Oscar-winning UK actor dies
2008-03-20 17:25
London - British actor Paul Scofield, who won an Oscar for his role in A Man For All Seasons and was one of his country's greatest Shakespearean actors, has died at the age of 86, his agent said on Thursday.
Scofield died peacefully in a hospital near his home in Sussex in southeast England, where he was being treated for leukaemia.
Considered one of the leading classical actors of a generation that included Richard Burton and Laurence Olivier, he won the Oscar in 1966 for his portrayal of Tudor statesman Sir Thomas More in the film version of Robert Bolt's play.
Scofield made his name on the London stage, playing many of the greatest roles in theatre.
Critics described him as "monumental but reassuring" and as having a voice "rumbling up from an antique crypt".
His last major film was a 1996 screen version of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, in which he sported a crop of wavy white hair and starred alongside Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder.
Judi Dench, a fellow British Oscar winner who appeared with Scofield in the 1989 film of Henry V, led the tributes to him, saying: "He was a great friend and a great man."
He turned down a knighthood because he wanted to remain "plain Mister" although he was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1956 after a highly acclaimed appearance in Hamlet in Cold War-era Moscow.
Scofield once said: "If you want a title, what's wrong with Mister? If you have always been that, then why lose your title?"
He was born on January 21, 1922, at Hurstpierpoint in Sussex where his father was the village schoolmaster.
He left school aged 17 to begin training as a professional actor and was hardly ever out of work from that day on.
He is survived by wife Joy Parker, a fellow actor, with whom he had two children.
An intensely private man, Scofield shunned the bright lights of film premieres and most recently lived a quiet life in the English countryside.
He once said: "People always ask me what I do down there, and it seems so silly. I mean, there's everything to do. There are very good walks - I like to go walking."