Occupation Stage and film actor Name Basil Gill | Years active 1897 – 1938 Role Actor | |
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Born 10 March 1877 Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, UK Died April 23, 1955, Hove, United Kingdom Movies Henry VIII, High Treason, Immortal Gentleman Similar People Maurice Elvey, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Thorold Dickinson, Seymour Hicks, Carmine Gallone | ||
Basil Gill (March 10, 1877 – April 23, 1955) was a British stage actor and film actor. His stage career included many roles in plays of Shakespeare.
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Life
He was a son of the Rev. John Gill, of Cambridge.
His first stage appearance, in Bury, Lancashire in 1897, was in The Sign of the Cross (Wilson Barrett's most successful play); the following year he appeared in this play in London. He then toured Australia and the USA with The Sign of the Cross and Ben-Hur.
In 1903 he joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company at His Majesty's Theatre, London, and appeared in plays of Shakespeare, playing several important roles. He left the company in 1907. He continued to perform, into the 1930s, in Shakespeare's plays during his career. As well as being a Shakespearean actor, he was regarded as a matinee idol and played romantic parts in modern plays.
His career as a film actor started with Henry VIII (1911): he appeared with Beerbohm Tree, on whose version of the play the film was based. In 1926, Gill appeared in two short films made in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, Santa Claus as the title character, and Julius Caesar as Brutus. He appeared in many more films, the last being The Citadel of 1938.