It was interesting to note from imbd that Robert Hardy was apparently in a 1961 BBC version of Rashomon in the role of the husband! Lots of TV (including The Age of Kings and The Spread of the Eagle series of Shakespeare adaptations. He also turns up playing the obviously unsuitable suitor Sir Tony Belch in the 1980 version of Twelfth Night in that massive BBC Shakespeare cycle that produced film versions of all the plays) and of course the All Creatures Great and Small TV series and a few Harry Potter entries. He's also in a few period films in the mid to late 90s: Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 1997's Mrs Dalloway, the 1998 version of The Titchbourne Claimant and the 1999 Rupert Everett version of An Ideal Husband.MichaelB wrote:British acting stalwarts Hywel Bennett and Robert Hardy.
He also was in Nikita Mikhailkov's film The Barber of Siberia and had supporting roles in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and 10 Rillington Place.
But I might best celebrate him for his role as the deranged "Baron Zorn" (!) tormenting his children in the underrated Hammer film Demons of the Mind (a rare starring role for him). And he turns up as a police inspector in that wonderful 'suicidal young bikers returning from the grave to terrorise local shopping centres' film Psychomania!
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In terms of Hywel Bennett, he had his best run in the mid 60s to early 70s, doing lots of sexually tinged, youth oriented films: I'd highly recommend The Family Way directed by Roy Boulting and starring Bennett and Hayley Mills as a married couple with consummation issues. Its sort of the previous generation's attempts to catch up with the whole 'grim up north' kitchen sink trend of the 60s (Room At The Top, Taste of Honey) and do a less bleak southern comic take on frank relationship issues in recognisably mundane locations.
Then that's followed by the other Hywel Bennet and Hayley Mills collaboration under the direction of Roy Boulting: the horror Twisted Nerve (with Tarantino approved theme tune!)
The Virgin Soldiers was probably Bennett's biggest role, headlining a large cast of a celebrated novel about squaddies trying to get their end away in 1950s Singapore. That sort of began a run of sexy-comic roles: in the 1970 version of the Joe Orton play Loot, Anyone For Sex? (against Nanette Newman!), and most notoriously the recipient of the world's first penis transplant from Denholm Elliot's doctor in the sex comedy (what were they thinking?) Percy!
(Though of course Bennett had the sense to miss out on the cruder sequels Stand Up Virgin Soldiers and Percy's Progress!)
Later on it was more television: he turned up in the 1979 Play For Today about homosexuality, Coming Out, was in the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy mini-series and in a couple of Dennis Potter pieces - a small role in Pennies From Heaven and a much larger one as the thuggish club owner Arthur 'Pig' Malion in Potter's final TV series Karaoke (part of Bennett's 'thug' period as a kind of a proto-Ray Winstone! He turns up in an episode of the Lock, Stock spin-off TV series too around this time). He's also in that same year's BBC adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. (Neverwhere was controversial because it was apparently going to get heavily digitally tinkered with in post-production (presumably in the vein of something like Lars von Trier's The Kingdom) but it was decided to just put the series out as it was, which led to a rather obviously stagey quality in the final result. Although at least the opening titles were memorably haunting! (It's only taken twenty or so years since this time for American Gods to get adapted. I have my fingers crossed that it leads to better results!)
The thing I'm most interested to get around to seeing from Bennett's back catalogue though is the sci-fi television drama Artemis '81, which sounds kind of Gaiman-esque in its own way, involving battles between demons and angels! Plus its got Sting and a very early role for Daniel Day-Lewis in it!
