Anthony Quayle (1913–1989) was an English actor and director who began his career on stage in 1931. Tall, burly, round-faced, and possessed of a powerful and resonant voice, he was mentored early on in his career by the well-known stage director Tyrone Guthrie. In 1936, he appeared on Broadway in The Country Wife and had roles in eight more productions, earning a Tony Award nomination in 1956 and winning a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in Sleuth in 1971. From 1948 to 1956, he was director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, bringing into the company some of the biggest stars of the stage, including Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. In motion pictures he often portrayed authority figures, such as his role in Lawrence of Arabia, or was used in historical epics due to his classical training, such as his performance as Cardinal Wolsey in Anne of the Thousand Days, which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Over the years, he consolidated his position as a Shakespearean actor, and his voice was heard as narrator of Shakespeare classics, of The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and on radio in anything from The Ballad of Robin Hood to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. |
