Roy Marsden

Education

Marsden attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and spent four terms there. He attempted to unionise the students but was thwarted. After one argument he poured a bottle of ink down the front of the director's suit. Marsden recalled, "Two weeks later, he phoned me up and asked if I'd got a job or an agent. I said no, so he arranged for me to start work at a theatre in Nottingham, and who should be the student assistant manager there but Anthony Hopkins. I persuaded him to go to RADA."

Stage

In the early 1960s, Marsden worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and began to accumulate an extensive list of theatrical credits that include everything from Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen to contemporary Soviet playwright Alexander Vampilov. His preference was for the alternative experimental theatres of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Birmingham over London's commercial theatre.

His appearances include Crispen in The Friends, 1970; Casca and Lucilius in Julius Caesar, 1972; Paul Schippel in Schippel, 1974; Heinrich Krey in The Plumber's Progress, 1975. He also played Long John Silver in Treasure Island at London's Mermaid Theatre around Christmas for two years and Henry Higgins in Pygmalion at the Albery Theatre. In 2008, Marsden appeared in two productions, Murder on Air and Happy Jack at the Theatre Royal, Windsor.

Television

His prominent television roles include George Osborne in a 1967 adaptation of Vanity Fair and the title role of Arthur Chipping in 1984's Goodbye Mr. Chips. Marsden has also appeared as a guest in The New Avengers, Space: 1999, Only Fools and Horses ("Little Problems"), Foyle's War and Tales of the Unexpected.

Marsden starred in Yorkshire Television's 1978–1980 Cold War espionage series The Sandbaggers. He played Neil Burnside, the dour and fiercely protective Director of Operations in the Secret Intelligence Service, whose character spent as much time infighting with his superiors in Whitehall and his own department as it did battling the KGB. The show ran for three series and 20 episodes.

In 1982, Yorkshire Television cast him in Airline, a series in which he played Jack Ruskin, a scrappy Second World War pilot trying to start his own post-war airline against establishment opposition. It also starred his wife, Polly Hemingway, who was pregnant with their first child during most of the filming. In an interview, Marsden said "It was one of the most enjoyable programmes I ever made. Learning to fly those old DC-3s was terrific. And I enjoyed playing Ruskin enormously because he had hope. Of course, he was a pain up the tushie most of the time, but then you'd see that youthful desire to actually get out and triumph against enormous odds. I identified with that character the most."

Marsden's portrayal of Adam Dalgliesh in Anglia TV's P.D. James series spanned fifteen years. 

After producer John Rosenberg died in early 1991 (during the transmission run of Devices and Desires), the format of the adaptations changed. Initially, Anglia followed the trend made popular by the Inspector Morse series.

The Dalgliesh role was taken by Martin Shaw when the BBC took over the rights to James's novels and produced its own series.

In 1993, Marsden appeared in The Last Vampyre, a feature-length episode of Sherlock Holmes.

In 2006 he played Ted Cartwright, a veterinarian, in "Bad Blood", episode 2 of the fourth season of Foyle's War.

Marsden presented a nine-part crime documentary series Roy Marsden's Casebook for ITV West in 2007. He also appeared in a 2007 episode of Doctor Who as Mr Stoker, a medical consultant.

In 2008, he appeared in ITV series The Palace as King Richard's private secretary, Sir Iain Ratalick.

Marsden reprised his Only Fools and Horses role in 2009 as one of the Driscoll brothers in the spin-off series, The Green Green Grass. He also appeared in the television film Margaret (2009) as Norman Tebbit.

In 2010 Marsden appeared in an episode of New Tricks, and in 2011 in an episode of Silent Witness.

He played Commander Haydock in the 2016 adaptation of Agatha Christie's N or M?, a three-episode part of the BBC's Partners in Crime serial.

Film

His film credits include Toomorrow (1970), a small part as a SS officer in The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Squeeze (1977), and as Oberon in Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005).