Nigel Hawthorne

Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne CBE (5 April 1929 – 26 December 2001) was an English actor. He is known for his stage acting and his portrayal of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the permanent secretary in the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister and the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. For this role, he won four BAFTA TV Awards for Best Light Entertainment Performance.

Sir Nigel Hawthorne CBE
As the Duke of Clarence in the 1995 film Richard III
Born	Nigel Barnard Hawthorne (1929-04-05)5 April 1929 Coventry, Warwickshire, England
Died	26 December 2001(2001-12-26) (aged 72) Cold Christmas, Hertfordshire, England
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1950–2001
Partner	Trevor Bentham (1979–2001; his death)

He won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for portraying King George III in The Madness of King George (1994). He later won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor, for the 1996 series The Fragile Heart. He was also an Olivier Award and Tony Award winner for his work in theatre.

Early life

Hawthorne was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, the second of four children of Agnes Rosemary (née Rice) and Charles Barnard Hawthorne, a physician.^[1]

When Nigel was three years old, the family moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where his father had bought a practice. Initially they lived in the Gardens and then moved to a newly built house near Camps Bay.^[2]

He attended St George's Grammar School, Cape Town, and, although the family was not Catholic, at a now-defunct Christian Brothers College,^[3] where he played on the rugby team.^[4] He described his time at the latter as not being a particularly happy experience.^[2]

He enrolled at the University of Cape Town, where he met and sometimes acted in plays with Theo Aronson (later a well-known biographer), but withdrew and returned to the United Kingdom in the 1950s to pursue a career in acting.

Career

Hawthorne made his professional stage debut in 1950, playing Archie Fellows in a Cape Town production of The Shop at Sly Corner.^[3] Unhappy in South Africa, he decided to move to London, where he performed in various small parts including a 1969 appearance in Series 3 Episode 1 of the classic TV comedy series Dad's Army before becoming recognised as a great character actor.

Finding success in London, Hawthorne decided to try his luck in New York City and eventually got a part in a 1974 production of As You Like It on Broadway. Around this time, he was persuaded by Ian McKellen and Judi Dench to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. He also supplemented his income by appearing in television advertisements, including one for Mackeson Stout, and in the early 1990s starred alongside Tom Conti in a long-running series of commercials for Vauxhall.

He returned to the New York stage in 1990 in Shadowlands and won the 1991 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.^[5]

Although Hawthorne had appeared in small roles in various British television series since the late 1950s, his most famous role was as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary of the fictional Department of Administrative Affairs in the television series Yes Minister (and Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister), for which he won four BAFTA awards during the 1980s. He became a household name throughout the United Kingdom, which finally opened the doors to film roles. In 1982, Hawthorne appeared in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, alongside a distinguished international cast including Martin Sheen, John Mills, Candice Bergen, John Gielgud, Ian Charleson and Ben Kingsley. That same year, he starred opposite Clint Eastwood in the Cold War thriller Firefox, where he played a dissident Russian scientist.

Other film roles during this time included Demolition Man, which he detested for being "brainless" and a "cheap picture". However, it led to his most famous role: that of King George III in Alan Bennett's stage play The Madness of George III (for which he won a Best Actor Olivier Award) and then the film adaptation entitled The Madness of King George, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and won the BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor. (The title was changed lest US audiences misunderstand ‘III’.)

After this success his friend Ian McKellen asked him to play his doomed brother, Clarence, in Richard III, and Steven Spielberg asked him to play lame-duck president Martin Van Buren in Amistad. He won a sixth BAFTA for the 1996 TV mini-series The Fragile Heart. He also drew praise for his role of Georgie Pillson in the London Weekend Television series Mapp and Lucia.

Hawthorne was also a voice actor and lent his voice to two Disney films: Fflewddur Fflam in The Black Cauldron (1985) and Professor Porter in Tarzan (1999). He also voiced Captain Campion in the animated film adaptation of Watership Down (1978).

Personal life

An intensely private person, he was annoyed at having been outed as gay in 1995 in the publicity surrounding the Academy Awards, but he did attend the ceremony with his long-time partner, Trevor Bentham, and afterwards he spoke openly about being gay in interviews and in his autobiography, Straight Face,^[6] which was published posthumously.^[7]

Hawthorne met Bentham in 1968 when the latter was stage-managing the Royal Court Theatre. From 1979 until Hawthorne's death in 2001 they lived together in Radwell and then at Thundridge, both in Hertfordshire. The two of them became fund-raisers for the North Hertfordshire hospice and other local charities.^[8]

Death

Hawthorne died from a heart attack at his home on 26 December 2001, aged 72.^[8] He had recently undergone several operations for pancreatic cancer, which he was diagnosed with in mid-2000, but had been discharged from hospital for the Christmas holidays.^[8] He was survived by Bentham, and his funeral service was held at St Mary's, the parish church of Thundridge near Ware, Hertfordshire, following which he was cremated at Stevenage Crematorium.^[9] His funeral was attended by Derek Fowlds, who had played Bernard in Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, Maureen Lipman, Charles Dance, Loretta Swit and Frederick Forsyth along with friends and local people. The service was led by the Right Reverend Christopher Herbert, the Bishop of St Albans. The coffin had a wreath of white lilies and orchids and Bentham was one of the pallbearers.^[10]

On hearing of Hawthorne's death Alan Bennett described him in his diary: "Courteous, grand, a man of the world and superb at what he did, with his technique never so obvious as to become familiar as, say, Olivier's did or Alec Guinness's."^[11]

Honours

He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1987 New Years Honours List^[12] and was knighted in the 1999 New Years Honours List "for services to the Theatre, Film and Television."^[13][14]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1958	Carve Her Name with Pride	Polish Soldier in Park	Uncredited
1972	Young Winston	Boer Sentry
1974	S*P*Y*S	Croft	Parody / Action / Comedy
1975	The Hiding Place	Pastor De Ruiter	Prison Drama / History
	Decisions, Decisions	Unknown	Short
1977	Spiderweb	Lonnrot
1978	Sweeney 2	Dilke	Action / Crime / Thriller
	Watership Down	Captain Campion	Voice, credited as Nigel Hawthorn
	The Sailor's Return	Mr Fosse	Drama
1981	History of the World: Part I	Citizen Official	(The French Revolution)
	Memoirs of a Survivor	Victorian Father	Sci-Fi
1982	Firefox	Dr Pyotr Baranovich	Adventure / Action / Thriller
	The Plague Dogs	Dr Boycott	Voice
	Gandhi	Kinnoch
1983	Dead on Time	Doctor	Short
1984	The Chain	Mr Thorn
1985	The Black Cauldron	Fflewddur Fflam	Voice
	Turtle Diary	The Publisher
1988	Rarg	The Storyteller	Short film
1989	A Handful of Time	Ted Walker
1990	King of the Wind	Achmet
1992	Freddie as F.R.O.7.	Brigadier General	Voice
1993	Demolition Man	Dr Raymond Cocteau
1994	The Madness of King George	King George III
1995	Richard III	Clarence
1996	Twelfth Night or What You Will	Malvolio
1997	Murder in Mind	Dr Ellis	Also associate producer
	Amistad	President Martin Van Buren
1998	The Object of My Affection	Rodney Fraser
	Madeline	Lord Covington	(segment "Lord Cucuface")
	At Sachem Farm	Uncle Cullen	Also executive producer
1999	The Big Brass Ring	Kim
	The Winslow Boy	Arthur Winslow
	A Reasonable Man	Judge Wendon
	Tarzan	Professor Porter	Voice
	The Clandestine Marriage	Lord Ogleby	Also associate producer

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1956	Cry Wolf!	PC Bray	Television movie television debut
1957	The Goose Girl	Unknown	Television movie
	The Royal Astrologers	Third Thief
	Bonehead	Bit Part	Episode: "Pilot"
	Huntingtower	Sinister Man	Episode: "#1.3"
	Villette	Second Footman	Television miniseries; 2 episodes
1962	The Last Man Out	Gestapo Man	Episode: "The Way Out"
1963	The Desperate People	Cliff Fletcher	recurring role; 4 episodes
	Man of the World	Assistant Director	Episode: "The Bandit"
	Bud	Trefor Jones	Episode: "#1.5"
1964	Detective	Temple Doorkeeper	Episode: "Death in Ecstacy"
	Emergency-Ward 10	Colin Davies	Episode: "#1.769"
1965	Jury Room	David Hemming, Juror	Episode: "The Dilke Affair"
1969	Mrs Wilson's Diary	Roy Jenkins	Television movie
	The Gnomes of Dulwich	Gnome	Episode: "#1.6"
	Dad's Army	The Angry Man	Episode: "The Armoured Might of Lance Corporal Jones"
1971	The Last of the Baskets	Mr Snodgrass	Episode: "For Richer, for Poorer"
	Hine	Freddy Ambercourt	Episode: "Everything I Am I Owe"
1973	Hadleigh	Oliver Mason	2 episodes
1974	Occupations	Libertini	Television movie
	Miss Nightingale	Dr Lewis
1976	Couples	Mr Laker	recurring role; 3 episodes
	Bill Brand	Browning	Television Miniseries; Episode: "Yarn"
1977	Crown Court	Dr William Ranford	Episode: "Beauty and the Beast (Part 1)"
	Eleanor Marx	Engels	2 episodes
	Marie Curie	Pierre Curie	Television miniseries; 4 episodes
	Just William	Mr. Croombe	Episode: "The Great Detective"
1978	Warrior Queen	Catus Decianus	recurring role; 4 episodes
	Breakaway Girls	Derek Carter	Episode: "Sarah Carter"
	Going Straight	"Worm" Wellings	Episode: "Going Going Gone"
	Holocaust	Ohldendorf	Television miniseries; Episode: "Part 2"
	Edward & Mrs. Simpson	Walter Monkton	recurring role; 5 episodes
1979	Thomas and Sarah	Wilson	Episode: "The New Rich"
	The Other Side	Skellow	Episode: "Underdog"
	The Knowledge	Mr Burgess	Television movie
1980	The Misanthrope	Philinte
	The Tempest	Stephano
	Jukes of Piccadilly	Brinsley Jukes	recurring role; 6 episodes
	The Good Companions	Reverend Chillingford	Television miniseries; Episode: "Miss Trant Pays the Bill"
1980	A Tale of Two Cities	Mr C.J. Stryver	Television Movie
1980–1984	Yes Minister	Sir Humphrey Appleby	series regular; 22 episodes
1981	Tales of the Unexpected	Charles Drummond	Episode: "The Last Bottle in the World"
1982	The Hunchback of Notre Dame	Magistrate at Esmeralda's Trial	Television movie
	A Woman Called Golda	King Abdullah
	The World Cup: A Captain's Tale	John Westwood
	The Barchester Chronicles	Archdeacon Theophilus Grantly	Television miniseries; 7 episodes
1983	Tartuffe, or the Imposter	Orgon	Television movie
1984	Pope John Paul II	Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski
	The House	General Fagg
1985–1986	Mapp & Lucia	Georgie Pillson	recurring role; 10 episodes
1985	Jenny's War	Colonel	recurring role; 4 episodes
1986–1988	Yes, Prime Minister	Sir Humphrey Appleby	series regular; 16 episodes
1989	The Play on One	John	Episode: "The Shawl"
1990	Relatively Speaking	Philip Carter	Television movie
1994	Late Flowering Lust	Cousin John - poetry reader	A "blend of music, poetry, dance, actor/dancers..."[15]
1995	Russia's War: Blood upon the Snow	Narrator	Documentary series, 10 episodes
1996	Inside	Colonel	Television movie
	The Fragile Heart	Dr Edgar Pascoe	unknown episode
	The Happy Prince	Narrator	Television movie
1997	Forbidden Territory: Stanley's Search for Livingstone	David Livingstone
1998	Animal Stories	Narrator	unknown episode
2000	The Last Polar Bears		Television short
2001	Victoria & Albert	Lord William Lamb	Television movie
	Call Me Claus	Nick	Television movie, (final film role)

Video games

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1998	Jeff Wayne's the War of the Worlds	The General	Voice
2001	Tarzan: Untamed	Professor Porter

Stage

Theatre

Year	Title	Role	Company	Venue
1950	The Shop at Sly Corner	Archie		Hofmeyr Theatre
1951	You Can't Take It With You	Donald		Embassy Theatre
1957	His Excellency	Captain the Contino Sevastein Jacono de Piero
	Talking To You	Fancy Dan		Duke of York's Theatre
1967	Mrs Wilson's Diary	Roy		Criterion Theatre
	The Marie Lloyd Story	Sir Oswald Stoll		Theatre Royal, Stratford
1968	Early Morning	Albert		Royal Court Theatre
1970	Curtains	Niall		Edinburgh Festival
1971				Open Space
	Alma Mater	Major
1972	The Trial of St George	Judge		Soho Poly
1973	A Question of Everything	Hugh
	The Emergency Channel	Graham
	The Philanthropist	Philip		May Fair
1975	A Child of Hope	Police Captain
	The Floater	Morris Shelman
	Otherwise Engaged	Stephen		Queens Theatre
	The Doctor's Dilemma	Culter Walpole		Mermaid Theatre
1976	Play Things	Tenby
	Buffet	Jack
	As You Like It	Touchstone		Riverside Studios
1977	The Fire that Consumes	Abbe de Pradts		Mermaid Theatre
	Blind date	Brian		King's Head Theatre
	Privates on Parade	Major Gliles Flack
1978	Destiny	Major Lewis Rolfe
	The Millionairess	Julius		Theatre Royal Haymarket
1980	The Enigma	Fenton
	A Rod of Iron	Trevor
	Jessie	Mr. Edmonds
1981	A Brush with Mr. Porter on the Road to Eldorado	Fulton
	Protest	Vaclav Havel
1982	The Critic	Mr. Sneer
1986	Across from the Garden of Allah	Douglas		Comedy Theatre
1988	The Miser	Harpagon
	Hapgood	Blair		Aldwych Theatre
1989	The Spirit of Man	Reverend Jonathan Guerdon
	Shadowlands	C. S. Lewis		Queens Theatre
1990				Brooks Atkinson Theatre
1991	The Trials of Oz	Brian Leary
	The Madness of George III	George III
1992	Flea Bites	Kryst
1999	King Lear	Lear	RSC	Barbican

Awards and nominations

Year	Title	Accolade	Category	Result
1977	Privates on Parade	Laurence Olivier Award	Best Actor in a Supporting Role	Won
1981	Yes Minister	Broadcasting Press Guild Award	Best Actor in a Light Entertainment Program	Won
1982		British Academy Television Award	Best Light Entertainment Performance	Won
1983				Won
1987				Won
1988				Won
1989		CableACE Award	Actor in a Comedy Series	Nominated
1990	Shadowlands	Laurence Olivier Award	Best Actor	Nominated
1991		Tony Award	Best Actor in a Play	Won
1992	The Madness of George III	Laurence Olivier Award	Best Actor	Won
1995	The Madness of King George	Academy Award		Nominated
1996		Empire Award		Won
		British Academy Film Award	Best Actor in a Leading Role	Won
		London Critics Circle Film Award	British Actor of the Year	Won
1997	The Fragile Heart	British Academy Television Award	Best Actor	Won
1999	The Object of My Affection	London Critics Circle Film Award	British Supporting Actor of the Year	Won

References

1. "Nigel Hawthorne Biography, FilmReference.com. Retrieved 18 August 2009.
2. Kathleen Riley (2004) Nigel Hawthorne on Stage, University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield; ISBN 978-1-90280-629-7
3. Biography for Nigel Hawthorne, TCM.com. Retrieved 18 August 2009.
4. Michael Green (2004) Around and About: Memoires of a South African Newspaperman, David Philip Publishers, Cape Town; ISBN 0-86486-660-7
5. Staff and agencies (26 December 2001). "Actor Sir Nigel Hawthorne dies". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
6. Nigel Hawthorne (2002) Straight Face, Hodder & Stoughton, London ISBN 978-0-34076-942-3
7. Hubbard, Michael; "Straight Face by Nigel Hawthorne" Archived 11 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine MusicOMH.com (Retrieved: 18 August 2009)
8. Payne, Stewart (27 December 2001). "Sir Nigel Hawthorne dies of heart attack aged 72". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 24 November 2012.
9. Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 20441-20442). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.
10. 'Friends pay tribute to Nigel Hawthorne' – The Guardian 10 January 2002
11. Bennett, Alan (2005). Untold Stories. London, England: Faber & Faber. p. 302.
12. "1987 New Year Honours". The London Gazette.
13. Barker, Dennis; "Sir Nigel Hawthorne" The Guardian, 27 December 2001 (Retrieved: 18 August 2009)
14. UK list: "No. 55354". The London Gazette (1st supplement). 31 December 1998. p. 2.
15. News - Vintage Adventures: Late Flowering Lust. Introduction by Matthew Bourne (the choreographer) New Adventures website, 26 March 2020. Retrieved 16 December 2023.

External links

• Nigel Hawthorne at IMDb
• Nigel Hawthorne at the Internet Broadway Database