Colin Blakely
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The ThumbScore for Colin Blakely (70.7%) is the average audience approval rating across 3 films. Each movie's ThumbScore represents the percentage of real audiences who rated it positively. A higher score means more of Colin's films are well-received by everyday viewers.
Colin George Edward Blakely (23 September 1930 – 7 May 1987) was a Northern Irish stage and screen actor. He was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Sidney Lumet's Equus (1977), and was nominated twice for a Best Actor in Television (1970, 1987). He was also an Olivier Award nominee. According to the British Film Institute, Blakely's "chunky form and rumpled, good-natured features tended to direct him towards hero's-friend roles, but there was also an impressive toughness and intensity about his work."
Blakely was born in Bangor, County Down, the son of Victor and Dorothy Blakely (née Ashmore). His mother was a singer in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his father owned a sports retail shop in Belfast. He attended Sedbergh School in Yorkshire (now Cumbria), England. At the age of 18, he started work in his family's sports goods shop in Belfast, before going on to work as a timber-loader on the railways. After a spell of amateur dramatics with the Bangor Operatic Society, he turned professional.
In 1958, Blakely made his stage debut in Belfast as Dick McCardle in Master of the House. He also appeared in several Ulster Group Theatre productions, including Gerard McLarnon's The Bonefire (1958) and Patricia O'Connor's The Sparrow's Fall (1959). From 1959 he was at the Royal Court Theatre, appearing in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance and, to critical approval, The Naming of Murderer's Rock.
In the Royal Court production of Saint Joan, starring Joan Plowright, he had the small but prominent role of the English Soldier. Blakely himself said, about his transfer to working in England, I was lucky then because the Royal Court were looking for actors like me at that time. Arden, Wesker, and so forth were writing for your plebians with rough knocked-about looking faces, so I got a job quite easily. In 1961, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, before joining the National Theatre for its opening in 1963 at the Old Vic; he was part of the NT cast that toured Moscow in 1965, the first time a foreign company was allowed to perform at the Kremlin.
Born 1930-09-23 in Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland, UK. Died 1987-05-07.
On ThumbScore, Colin Blakely appears in 3 films with an average audience score of 70.7%, most frequently in the Crime genre.
