 Of aristocratic voice and bearing, former estate agent Charles Gray made a memorable villain in such films as the Bond caper, Diamonds Are Forever (d. Guy Hamilton, 1971), playing the malevolent Blofeld with a white cat to underline his decadence. On stage from 1952 (as 'Charles the Wrestler' in As You Like It, Regent's Park), the 6-foot, silver-haired Gray had Old Vic and Broadway seasons, but his main career was on screens large and small. Famous in the 1980s as TV's Mycroft in the Sherlock Holmes series (ITV, 1985/87/94); a memorable 'Claudius', on- and off-stage in the wonderful An Englishman Abroad (BBC, tx. 29/11/1983); brilliantly type-cast as Pandarus in the BBC's Troilus and Cressida (tx. 7/11/1981); and guest in innumerable popular series. On screen from the late 1950s (a caddish ladies' man in the 'B' movie, The Desperate Man, d. Peter Maxwell, 1959), he made a major impact as icily evil Mocata in the masterly Hammer occult piece, The Devil Rides Out (d. Terence Fisher, 1967). He was an authoritative Essex in Cromwell (d. Ken Hughes, 1970), threw himself into the cult camp nonsense of The Rocky Horror Show (d. Jim Sharman, 1975), and appeared in several nondescript US films, including The Secret War of Harry Frigg (US, d. Jack Smight, 1967). His mellifluous tones were in demand for narrations (e.g., On the Game, d. Stanley A.Long, 1973, a documentary about prostitution's history), and from the early 1980s TV claimed him increasingly. He also provided Jack Hawkins's 'voice' when Hawkins lost his own through throat cancer. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
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FILM & TV CREDITS
