David Warner, one of the most acclaimed stage actors of the Sixties, who went on to play wildly varied characters on screen – obituary
msn.comPeter Hall; tall, lean, gangling, long-faced, he triumphed first in one of Shakespeare’s least-known roles, Henry VI, which he brought to life in the RSC’s quatercentenary cycle, The Wars of the Roses, and again with a resolutely “contemporary” interpretation of Hamlet.
But within a decade of those early glories, which he achieved in his early twenties, Warner was drawn increasingly to the cinema – not that he took it as seriously as he had the classical stage, but as he said, when living in Los Angeles years later, “I am a letterbox actor.
If the script comes through the letterbox I’ll do it. It’s all fun, and you get something out of it. ”Peter Hall considered Warner “potentially one of the greatest stage actors”, possessing “that authentic quality that makes you hang on to their every word, understand their every thought, note their merest gesture”.
None the less, if his talent seemed to some wasted, he found ready employment before the cameras, going on to amass more than 200 credits.
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