Born:
April 05, 1929
in
Coventry
Best Known For:
Playing Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
Early-life:
Nigel Barnard Hawthorne was born in Coventry on April 5, 1929. His family emigrated to South Africa when he was four. Nigel dropped out of Cape Town University before completing a broadcasting degree. He did some acting as a student and made his professional debut in 1950 in The Shop at Sly Corner.
Career:
Hawthorne returned to England in 1951 and landed a job as an assistant stage manager in Buxton, Derbyshire. Later the same year, he made his London stage debut in You Can't Take It With You, but found other roles hard to come by. In 1957 he returned to South Africa and managed to secure a number of leading roles. He came back to London in 1962 and made his first West End appearance in Talking to You. He made his Broadway debut in 1974 in As You Like It and won a Tony Award in 1991 for his role in Shadowlands. In a varied career, he mixed his stage work with appearances in a number of TV shows and films. He won four Bafta TV awards for his work on Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, and was awarded Bafta film gongs for The Madness of King George (1994) and The Fragile Heart (1996). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Madness of King George. He was knighted in 1999. He died from a heart attack on December 26, 2001 at the age of 72.
Quote:
"I wanted to be an animator, not an actor, but I wasn't any good, and I knew it. So when I first made a cartoon with Disney, which was called The Black Cauldron, it was like a dream come true."
Trivia:
He was survived by his partner, writer Trevor Bentham.