British cinema mourns a man for all seasons
The British film world, already in shock over the untimely death of Anthony Minghella, had further reason to mourn after Oscar and BAFTA winning actor Paul Scofield passed away on March 19th from a leukaemia related illness. He was 86.
Scofield won the Best Actor BAFTA and Oscar in 1967 for his towering performance as Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. He was also nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Quiz Show (1995).
He came to international prominence when he won the Most Promising Newcomer to Film BAFTA in 1956 for his role in That Lady. In 1997, he added a Best Supporting Actor BAFTA to his kitty for The Crucible.
Nicholas Hyntner, who directed The Crucible, said, “No actor summoned with such authority the mysterious depths of human experience. He was a man of wit, charm and grace; and quite extraordinarily modest.”
Dame Judi Dench who acted alongside Scofield in Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V said, “He was a great friend and a great man.”
Fellow actor Simon Callow added, “He had a kind of extraordinary physical warmth, almost literally like being near a fire, in a way that I have almost never experienced with another actor. It was a sort of blaze. He had a charisma, a hypnotism, a kind of spell that he cast on an audience, which was an extraordinary thing to negotiate as a young actor. He was an absolutely towering actor.”
Paul Scofield began his career on the stage in 1940 and quickly gained fame as one of the foremost Shakespearian actors of his time. His 1962 performance of King Lear was voted the greatest performance in a Shakespeare play in 2004, by a panel of Royal Shakespeare Company actors, including Sir Ian McKellen and Ian Richardson.
Scofield is survived by his wife Joy Parker.
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