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.
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