David Warner
Dec. 27th, 2004 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloWhatever happened to David Warner?
Back in the 1960s he was the brilliant young star of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I saw his moody, studenty Hamlet- one of the defining performances of the era- and fully expected him to turn into my generation's Gielgud. Then he went to Hollywood and- well- embarked on a career playing doctors and clergymen and Klingon elder statesmen. Oh, yes, and he was the homicidal gentleman's gentleman in Titanic.
Last night he turned up on TV- as he does every once in a while- as the patriarch of a disfunctional Agatha Christie family. He's a damn fine actor, but where are the clouds of glory he should be trailing by now?
Back in the 1960s he was the brilliant young star of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I saw his moody, studenty Hamlet- one of the defining performances of the era- and fully expected him to turn into my generation's Gielgud. Then he went to Hollywood and- well- embarked on a career playing doctors and clergymen and Klingon elder statesmen. Oh, yes, and he was the homicidal gentleman's gentleman in Titanic.
Last night he turned up on TV- as he does every once in a while- as the patriarch of a disfunctional Agatha Christie family. He's a damn fine actor, but where are the clouds of glory he should be trailing by now?
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Date: 2004-12-27 03:31 pm (UTC)Warner was my hero for a while. I saw him as Hamlet in 64-65 and shortly before that as an electrifying Henry VI in a TV version of the RSC's Wars of the Roses Cycle. I thought he was going to be a huge star and then he disappeared from the English stage.
When I express disappointment with his perfectly respectable but unspectacular film and TV career it is perhaps my own youth that I am feeling wistful about.