Leonard Whiting

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Leonard Whiting (born 30 June 1950) is an English actor and singer best known for his role as Romeo in the 1968 Zeffirelli film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet opposite Olivia Hussey's Juliet, who received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year (Actor).

Early life

Whiting was born in Wood Green, England, on June 30th, 1950, and he and his two sisters went to Holloway, another North London neighborhood. Peggy Joyce (O'Sullivan) and Arthur Leonard Whiting's only son has English, Irish, and Romani roots. Whiting's passion for performing was promoted at his local Church and Primary School in St Josephs, R.C. Highgate, where he and sister Linda participated in the school's nativity plays. Leonard went on to study at St. Richard of Chichester School, Camden Town, just a week or two before beginning to work on Romeo and Juliet (1968).

Personal life

Whiting married Cathee Dahmen in 1971. Sarah Beth Whiting, a 1972 girl who died of cervical cancer in 2014, died in 2014. Whiting had a relationship with Valerie Tobin, who gave birth to Charlotte, following his separation from Dahmen in 1977. Charlotte has admitted that she did not know her father until she was 12, which was when she learned that her step-father's surname Westenra, whom her mother adopted in 1982. Charlotte Westenra became a theatre director. Lynn Presser, Whiting's assistant, was married in 1995. Whiting ceased his film career in the mid 1970s for the most part, then focusing on his theatre career as an actor and writer. In Haverstock, north London, he and his wife live.

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Career

Whiting had some success as a child singer, almost winning a Butlin's Talent Contest (he came second) hosted in the holiday camp's packed out Gaiety Theatre. Whiting was later spotted by a theatrical agent at the Connaught Rooms Holborn, where he was performing at a Jewish wedding at the age of 12. He only sang one song ("Summertime") which he had rehearsed as a one-off song with the group Teal Lewis and the Fourtunes, who provided the evening entertainment. This was set up by his father to get him noticed. After hearing him sing, the agent suggested he try out for Lionel Bart's Oliver! which constantly needed replacements for its child performers. Whiting played the Artful Dodger in the long-running London musical for 15 months, and for 13 months in 1965–1966 appeared at Laurence Olivier's National Theatre in the production of William Congreve's Love for Love opposite Olivier, which toured Moscow and Berlin.

Director Franco Zeffirelli described his discovery, from 300 youngsters who auditioned over a period of more than three months: "He has a magnificent face, gentle melancholy, sweet, the kind of idealistic young man Romeo ought to be."

In the mid-1970s, his voice caught the attention of Abbey Road and The Dark Side of the Moon engineer Alan Parsons, who was in the process of recording what was to be the first album by the Alan Parsons Project, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Whiting performed lead vocals on the song "The Raven" and he also narrated the introduction of the five part musical rendition of The Fall of the House of Usher on the original 1976 album, which was then replaced by Orson Welles on the 1987 remixed version.

Whiting was cast as the Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in London's Westminster Theatre between 27 November 1978 and 17 January 1979. This was a Ken Hill production with the Pharaoh played by Whiting in the style of Elvis Presley.

In 1990, Whiting provided the voice of the Urpney scientist Urpgor in the children's animated television series The Dreamstone. After voicing the character for three seasons, he was replaced by Colin Marsh for the fourth and final season.

In 2014, he reunited with Olivia Hussey for the film Social Suicide (2015), their first work together in the 46 years since Romeo and Juliet.

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