Roy Marsden

Infobox actor
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name = Roy Marsden

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caption = Roy Marsden as Neil Burnside in "The Sandbaggers"
birthname = Roy Mould
birthdate = Birth date and age|1941|6|25
location = flagicon|UK Stepney, London, United Kingdom
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notable role = Adam Dalgliesh in the television dramatisations of P. D. James's detective novels
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Roy Marsden (born on June 25 1941 in Stepney, London) is a British actor, who is probably best known for his portrayal of Adam Dalgliesh in the Anglia Television dramatisations of P. D. James's detective novels.

Education

Marsden attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and spent four terms there. However, he attempted to unionize 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.

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.

Television

Marsden's portrayal of Adam Dalgliesh in Anglia TV's P. D. James series spanned fifteen years. Marsden wore a variety of wigs for the role. The series began as adaptations played out in serials of five or six one-hour episodes each, which were, unusually for the time, recorded on outside broadcast videotape as opposed to film:

*"Death of an Expert Witness" (1983);
*"Shroud for a Nightingale" (1984);
*"Cover Her Face" (1985);
*"The Black Tower" (1985);
*"A Taste for Death" (1988);
*"Devices and Desires" (1991).

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, condensing the next two adaptations into two-hour filmed TV movies.

*"Unnatural Causes" (1993);
*"A Mind to Murder" (1995).

The final two adaptations were filmed in three one-hour episodes:

*"Original Sin" (1997);
*"A Certain Justice" (1998).

Marsden was replaced by Martin Shaw when the BBC took over the rights to James's novels.

Marsden also starred in Yorkshire Television's 1978–1980 Cold War espionage series "The Sandbaggers". He played Neil Burnside, the dour and fiercely protective head of the covert operations section of British Intelligence, whose character seemed to spend as much time on infighting within Whitehall and his own department as it did in battling the KGB. The show ran for three series and 20 episodes before the untimely disappearance of the show's creator and writer Ian Mackintosh in 1979.

In 1982, Yorkshire Television cast him in "Airline", a series in which he played Jack Ruskin, a scrappy World War II 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."

Other prominent television roles include George Osborne in a 1967 adaptation of "Vanity Fair" and the title role of Arthur Chipping in 1987's "Goodbye Mr. Chips".

Marsden has also made guest appearances in "The New Avengers", "Space 1999", "Only Fools and Horses" ("Little Problems"), and "Tales of the Unexpected".

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

Film

He has appeared in: "The Squeeze", Warner Brothers (1976), a walk-on part with one line (as a Nazi officer) in the classic "The Eagle Has Landed" (1976), and as Oberon in "Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God" (2005).

Other interests

In his spare time, Marsden windsurfs, sails and restores a 78-year old fishing ketch. Much of his free time is spent with his children and their friends.

External links

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References