Cause of death Pleurisy Role Actor Name Basil Sydney | Years active 1920-1964 Occupation Actor TV shows Silent Evidence | |
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Movies Hamlet, Treasure Island, Caesar and Cleopatra, Sea Wife, The Dam Busters Similar People Doris Keane, Mary Ellis, Gabriel Pascal, Byron Haskin, Lawrence Edward Watkin | ||
Basil Sydney (23 April 1894 – 10 January 1968) was an English stage and screen actor.
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Career
Sydney made his name in 1915 in the London stage hit Romance by Edward Sheldon, opposite the play's Broadway star Doris Keane, and costarred with Keane in the 1920 silent film of the play. The couple married in 1918, and when Keane revived Romance in New York in 1921, Sydney made his Broadway debut in the parts. He stayed in New York for over a decade playing classical roles like Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet (1922), Richard Dudgeon in The Devil's Disciple (1923), the title role in Hamlet (1923), Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part I (1926), and Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew (1927).
He made over fifty screen appearances, most memorably as Claudius in Laurence Olivier's 1948 film of Hamlet. He also appeared in classic films like Treasure Island (1950), Ivanhoe (1952), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), but the focus of his career was the legitimate stage on both sides of the Atlantic.
Personal life
In 1925, Sydney divorced Keane; four years later, in 1929, he married actress Mary Ellis, and the couple moved to England. There he concentrated more on film than on theatre work. In the 1940s, he married English film actress Joyce Howard; they had three children.
A heavy smoker, Sydney died from pleurisy in 1968, aged 73.