Daniel Massey Biography
Daniel Raymond M*ey (10 October 1933:– 25 March 1998) was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant. He is also known for his role in the 1968 American film Star!, as Noël Coward (M*ey's godfather), for which he won a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination.
Early life
M*ey was born in London in 1933. He was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. He was a member of the noted M*ey family, which included his father, Raymond M*ey, his sister, Anna M*ey and his uncle Vincent M*ey, the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada. His mother was the actress Adrianne Allen.
Living with his mother after his parents' divorce, M*ey rarely saw his father through most of his adult life; however, they were cast as father and son in The Queen's Guards (1961).
Career
M*ey made his film debut as a child in his godfather Noël Coward's naval drama, In Which We Serve (1942). He would later play Coward in the 1968 Julie Andrews vehicle Star!, a performance for which he won a Golden Globe Award and received his sole Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
He made a major impression as an adult as Laurence Olivier's son-in-law in the stage and screen versions of John Osborne's The Entertainer (film in 1960). M*ey appeared in numerous British films from the 1950s onwards, including The Jokers (1967), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), The Vault of Horror (1973, in which his character's sister was played by his real-life sister, Anna M*ey), The Cat and the Canary (1979), Victory! (1981) and In the Name of the Father (1993).
Other highlights of his career were his stage roles, especially that of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler in Ronald Harwood's Taking Sides; M*ey was nominated for the 1996 Olivier Award as Best Actor. He recreated the role for Broadway in 1996, earning a 1997 Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor In A Play. His other Broadway stage appearances included musicals such as She Loves Me as Georg in 1963 and Gigi (as Gaston) in 1973.
He appeared in Stephen Sondheim's Follies as Benjamin Stone in the West End in 1987. In the 1980s and 1990s, he also appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in productions such as Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure and The Time of Your Life, the latter alongside John Thaw.
In 1970 M*ey played the role of the openly gay character Daniel, alongside a cast headed by Michael Bryant as Mathieu in the acclaimed multi-part BBC adaptation of Jean Paul Sartre's The Roads to Freedom.
Other television highlights of M*ey's career include The Crucible on the BBC (1981) as Reverend Hale, The Golden Bowl (1972) as the Prince, in the Inspector Morse episode "Deceived by Flight" as Anthony Donn, again with John Thaw, and his performance as an AIDS patient in Intimate Contact (1987). With Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, he played a US Senator in "The Problem of Thor Bridge", series 3, episode 2, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Granada Television, 1991. Brett had once been married to M*ey's sister, Anna, and was father to M*ey's nephew by Anna, actor David Huggins. He also stole mostly every scene he appeared in the Alan Bleasdale cl*ic G.B.H. (1991) as the awkward eccentric hotel owner, Grosvenor.
Personal life
M*ey was married three times, two of his wives being well-known actresses:
- Adrienne Corri (1961–1967)
- Penelope Wilton (1975–1984); one daughter, Alice M*ey and a stillborn son.
- Linda Wilton (1986–1998) (a sister of Penelope)
- M*ey also had a close friendship/relationship with Marilu Henner. The two worked together in 1985 in Italy making the film, Love with a Perfect Stranger (1986). Henner wrote she fell for M*ey.
Death
He died in London, on 25 March 1998 from Hodgkin's lymphoma, which had been diagnosed in 1992. His body was interred at Putney Vale Cemetery. M*ey worked in theatre throughout his cancer treatments, rarely missing a performance.
Selected filmography
- In Which We Serve (1942) – Bobby Kinross
- Girls at Sea (1958) – Flag. Lt. Courtney
- Operation Bullshine (1959) – Bombardier Peter Palmer
- Upstairs and Downstairs (1959) – Wesley Cotes
- The Entertainer (1960) – Graham
- The Queen's Guards (1961) – John Fellowes
- Go to Blazes (1962) – Harry
- The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) – Elder Brother
- The Jokers (1967) – Riggs
- Star! (1968) – Noël Coward
- Fragment of Fear (1970) – Maj. Ricketts
- Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) – Robert Dudley
- The Vault of Horror (1973) – Rogers (segment 1 "Midnight Mess")
- The Incredible Sarah (1976) – Victorien Sardou
- The Devil's Advocate (1977) – Black
- Warlords of Atlantis (1978) – Atraxon
- The Cat and the Canary (1978) – Dr. Harry Blythe
- Love with a Perfect Stranger (1986) - Hugo DeL*ey
- Bad Timing (1980) – Foppish Man
- Escape to Victory (1981) – Colonel Waldron
- Scandal (1989) – Mervyn Griffith-Jones
- In the Name of the Father (1993) – Prosecutor
- The Miracle Maker (2000) – Cleopas (voice) (final film role)
References
Granada Television: screen credits.
External links
- Daniel M*ey at IMDb
- Daniel M*ey at the Internet Broadway Database
(except 1988)
- Antony Sher (1985)
- Albert Finney (1986)
- Michael Gambon (1987)
- Oliver Ford Davies (1989/1990)
- Ian McKellen (1991)
- Nigel Hawthorne (1992)
- Robert Stephens (1993)
- Mark Rylance (1994)
- David Bamber (1995)
- Alex Jennings (1996)
- Antony Sher (1997)
- Ian Holm (1998)
- Kevin Spacey (1999)
- Henry Goodman (2000)
- Conleth Hill (2001)
- Roger Allam (2002)
- Simon Russell Beale (2003)
- Matthew Kelly (2004)
- Richard Griffiths (2005)
- Brian Dennehy (2006)
- Rufus Sewell (2007)
- Chiwetel Ejiofor (2008)
- Derek Jacobi (2009)
- Mark Rylance (2010)
- Roger Allam (2011)
- Benedict *berbatch and Jonny Lee Miller (2012)
- Luke Treadaway (2013)
- Rory Kinnear (2014)
- Mark Strong (2015)
- Kenneth Cranham (2016)
- Jamie Parker (2017)
- Bryan Cranston (2018)
- Kyle Soller (2019)
- Andrew Scott (2020)
- No Ceremony (2021)
- Hiran Abeysekera (2022)
- Paul Mescal (2023)
- Mark Gatiss (2024)
