Ian Charleson

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Ian Charleson (11 August 1949 – 6 January 1990) was a Scottish stage and film actor.

In the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire, he is best known for his role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell.

He is also known for his portrayal of Rev. Paul.

In the 1982 Oscar-winning film Gandhi, Charlie Andrews appears. Charleson appeared on television as well as in Guys and Dolls, Fool for Love, and Hamlet, among other things.

He appeared in many Shakespearean performances, and the annual Ian Charleson Awards were established in 1991, particularly in honor of his final Hamlet.

The awards are given to the best classical stage performances in the United Kingdom by actors under the age of 30. Charleson is described as "a leading figure of charm and power" and "one of the finest British actors of his generation" in the Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography.

Charleson was "definitely one of the top ten actors of his age group," Alan Bates wrote.

Charleson was "the most unmannered and unactorish of actors" after being diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and dying at the age of 40, according to Ian McKellen.

In order to publicize the disease, he ordered that it be revealed after his death.

It was the first celebrity death in the United Kingdom openly linked to AIDS, and the announcement helped to raise the disease's awareness and acceptance.

Early life

Charleson, a printer's son, was born in Edinburgh in 1949 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Edinburgh. By the age of eight, he was performing in local theatre productions. He received a scholarship to and attended Edinburgh's Royal High School, and in his teens, he joined and performed with The Jasons, Edinburgh's amateur theatrical group. He performed solo in church and in the Royal High School choir, which also appeared on the radio and in Edinburgh Festival concerts.

Charleson was granted a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh, which he attended from 1967 to 1970, earning a three-year Scottish MA Ordinary degree. He started learning architecture. However, he spent the majority of his time with Edinburgh University Drama Society and decided against acting as a profession. He changed his subject matter and graduated with a degree in English, fine art, and mathematics. In addition to his acting appearances at Edinburgh University, he penned several plays and he crafted costumes for several of them.

Charleson appeared often at the Edinburgh Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 1967 to 1973, making him a well-known actor in those genres.

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Stage career

Charleson earned a scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where he studied for two years.

Charleson was recruited by Frank Dunlop's Young Vic Theatre Company in Los Angeles. He made his professional debut with the Young Vic in 1972 as one of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1972), which was also broadcast in the United Kingdom by Granada Television. Jimmy Porter appeared in Look Back in Anger in 1973, and in the first revival of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, he died as Jimmy Porter. He appeared in Much Ado About Nothing as a member of the Young Vic group in 1974. He travelled with the company to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York the same year to appear as Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew, Ottavio in Scapino, and Brian Curtis in French Without Tears.

He appeared in Hamlet with the Cambridge Theatre Company in late 1974, where he had previously appeared in The School of Scandal and Six Characters in Search of an Author. Hamlet's success received raves; however, Charleson expressed disappointment that he had not done the notoriously difficult job of complete justice.

Charleson made his West End debut in 1975 in Simon Gray's Otherwise Engaged at the Queen's Theatre. Dave, a mysterious Scottish lodger in it, appeared opposite Alan Bates.

He appeared at the National Theatre for the second time, when he appeared in Julius Caesar's Octavius. He also appeared Peregrine in the classic play Volpone opposite John Gield, and Captain Phoebus in The Hunchback of Notre Dame that year.

Charleson spent a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon 1978–79. In The Tempest, he performed a hauntingly voiced Ariel; Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew; and Love's Labour's Lost opposite Richard Griffiths as the King - both in Stratford and London's Aldwych Theatre. Lawrence Vail of the Royal Shakespeare Company appeared in an acclaimed production of Once in a Lifetime (1979) at the Aldwych Theatre (1979), and he played Pierre in the Jane Lapotaire vehicle Piaf, capturing the attention of the filmmakers of Chariots of Fire.

Charleson earned particular renown and acclaim in the 1980s for his performance at the National Theatre. In Richard Eyre's hugely popular 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.

In a New Play as Eddie (1984–85), Charleson received an Olivier Award nomination for Actor of the Year, 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.

Charleson performed his second run of Hamlet, this time at the National Theatre, in a critically ill man. Richard Eyre, director Richard Eyre, after some initial misgivings based on Charleson's wellbeing, had him come in to substitute Daniel Day-Lewis, who had abandoned the venture. Charleson's face was also swollen from septicemia, as audience members and the majority of the public were informed that he was recovering from a sinus surgery.

In a long review lauding Charleson's performance, John Peter wrote in the Sunday Times: "John Peter wrote in the Sunday Times glorifying Charleson's success.

McKellen said he wished that Ian McKellen for his Iago in Othello, but not really because he but Ian Charleson, 1989's Best Actor, he told Charleson the day after, but he didn't realise that he was not the best Actor of 1989, and he presented him with his statuette.

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