Michael Bradshaw

Early life in England

Born in Plumstead, London, he grew up Boxmoor, Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire to the north west of London. He trained as a printer for most of his teen years at John Dickinson Stationery Limited, except for two years mandatory service in the British armed forces ("National Service") which he served in the Royal Air Force, stationed at RAF Ternhill near Market Drayton, Shropshire. During this time Bradshaw was working in non-professional theatre in his home town, having also been a talented boy soprano for his local church, St. John's, Boxmoor, even going on local tours.

Canada

Bradshaw left England for Canada in 1956 where he flourished in theatre working primarily with the Players' Guild of Hamilton, Ontario in such productions as "Pygmalion" as Henry Higgins, "Murder in the Cathedral" as Thomas Becket, "The Heiress", "Arms and the Man", "Auntie Mame", "Separate Tables" and Sir Thomas More in "A Man for All Seasons" for which he won the Henry Osborne Trophy for Best Actor in the Dominion of Canada Award at the Dominion Drama Festival. He also performed in productions of My Fair Lady as Henry Higgins and as the title character in "Ross" for the London Little Theatre. During its early years he appeared at the Shaw Festival, most notably in the 1966 season with Artistic Director Barry Morse. He appeared that year in productions of "The Apple Cart" and "Misalliance" with Zoe Caldwell in which he played the pilot, Joey Percival.

United States

In 1967 he went on to the United States, first performing as part of the resident company at the Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo, New York alongside such actors as John Schuck. At the Studio Arena he appeared in productions such as Oh, Kay! as The Duke, The Man Who Came to Dinner as Beverley Carlton and Under Milk Wood, which he also directed. In late 1967 he was cast in his first Broadway production in Portrait of a Queen with Dame Dorothy Tutin which ran until April 1968. Through 1968 he performed with The Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven Connecticut, Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, Connecticut and the Green Hills Theatre in Reading, Pennsylvania. In late 1968 he was cast as the Captain of the Inquisition in the first U.S. national touring company of Man of La Mancha with José Ferrer, which he toured with into the summer of 1969. In 1970 Bradshaw appeared in the Original Broadway production of Barry England's Conduct Unbecoming as Major Lionel Roach, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award.

In the 1970s he served as Production Stage Manager for the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, and then retired for most of the 1980s, working again as a printer and focusing on his family.

In the late '80s he began acting again, starting off small, appearing in community theatre and even directing several high school productions. Quickly he began appearing in smaller productions around the New England area, especially Boston where he worked extensively during the 1990s, most notably for The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, at which he performed in "Oedipus Rex", "Antigone", "Pygmalion", "Present Laughter", "The Heiress", "Entertaining Mr. Sloane", "Juno and the Paycock" and "Mrs. Warren's Profession" to name but a few. He gained quite a reputation in the area, also performing for the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's 1997 performance of "Romeo and Juliet" in Boston Common as Friar Laurence and in productions for the Lyric West and Huntington Theatre Company. He performed in the first ever Boston Theater Marathon and in 1998 he was nominated for the prestigious Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Actor in a Small Company.

Later life

It was around this time that he began to work in small roles in film, television and voice over work. He did the play by play voice over commentary for the Looking Glass Technologies British Open Championship Golf Computer Game in 1997, worked on the PBS documentary "Africans in America" appeared on "Unsolved Mysteries" and the PBS series Nova among other programmes. He also did small roles or extra work in the films The Crucible (1996), The Spanish Prisoner(1997), The Proposition(1998) and State and Main(2000)

In the early 2000s he continued theatre work around the country appearing in shows such as Nick Dear's The Art of Success as Sir Robert Walpole off Broadway at the Rubicon Theatre Company in New York and in Tennessee Williams' "The Night of the Iguana" as Nonno at the Dallas Theater Center in Dallas, Texas. He was scheduled to take part in the Washington, D.C. premiere of The Invention of Love at the Studio Theatre, but due to illness was forced to withdraw, the first time he'd ever been forced to leave a production in his career. His illness was diagnosed as cancer, and it grew worse until he finally succumbed on 13 December 2001 in a Newton, New Jersey hospital.

Family