Basil Sydney
Actor
Biography
Basil Sydney (23 April 1894 – 10 January 1968) was an English stage and screen actor. Sydney made his name in 1915 in the London stage hit Romance by Edward Sheldon, with Broadway star Doris Keane, and he costarred with Keane in the 1920 silent film of the play. The couple married in 1918, and when Keane revived Romance in New York City in 1921, Sydney made his Broadway debut in the parts. He stayed in New York for over a decade playing classical roles such as 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).[citation needed] In 1937 he starred in the murder mystery Blondie White in the West End.
He made over 50 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 stage on both sides of the Atlantic.
Filmography
Hamlet
as Claudius - The King 1948
Treasure Island
as Captain Smollett 1950
Ivanhoe
as Waldemar Fitzurse 1952
The Dam Busters
as Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris G.C.B., O.B.E., A.F.C. 1955
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver
as Emperor of Lilliput 1960
Went the Day Well?
as Major Hammond / Kommandant Orlter 1942
Caesar and Cleopatra
as Rufio 1945
Salome
as Pontius Pilate 1953
The Devil's Disciple
as Lawyer Hawkins 1959
The Tunnel
as Mostyn 1935
The Magic Box
as William Fox-Talbot 1952
Island in the Sun
as Julian Fleury 1957
Simba
as Mr Crawford 1955
Sea Wife
as Bulldog 1957
The Riverside Murder
as Inspector Philip Winton 1935
John Paul Jones
as Sir William Young 1959