlesinger. He said of Albert Finney, "We both have the same problem, overcoming the flat harsh speech of the North."^[2]

Courtenay's film debut was in 1962 with Private Potter, directed by Finnish-born director Caspar Wrede, who had first spotted Courtenay while he was still at RADA. This was followed by The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, directed by Tony Richardson and Billy Liar, two highly acclaimed films and performances which helped usher in the British New Wave of the early-to-mid '60s. For these performance Courtenay was awarded the 1962 BAFTA Award for most promising newcomer and the 1963 BAFTA Award for best actor respectively. For his role as the dedicated revolutionary leader Pasha Antipov in Doctor Zhivago (1965), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but was bested by Martin Balsam. Among his other well-known films is King & Country, directed by Joseph Losey, where he played opposite Dirk Bogarde; the all-star war film, Operation Crossbow, directed by Michael Anderson (starring George Peppard and Sophia Loren); and The Night of the Generals, directed by Anatole Litvak with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif.

Despite being catapulted to fame by the aforementioned films, Courtenay has said that he has not particularly enjoyed film acting;^[3] and from the mid-1960s concentrated more on stage work. In 1968 Courtenay began a long association with Manchester when he played in The Playboy of the Western World for the Century Theatre at Manchester University directed by Michael Elliott. The theatre was a precursor of the Royal Exchange Theatre, which was founded in 1976 where he was to give many performances, firstly under the direction of Casper Wrede.^[4] His first roles for the Royal Exchange were as Faulkland in Sheridan's The Rivals and the hero of von Kleist's The Prince of Homburg. Since then he has played a variety of roles, including in 1999 the leading role in the theatre's production of King Lear, and in 2001 Uncle Vanya.

Courtenay's working relationship with Wrede returned to film when he played the title role in the latter's 1970 production of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. His best known film role since then was in The Dresser, from Ronald Harwood's play of the same name (in which he also appeared) with Albert Finney. Both Courtenay and Finney received nominations for Best Actor in the 1984 Academy Awards for their roles, losing to Robert Duvall. He played the father of Derek Bentley (Christopher Eccleston) in the 1991 film Let Him Have It.

Courtenay's television and radio appearances have been relatively few, but have included She Stoops to Conquer in 1971 on BBC and several Ayckbourn plays. He appeared in I Heard the Owl Call My Name on US television in 1973. In 1994 he starred with Peter Ustinov in a Disney Channel 'made for television' version of The Old Curiosity Shop. Rather unexpecedly, he had a cameo role as the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in the 1995 US TV film Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock's Eye. In 1998 he teamed with Albert Finney again for the acclaimed BBC drama A Rather English Marriage. He played the role of God, opposite Sebastian Graham-Jones, in Ben Steiner's radio play "A Brief Interruption", broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004. Also for Radio 4, he played the title role in Nick Leather's The Domino Man of Lancashire and Maurice in Richard Lumsden's Man in the Moon, both broadcast in 2007. Courtenay also appeared in the 2008 Christmas special of the BBC show The Royle Family, playing the role of Dave's father, David Senior.

In 2002, based on an idea by Michael Godley, Courtenay compiled a one-man show Pretending To Be Me based on the letters and writings of poet Philip Larkin, which first played at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. It later transferred to the Comedy Theatre in the West End in London.^[5]

In 2007 Courtenay appeared in two films: Flood, a disaster epic in which London is overwhelmed by floods, and The Golden Compass, an adaptation of Philip Pullman's novel, playing the part of Farder Coram. In 2008 he appeared in the BBC adaptation of Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, playing William Dorrit, and the Christmas edition of The Royle Family, playing David (Senior).

In March 2011, multiple media sites reported that Courtenay has joined the cast of Gambit, a film starring Colin Firth scheduled to begin filming in May.

Personal life

Courtenay was married to actress Cheryl Kennedy from 1973 to 1982. In 1988, he married Isabel Crossley, a stage manager at the Royal Exchange Theatre.^[6] They have homes in Manchester and Putney in London.

In 2000, Courtenay's memoir Dear Tom: Letters From Home was published to critical acclaim. It comprises a selection of the letters exchanged between Courtenay and his mother, interspersed with his own recollections of life as a young student actor in London in the early 1960s.

Filmography

Work in the theatre

His roles include^{[7] [8]}

• Konstantin Trepylef, The Seagull by Anton Chekhov as the Old Vic, London (1960)
• Poins, Henry IV, Part 1 at the Old Vic (1961)
• Feste, Twelfth Night at the Old Vic (1961)
• Billy Fisher, Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse at the Cambridge Theatre, London (1961)
• Andri, Andorra by Max Frisch for the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic (1964)
• Trofimov, The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov at the Chichester Festival Theatre (1966)
• Malcolm, Macbeth at the Chichester Festival Theatre (1966)
• Lord Fancourt Babberley, Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas for Century Theatre at the University of Manchester Theatre (1967)
• Christy Mahon, The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge for Century Theatre at the University of Manchester Theatre (1968)
• Romeo, Romeo and Juliet for Century Theatre at the University of Manchester Theatre (1968)
• Hamlet for the 69 Theatre Company at the Edinburgh Festival (1968)
• Young Marlow, She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith for the 69 Theatre Company at the University of Manchester Theatre and then at the Garrick Theatre, London (1969)
• Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen for the 69 Theatre Company at the University of Manchester Theatre (1970)
• Lord Fancourt Babberley, Charley’s Aunt by Brandon Thomas for the 69 Theatre Company at the University of Manchester Theatre and then at the Apollo Theatre, London (1972)
• Leonard, Time and Time Again by Alan Ayckbourn at the Comedy Theatre, London (1972)
• Captain Bluntschli, Arms and the Man for the 69 Theatre Company at ‘the Tent’ in the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1973)
• Norman, The Norman Conquests by Alan Ayckbourn at the Greenwich Theatre and then at the Globe Theatre (1974)
• John Clarke, The Fool by Edward Bond at the Royal Court Theatre (1975)
• Faulkland, The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1976)
• The Prince of Homburg by Heinrich von Kleist at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1976)
• Simon, Otherwise Engaged by Simon Gray at the Plymouth Theatre, New York (1977)
• Malvolio, Twelfth Night at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1978)
• Owen, Clouds by Michael Frayn at the Duke of York's Theatre, London (1978)
• Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1978)
• Norman, The Dresser by Ronald Harwood at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, then at the Queens Theatre, London (1980). Then at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York (1981)
• Alceste, The Misanthrope by Moliere at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1981)
• Andy Capp by Alan Price and James Maxwell at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1982)
• George, Jumpers by Tom Stoppard at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1984)
• Rookery Nook by Ben Travers at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London (1986)
• The Hypochondriac by Moliere at the Lyric Theatre (Hammersmith) (1987)
• Dealing with Clair by Martin Crimp at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond (1988)
• Harpagon, The Miser by Moliere at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1992)
• Eric Wells, Poison Pen by Ronald Harwood at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1993)
• Moscow Stations from the novel by Venedict Yerofeyev, one man show at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh then toured (1993)
• Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov at the Circle in the Square Theatre, New York (1995)
• Serge, 'Art' by Yasmina Reza at Wyndham's Theatre, London (1996)
• King Lear at the Royal Exchange, Manchester at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1999)
• Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (2001)
• Pretending To Be Me, one man show at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds then toured (2003)

References

External links

• Tom Courtenay at the Internet Movie Database
• Tom Courtenay at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Tom Courtenay at the Internet Broadway Database