Cancer claims stage and screen icon Alan Bates

By KIM SENGUPTA


LONDON - Sir Alan Bates, one of the most renowned and respected actors of his generation, has died aged 69 from cancer of the liver.

Sir Alan, knighted in the New Year's honours, had his 19-year-old son Benedick by his side at a London hospital at the time of his death.

It is believed Sir Alan had suffered a relapse. Last October his agent, Rosalin Chatto reported, "He is recovering from cancer ... He is definitely on the mend. Alan is really doing fantastically well now."

Sir Alan's second son, Benedick's twin, Tristran, had died from an asthma attack in 1990, and his actress wife Victoria Ford also died after a suspected heart attack two years later. He had continued to work through much of his own illness, saying that it was focusing on his acting that helped him cope.

Sir Alan became an international star, appearing in some of the most memorable films of the 60s and 70s, including Women in Love, Georgy Girl, Far From the Madding Crowd and Zorba The Greek.

He received an Oscar nomination for his part as a persecuted Russian Jew in The Fixer.

Last year he won a Screen Actor's Guild award for best actor in his role in the Robert Altman directed Gosford Park. And he also received the best actor Tony Award for his portrayal on Broadway of an impoverished nobleman in Turgenev's "Fortune's Fool".

However, Sir Alan achieved his first critical acclaim as one of the "angry young men" of the post-war English theatre, portraying disaffected and disenfranchised young working-class men in gritty, iconoclastic plays exemplified by John Osborne's Look Back In Anger and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker.

Yesterday Glenda Jackson, MP, who starred alongside Sir Alan in Women in Love, described how he had reached the top of his profession.

She said: "The longer he lived, the better an actor he became. Look Back in Anger ... totally transformed British theatre. But as he matured as an individual, his acting became broader and deeper and he always brought the unexpected to everything he did."

It was playing Jimmy Porter in The Caretaker that brought Sir Alan admiring reviews and took him from the West End to Broadway at the age of 30. Determined not to be typecast, he made the transition to character actor with great success, becoming known for his versatility.

The son of an insurance broker and a housewife, he was born on February 17, 1934, in Allestree, Derby, a place for which he held a warm affection throughout his life.


- INDEPENDENT