Timothy West, a versatile actor who portrayed a parade of historical and classical figures onstage and onscreen, and in between became a household name in Britain as a sitcom and soap opera regular, died on Tuesday in London. He was 90.
His death was announced by his family on social media. They did not specify where he died but thanked the staffs at a London care home and a hospital for “their loving care” during Mr. West’s final days.
With arched brows, narrow eyes and a strong jaw, Mr. West brought a commanding presence to historical figures like Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and King Edward VII, and to notables of classic theater like King Lear, Macbeth and Willy Loman.
He was perhaps best known to American audiences for his performances in British television imports: the mini-series “Edward the King,” the movie “Churchill and the Generals” and the acclaimed mini-series “Bleak House,” an adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel that was shown on PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater” in 2005.
Image
Image
Although Mr. West was a staple of British television, had dabbled in radio drama and had several small film roles, his lifelong passion was the theater.
He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Prospect Theater Company, an artistic director of the Old Vic Theater in London and, from 1986 to 2018, the president of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1984, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.
He first came to the attention of television audiences in 1975, in the title role of the lavishly produced 13-part television series “Edward VII,” broadcast in the United States in 1979 as “Edward the King.”
The show won critical acclaim and a popular following, even if some viewers were confused about which Edward he was portraying.
“When I told people I was going to play Edward VII, the first person I told said, ‘Oh, I don’t like Shakespeare,’” Mr. West said in a 1979 interview with The New York Times. “The second said” — confusing Edward VII with his grandson Edward VIII, who abdicated to marry an American — “‘Who’s playing Mrs. Wallis Simpson?’”
How The Times decides who gets an obituary. There is no formula, scoring system or checklist in determining the news value of a life. We investigate, research and ask around before settling on our subjects. If you know of someone who might be a candidate for a Times obituary, please suggest it here.
With his statesmanlike countenance, Mr. West was a natural fit to play Churchill. His performance in “Churchill and the Generals,” a 1979 BBC drama that arrived in the United States in 1981, was the first of three career portrayals of the British prime minister.
“Unlike Mr. Churchill in the war, Timothy West never loses center stage in this production,” John J. O’Connor wrote in a Times review. “He rages, pouts, squints, charms and even sings a music hall ditty.”
And he could do comedy, too. Many viewers in Britain knew Mr. West as the ruthless businessman Bradley Hardacre in “Brass,” a comedy drama set in the 1930s that followed the lives of two feuding families in the fictional Lancashire mining town of Utterly.
Mr. West’s ability to bounce from stage role to screen role and back again meant that he was never out of work, even in his later years. He was in the HBO historical drama “Gentleman Jack” from 2019 to 2022 as the crusty father of the lesbian industrialist Anne Lister, and at 81 he played King Lear — his fourth time — at the Bristol Old Vic in 2016.
“There’s a great reward in telling such a complex story every night,” he told The Guardian in 2014, when he reflected on the “emotionally exhausting” job of playing Lear. “And it’s always very satisfying to die at the end of a play.”
Image
Timothy Lancaster West was born on Oct. 20, 1934, in Bradford, a city in West Yorkshire, England, and grew up in Bristol, in the southwest. His father, Harry Lockwood West, and mother, Olive (Carleton-Crowe) West, met as stage actors. Lockwood West, as his father was known professionally, also had a long career in television and film.
Timothy showed early leanings toward acting but was discouraged by his parents. “It wasn’t sold to me as a noble profession,” he said in a 2011 interview with The Yorkshire Post.
After completing his schooling at Polytechnic Regent Street (now the University of Westminster), where he became involved in the drama group as an actor and director, he worked at a furniture dealer and as a quality control engineer at the record label EMI.
He married Jacqueline Boyer, an actress in 1956; they had a daughter, Juliet, and divorced in 1961. In 1963, he married Prunella Scales, an actress best known as Sybil Fawlty, the wife of the high-strung hotel manager Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) in the sitcom “Fawlty Towers.” They had two sons, Samuel, an actor, and Joseph.
Mr. West is survived by Ms. Scales and his children; seven grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and his sister, Patricia.
His West End debut came in 1959 with a small part in the farce “Caught Napping” at the Piccadilly Theater.
In 1975, he joined the director Trevor Nunn’s world tour of the Ibsen play “Hedda Gabler,” in which Mr. West played Judge Brack in a cast that included Glenda Jackson and Patrick Stewart. A film version, also directed by Mr. Nunn and featuring the same cast, was released that year.
Image
Mr. West’s directing credits at the Old Vic, from 1980-81, include Arthur Wing Pinero’s “Trelawny of the ‘Wells’” and “The Merchant of Venice.” While there he had a brief and ill-fated partnership with Peter O’Toole, who starred in a production of “Macbeth” that was famously savaged in the press.
Mr. O’Toole, who had not appeared on the London stage for 15 years, had insisted on complete artistic control over the production, Mr. West wrote in a memoir — “a sure recipe for dissent if not disaster” — and refused to make any suggested changes.
The first night was a critical failure (“Not so much downright bad as heroically ludicrous,” The Daily Mail wrote), and ignited a public war of words (“West Disowns MacBeth,” one headline blared). But the play drew so many curious theatergoers that it became a box office hit.
Starting in the 1960s and continuing through the 2020s, Mr. West was in scores of television series and movies.
Image
He was Sir Leicester Dedlock in the Emmy-winning “Bleak House,” starring opposite Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock. In 2013, he played a rich retiree in the long-running soap “Coronation Street,” and from 2014-15, he was a curmudgeon who stirred up family strife in the rival soap “EastEnders.”
His movie roles included small parts in “The Day of the Jackal” (1973), “Cry Freedom” (1987) and “The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc” (1999).
In 2014, it was revealed that Ms. Scales had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. That same year, Mr. West and Ms. Scales followed in the footsteps of many veteran actors and made a travel show, “Great Canal Journeys,” in which they toured waterways in Britain and abroad on canal barges and narrowboats; it aired for 13 seasons.
Despite building a reputation for playing commanding figures, Mr. West preferred to tout his versatility. “People always say ‘You play gravitas,’” he told The Independent in 2006. “I hope I don’t. I don’t like anything that puts me in a pigeonhole — people don’t live in pigeonholes on the whole.”
Alex Marshall contributed reporting from London.
A correction was made on
:Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to Wallis Simpson. She was the wife of the Duke of Windsor, who as the English monarch Edward VIII had abdicated the throne to marry her; she was not the wife of his grandfather Edward VII, portrayed by Mr. West in a British mini-series.
