Keith Michell

Keith Joseph Michell (1 December 1926 – 20 November 2015) was an Australian actor who worked primarily in the United Kingdom, and was best known for his television and film portrayals of King Henry VIII. He appeared extensively in Shakespeare and other classics and musicals in Britain, and was also in several Broadway productions. He was an artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre in the 1970s and later had a recurring role on Murder, She Wrote as the charming thief Dennis Stanton. He was also known for illustrating a collection of Jeremy Lloyd's poems Captain Beaky, and singing the title song from the associated album. Early life Michell was born in Adelaide, and brought up in Warnertown, near Port Pirie. His parents were Joseph, a cabinet-maker, and Alice (née Aslat). Educated at Port Pirie High School, Adelaide Teachers' College and Adelaide University, he began his career as an art teacher and made his professional acting debut in 1947 in the comedy Lover’s Leap, by Bill Daily, at Adelaide's Playbox Theatre. He then worked in radio for ABC in Adelaide. In 1949, he moved to Britain to study at the Old Vic Theatre School. Career Michell joined the Young Vic theatre company and made his first appearance in London by 1951. An early role there was Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice. His first London musical was And So to Bed, playing King Charles II. With the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company in 1952–1953, he toured in Australia. Then, at Stratford-upon-Avon, he appeared in a series of Shakespeare plays: The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida, and Romeo and Juliet. In 1956, on television, he played Henry Higgins in Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw and, the same year, at the Royal Court Theatre, he starred in the title role in Ronald Duncan's Don Juan and in several Old Vic Company productions as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Antony in Antony and Cleopatra and Aaron in Titus Andronicus. In 1958, he played Nestor-Le-Fripe in the musical Irma La Douce, also starring in the role with the National Theatre in Washington, DC, and on Broadway in 1960–1961. At the newly opened Chichester Festival Theatre, in 1962, he played Don John in The Chances and then Ithocles in The Broken Heart, and in British television adaptations, he starred as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1962) and, in a series of Roman plays titled The Spread of the Eagle, he played Mark Antony (1963).