The British actor Freddie Jones, whose film and television credits number in the hundreds, has died after a short illness, aged 91.
Frederick Charles Jones was born in Stoke-On-Trent in 1927. Some of his first stage roles were as part of a boy scout troop, but he came to professional acting relatively late: his first career saw him spend a decade as a laboratory assistant with the British Ceramic Research Association in Penkhull. But amateur dramatics was always a hobby, and one that would eventually lead him to reinvent himself. He enrolled at the Rose Buford College of Theatre and Performance in his early 30s, and made his debut for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962, aged 35. He established himself almost immediately as a memorable character actor in the work of playwrights like Maxim Gorky, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.
Television and film predictably followed. On the small screen his early credits included the usual suspects like Z-Cars, The Avengers, The Saint, and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), and he gained significant recognition playing Claudius in The Caesars. His first film role was in Peter Brook's Marat/Sade in 1967, immediately followed by Joseph Losey's Accident and John Schlesinger's Far From the Madding Crowd. But there were also horror films like Hammer's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and comedies like Doctor In Trouble.
In 1980 he played his most famous stage role, the crumbling tragedian named only as Sir, in Ronald Harwood's The Dresser. And the same year he took one of his most memorable screen jobs as the sadistic freakshow proprietor Mr Bytes in The Elephant Man. It marked the first of a number of projects with director David Lynch: Jones would continue to appearances in Lynch's Dune__, Wild At Heart, and the less seen On The Air and The Hotel Room.
Perhaps never a household name, he remained incredibly prolific throughout the rest of his career. His non-Lynch films included Firefox, Krull, Young Sherlock Holmes, Erik the Viking, Ladies In Lavender and The Libertine, and he said his personal favourite was Federico Fellini's And The Ship Sails On, in which he played the sozzled journalist Orlando. On television his work ranged from dramas and classic serials to children's shows and knockabout comedies: his demeanour was always that of a "serious" actor who delighted in silliness and twinkle-eyed mischief. In 2000, playing up his Hammer heritage, he appeared in The League Of Gentlemen's Christmas Special in a typically wonky take on the classic horror tale The Monkey's Paw.
His last role was a long-running stint on the TV soap Emmerdale, clocking up 632 episodes beginning in 2005 as the roguish Sandy Thomas. He finally stepped away in early 2018, at the age of 89.
He is survived by his wife of 54 years Jennifer Jones, and his sons Toby and Casper (both actors) and Rupert (a director).