Ian Charleson (11 August 1949 – 6 January 1990) was a Scottish stage and screen actor. He is best known internationally for his starring role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. He is also well known for his portrayal of Rev. Charlie Andrews in the 1982 Oscar-winning film Gandhi.
Charleson was a noted actor on the British stage as well, with critically acclaimed leads in Guys and Dolls, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Fool for Love, and Hamlet, among many others. He performed numerous Shakespearean roles, and in 1991 the annual Ian Charleson Awards were established, particularly in honour of his final Hamlet.Peter, John. "Stairway to success". Sunday Times. 20 June 2010.Rosenthal, Daniel. The National Theatre Story. Oberon Books, 2013. The awards reward the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors aged under 30.
The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography describes Charleson as "a leading player of charm and power" and "one of the finest British actors of his generation".The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography. Houghton Mifflin, 2003. p. 308. Alan Bates wrote that he was "definitely among the top ten actors of his age group".McKellen, Bates, Hudson, et al. p. 4. Ian McKellen said Charleson was "the most unmannered and unactorish of actors: always truthful, always honest"."Actor Who Starred in Chariots of Fire Dies of AIDS Illness." Deseret News. 8 January 1990.
Charleson was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, and died in 1990 at the age of 40. He requested that it be announced after his death that he had died of AIDS, to publicise the condition. This was the first celebrity death in the United Kingdom openly attributed to AIDS, and the announcement helped to promote awareness and acceptance of the disease.
Early life
Born in Edinburgh in 1949, Charleson was the son of a printer, and grew up in a working-class area of the city. A bright, musical, artistic child, by the age of eight he was performing in local theatre productions. He won a scholarship to and attended Edinburgh's Royal High School; and in his teens, he joined and performed with The Jasons, an Edinburgh amateur theatrical group. He also sang solo as a boy soprano in church and in the Royal High School choir, which performed on the radio and in Edinburgh Festival concerts.
Charleson won a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh, which he attended from 1967 to 1970, obtaining a three-year Scottish MA Ordinary degree. Initially he studied architecture. However, he spent most of his time acting with the student-run Edinburgh University Drama Society, and decided to pursue acting as a career. He changed his study concentration accordingly, and graduated with a degree in English, fine art, and mathematics.Data from Alumni Administrator, Edinburgh University. In addition to his acting roles at Edinburgh University, he also directed many plays there, and he designed costumes for several as well.
From 1967 through 1973, Charleson also performed often at the Edinburgh Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe, becoming a noted actor in those circles.
Stage career
LAMDA, Young Vic, and Cambridge Theatre Company After graduating in 1970 from the University of Edinburgh – where he played leads in numerous productions, including several Shakespeare playsCharleson's roles with the Edinburgh University Dramatic Society included, among others: Malvolio in Twelfth Night; Gaveston in Edward II; John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest; Dr. Prentice in What the Butler Saw; Callimaco in Mandrake, the Musical; Tony Lumpkin in She Stoops to Conquer; the Herald in Marat/Sade. – Charleson won a place in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where he studied for two years.
From LAMDA, Charleson was hired by Frank Dunlop's Young Vic Theatre Company. He made his professional stage debut in 1972 with the Young Vic, as one of the ensemble of brothers in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1972), which was also televised in the UK that same year by Granada Television.Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (TV, 1972) at the Internet Movie Database. In 1973, he starred as Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, and that year he was also Hamlet and later Guildenstern in the first revival of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Also as part of the Young Vic company, he was Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing in 1974. He traveled with the company to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York that same year, to appear as Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew, Ottavio in Scapino, and Brian Curtis in French Without Tears.
In late 1974, he played the title role in Hamlet with the Cambridge Theatre Company, where he had previously performed that year in The School for Scandal and Six Characters in Search of an Author, and the production went on tour into 1975."Hamlet". In: Johns, Eric (ed). "Plays of the Year 1974", British Theatre Review 1974. Vance-Offord Publications Limited, 1975. pp. 137–138. "Directed with clarity and firmness by Richard Cottrell, it had a very well played Prince in Ian Charleson, who was especially impressive in his speaking of the great soliloquies. ... Presented by the Cambridge Theatre Company at the Cambridge Arts Theatre on 17 September 1974." His performance of Hamlet garnered good reviews; nevertheless Charleson felt he had not done the notoriously difficult role complete justice.Maclachlan, Ewen. "Introduction". In: For Ian Charleson: A Tribute. Constable, 1990. p. xviii.
West End and National Theatre debuts, Royal Shakespeare Company Charleson made his West End debut in 1975, in a long-running production of Simon Gray's Otherwise Engaged at the Queen's Theatre. In it he played Dave, a surly Scottish lodger, opposite Alan Bates.
He next appeared at the National Theatre, where he performed Octavius in Julius Caesar in 1977. That year he also played Peregrine in the Ben Jonson play Volpone, opposite John Gielgud, and Captain Phoebus in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Charleson then spent a year in Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company 1978–79. There he performed a hauntingly voiced Ariel in The Tempest; Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew; and Longaville in Love's Labour's Lost opposite Richard Griffiths as the King – all both in Stratford and at the Aldwych Theatre in London. Also with the RSC, he was Lawrence Vail in an acclaimed production of Once in a Lifetime (1979) at the Aldwych Theatre, and he played Pierre in the Jane Lapotaire vehicle Piaf, giving a performance which caught the eye of the filmmakers of Chariots of Fire.For Ian Charleson: A Tribute. London: Constable and Company, 1990. pp. xix, 9, 76.
National Theatre spotlight
In the 1980s, Charleson won particular critical and popular acclaim for his starring roles at the National Theatre. He was a glowingly reviewed Sky Masterson in Richard Eyre's enormously successful revival of the musical Guys and Dolls (1982), opposite Julie Covington as Sister Sarah, with Bob Hoskins as Nathan Detroit and Julia McKenzie as Adelaide.
He received an Olivier Award nomination for Actor of the Year in a New Play as Eddie in Sam Shepard's gritty and very physical two-person drama, Fool for Love (1984–85), opposite Julie Walters as his on-again off-again love object. And he was a highly praised Brick, the repressed homosexual protagonist in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1988), opposite Lindsay Duncan.
Final Hamlet Shortly before his death, while seriously ill from AIDS, from 9 October to 13 November 1989 Charleson performed his second run of Hamlet, this time at the National Theatre – giving a definitive performance which garnered major accolades."The Readiness Was All: Ian Charleson and Richard Eyre's Hamlet", by Richard Allan Davison. In Shakespeare: Text and Theater, Lois Potter and Arthur F. Kinney, eds. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999. pp. 170–182.Associated Press. "Chariots star dies of AIDS. 8 January 1990.Masters, Brian. Thunder in the Air: Great Actors in Great Roles. Oberon Books, 2000. pp. 86–88. Director Richard Eyre, with some initial misgivings based on Charleson's health, had brought him in to replace Daniel Day-Lewis, who had abandoned the production.Eyre, Richard. National Service: Diary of a Decade at the National Theatre. Bloomsbury, 2004 (paperback edition). pp. 82–101. A further challenge was that Charleson's face was greatly swollen from septicaemia;Maclachlan, Ewen. "The last role of Ian Charleson". The Guardian. 6 October 1990.Hoyle, Martin. "Hamlet: Olivier Theatre". Financial Times. 25 October 1989. "Mr Charleson's admirers must be warned that he is at first unrecognisable. A sinus operation has left his face temporarily swollen, his eyes deep slits above puffy cheeks." audience members and the rest of the public were told that he was recovering from a sinus operation.
In a lengthy review praising Charleson's performance, John Peter wrote in the Sunday Times:
The day following Charleson's final Hamlet performance, when Ian McKellen was given the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for his Iago in Othello, McKellen offered thanks, but said having seen "the perfect Hamlet" at the National Theatre the previous night, he thought that not he but Charleson was truly the Best Actor of 1989,Barratt, Mark. Ian McKellen: An Unofficial Biography. Virgin Books, 2005. p. 63."The Readiness Was All: Ian Charleson and Richard Eyre's Hamlet", by Richard Allan Davison. In Shakespeare: Text and Theater, Lois Potter and Arthur F. Kinney, eds. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999. p. 177. and he gave Charleson his statuette.
Film and television
Chariots of Fire and Gandhi
In 1979, producer David Puttnam and director Hugh Hudson had done months of searching for the actor to play the lead of the evangelical Scot Eric Liddell in their upcoming film about the 1924 Olympics. They then saw Charleson performing the role of Pierre in Piaf, and knew immediately they had found their man. Unbeknownst to them, the actor had heard about the film from his father, and desperately wanted to play the part, feeling it would "fit like a kid glove".Ian McKellen, Hugh Hudson, Alan Bates, et al. For Ian Charleson: A Tribute. London: Constable and Company, 1990. pp. xix, 9, 76. This mutual affinity led to Charleson's best-known film role and success – as the athlete and missionary Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire (1981). He prepared for the role by studying the Bible intensively, and he himself wrote Liddell's stirring post-race address to the workingmen's crowd.McKellen, Bates, Hudson, et al. pp. 37–39. This film and role made him an international celebrity."Charleson, Ian (1949–1990)". Screenonline. British Film Institute. Retrieved 29 December 2017.
He had a similar success the following year, playing Mahatma Gandhi's closest friend and collaborator, the Anglican priest Charlie Andrews, in Gandhi (1982), opposite Ben Kingsley. Like Chariots of Fire, the film Gandhi won numerous Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Other film work After these two major successes in these two Best Picture Oscar–winning films, Charleson's film career did not, however, follow the same progressive arc that his stage career did. Good feature Hollywood scripts did not pour in after Chariots of Fire and Gandhi; nor did he choose to move to Hollywood to capitalize on his success.McKellen, Bates, Hudson, et al. pp. xxii–xxiii.Andrews, Deborah (ed). The Annual Obituary 1990. London: St James Press, 1991. pp. 9–10. Also affecting his film career was the fact that he was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, and thereafter lacked enthusiasm to do feature films, although he was not symptomatic until the autumn of 1988. His drive to pursue a rich stage career focusing on Shakespearean leads, however, remained strong.