Earl Cameron

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Earlston J. Cameron, CBE (born 8 August 1917), also known as Earl Cameron, is a British actor who appeared in Bermuda and a long-time resident in England.

Cameron, alongside Cy Grant, became one of the first black actors to play in a British film after Paul Robeson, Nina Mae McKinney, and Elisabeth Welch in the 1930s.

Cameron, who was often cast as a sympathetic stranger, gave his characters a sense of humor and moral heft that often went beyond the films' misguided liberal ideals. He appeared on many British science fiction programs of the 1960s, including Doctor Who, The Prisoner, and The Andromeda Breakthrough.

Personal life

Cameron, a Bahách Faith practitioner, entered the faith at the time of the first Bahá World Congress, held at Royal Albert Hall in London from 1963. In 2007, the Bahá's community held a reception in London to celebrate his 90th birthday. He lived in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England. He was married to Barbara Bower. Audrey Godowski, his first wife, who had married in 1954, died in 1994. He had six children.

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Early career

Cameron was born in Pembroke, Bermuda, and grew up on Hamilton's Princess Street. His father, a stonemason who died in 1922, died in 1922, and Cameron's mother took on various jobs to help the family. Cameron, a young man, joined the British Merchant Navy: "I was on a ship going from Bermuda to New York and back. "I was going back to Bermuda." I always had a keen desire to travel as a child, so I moved to the Eastern Prince, sailing to South America. The war started on our second trip. The British Admiralty ordered the ship, and it brought me to London." "I arrived in London on October 29-1939," he explained in an interview. I became involved with a young lady and you know the rest. The ship was left without me, and the child was escorted out.

Cameron was first struggling to find a job as a black man; he was reluctantly accepted as a dishwasher in a hotel and then had to do whatever casual jobs came his way. In 1941, his companion Harry Crossman offered Cameron a ticket to see Chu Chin Chow's revival at the Palace Theatre. In the West End's production, Crossman and five other black actors had bit parts. Cameron, who was in charge of the Strand Corner House at the time, was fed up with menial jobs and begged Crossman if he could bring him on the show. Cameron told Cameron that all the actors had been cast, but that Crossman, two or three weeks later, arranged a meeting with director Robert Atkins, who starred Cameron on the spot. According to Cameron, he had a better time than most black actors because his Bermudian accent sounded American to British ears (Bermuda, the first two centuries of settlement, although they and ten other continental colonies formed the United States). Joseph was the chauffeur in Robert E. Sherwood's American play The Petrified Forest for the following year. When Cameron first started working as an actor, he met fellow Bermudian Ernest Trimingham who was still living in the West End.

Cameron took on the role of one of the Dukes of the Duchess and Two Dukes, a British army troupe that performed in India in 1945 and 1946, as well as the Netherlands in 1946. Cameron returned to Bermuda for five months in 1946 but then went back to work as an actor in the United Kingdom. In the play "Deep the Roots," he worked on the London stage as an understudy. This play, written by Arnaud d'Usseau and James Gow, was staged at the Wyndham's Theatre in London for six months (featuring Gordon Heath) and then went on tour. During a performance of that play in Coventry, Cameron first encountered and worked alongside Patrick McGoohan. Cameron appeared in a reading of Deep Are the Roots in Bermuda in 2012, not only because it gave him his first black actor his first exposure in the West End, but also his first wife when he went on tour with the cast."

The Roots were studied in Deep with fellow understudy Ida Shepley, a singer. As Cameron's diction was failing, she introduced him to voice coach Amanda Ira Aldridge, the daughter of Ira Aldridge, a black Shakespearian American actress of the nineteenth century.

Film career

Cameron's breakthrough acting appearance was in Pool of London, a 1951 film directed by Basil Dearden set in postwar London involving racial stereotypes and passion — Cameron's character is a merchant sailor falling in love with a young white woman, played by Susan Shaw — and a diamond robbery. He received a lot of praise for his role in the film, which is described as "the first big role for a black actor in a British mainstream film."

In the 1955 film Simba, Cameron's next big screen role was in the 1955 film Simba. Cameron portrayed Peter Karanja, a doctor struggling to reconcile his reverence for Western civilisation with his Kikuyu roots in this drama about the Mau Mau Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. In the same year, Cameron played Jeroge in Safari for the Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau.

In a 2017 interview, he told The Guardian, "I never thought of myself as a pioneer." It was only later that I realized that I was not there." "They would never think that this was a part of a black actor." And they would never consider moving a white part to a black part. So that was my problem. I got major portions of the film, and it was painful not only for me but also for other black actors. We had a difficult time getting meaningful positions."

Cameron appeared in several films, including: The Heart Within (1957), in which he appeared as Victor Conway in a crime film again set in London; and The Message (1976) — the story of the Prophet Muhammad, in which he played the King of Abyssinia.

Cameron's other film appearances include Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), in which he appeared Tate; Fire in the Streets (1961), in which he starred Gabriel Gomez; and Battle Beneath the Earth (1967), in which he appeared as an African ambassador to the United Kingdom, in which he appeared as a soldier in the 1920s; and In which he appeared as a Knight in the Streets (1963), in which he appeared in Tandar

Cameron was considered for the role of Quarr in Dr. No (1962), directed Terence Young and co-producer Albert R. Broccoli, who knew of his Warwick Films work; however, producer Harry Saltzman did not think him suitable for the role and cast John Kitzmiller. Cameron was asked to return to Thunderball (1965), in which he appeared in Bond's Bahamian assistant Pinder. In 1976, Cameron appeared alongside Thunderball leader Sean Connery in Cuba (1979), in which he appeared as Colonel Levya.

Cameron's most recent film appearances include a major role in Sidney Pollack's The Interpreter (2005) as a fictionalized version of Robert Mugabe (then king of Zimbabwe). Cameron's performance was lauded. "Earl Cameron is magnificent as the slimy old fraud of a tyrant," the Baltimore Sun said, and Rolling Stone described his appearance as "subtle and menacing." In the Observer, Philip French referred to "that fine Caribbean actor Earl Cameron." In the 2006 film The Queen (directed by Stephen Frears), he appeared in a cameo as a portrait artist alongside Helen Mirren. In the film Inception, he appeared as "Elderly Bald Man." In the short film Up on the Roof, he appeared as Grandad in 2013.

Television career

Cameron appeared in a number of television shows, but one of his first major roles was his appearance in The Dark Man, a BBC 1960 television drama in which he played a West Indian taxi driver in the United Kingdom. The show explored his reactions and prejudices in his work. He appeared in A Man From The Sun, a BBC drama about racial injustice in the workplace, in which he appeared as community leader Joseph Brent, but the script also stars Errol John, Cy Grant, Colin Douglas, and Nadia Cattouse.

Cameron appeared in a variety of television shows, including series Danger Man (Secret Agent in the United States), as well as series actor Patrick McGoohan. Cameron appeared in McGoohan's television series "The Prisoner" (1967) as the Haitian chief.

Dixon of Dock Green (a small actor from the series to reach 100 years of age), Emergency – Ward 10, The Zoo Gang, Crown Court (two separate stories, each three episodes long), Jackanory (reportedly the first black actor to play an astronaut on television), Waking the Dead (a small role as a Mr Lambert), and Lovejoy are among his other television appearances. In 1996, he appeared on BBC2 as The Abbot in Neverwhere, an urban fantasy television series created by Neil Gaiman.

He appeared in several one-off TV dramas, including: Television Playhouse (1957); A World Inside BBC (1962); and ITV Play of the Week (two stories) and I Can Walk Where I Like (1962) Can't believe it? Wind Versus Polygamy (1964), the BBC's Wind Versus Polygamy (1964), ITV's A Fear of Strangers (1964), in which he played Ramsay, a black saxophonist and small-time criminal who is arrested by the police on suspicion of murder and is also racially assaulted by a Chief Inspector Dyke (1964); Festival: the Respectful Prose (1964); Soldier Ants, 1966; ITV's

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