Paul Scofield, A Man For All Seasons Oscar-winner, dies at 86

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Paul Scofield has died at the age of 86 after a long illness

Oscar-winning actor Paul Scofield has died at the age of 86 after a long illness.

Scofield was one of the greatest British classical actors of his generation, yet had an intense dislike for publicity and shunned the spotlight.

His most famous screen role was as Sir Thomas More in the film of Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons. It was a performance which won him an Oscar in 1967.

And whether on the stage or screen, he was always the dominant figure, with a presence described as "monumental but reassuring" and a voice compared variously to a Rolls-Royce being started up and a sound rumbling up from an antique crypt.

He was noted for being highly selective about the roles he took on, appearing in just over 30 films throughout his 50-year screen career.

Scofield was appointed a CBE in 1956 after a triumphal appearance in Peter Brook's Hamlet in Moscow. But he more than once rejected a knighthood - because he wanted to remain "plain Mister".

He once said: "If you want a title, what's wrong with Mr? If you have always been that, then why lose your title? But it's not political. I have a CBE, which I accepted very gratefully."

In the 2001 New Year Honours, he became a Companion of Honour, which ranks with a knighthood, but is more select in that only 65 people are allowed to hold it at any one time.

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Scofield won an Oscar for his role as English chancellor Sir Thomas More in 1966's A Man for All Seasons (above with Susannah York)

David Paul Scofield was born on January 21 1922 at Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, where his father was the village schoolmaster. He was educated at Varndean School for Boys, in Brighton, where, wearing blond plaits, he played Juliet and Rosalind.

At the age of 17, he left school and went straight to Croydon Repertory Theatre to train as a professional actor. He remained an actor from that date onwards, with remarkably few periods of unemployment.

His first professional role was a walk-on part in Desire Under The Elms at the Westminster Theatre in 1940.

His first real break came when he joined Basil C Langton's touring company in Birmingham in 1942. He played Horatio in Hamlet, and his wife-to-be Joy Parker played Ophelia. They married in 1943.

It was towards the end of the war, that Scofield met Brook, and a lifelong friendship ensued.

Scofield went to Stratford for three years, where he played some of the great Shakespearean roles, including Henry V, Lucio in Measure For Measure, Mercutio in Romeo And Juliet, a long, blond-haired Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Pericles, rounding off that period with a highly-acclaimed performance of Hamlet - and he was still only 26.

His career never faltered. Although his first love was the stage, he enjoyed an impressive screen career well into his seventh decade, winning an Oscar-nomination for his turn in Robert Redford's film Quiz Show in 1995.

His TV work included the BBC's £4 million adaptation of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit the previous year.

Other roles which brought him fame included Alexander the Great in Adventure Story, written for him by Terence Rattigan, the whisky priest in The Power And The Glory, King Lear, Frederic in Anouilh's Ring Around The Moon, and Macbeth.

Nothing ever induced him to take part in anything unless his seasoned instinct assured him of its rightness. Although, in the early 1990s, he did make one spectacular error of judgment, with an overnight flop called Exclusive by Jeffrey Archer.

The fact that he did not enjoy parties and discouraged media contact did not mean he was reclusive in his home at Balcombe, West Sussex.

Once he said: "People always ask me what I do down there, and it seems so silly. I mean, there's everything to do. There are very good walks - I like to go walking."

He also enjoyed riding, cycling and savoured the wind and rain in his holiday home on a Scottish island.

Dame Judi Dench, who starred with Scofield in the 1989 Oscar-winning film of Henry V, directed by Kenneth Branagh, said: "He was a great friend and a great man."

Simon Callow, who played alongside Scofield in the world premiere of the play Amadeus in 1979, said he had been "one of the greatest actors in the world".

"He had a kind of extraordinary physical warmth, almost literally like being near a fire, in a way that I have almost never experienced with another actor. It was a sort of blaze," he told BBC Radio 4's The World At One.

"He had a charisma, a hypnotism, a kind of spell that he cast on an audience, which was an extraordinary thing to negotiate as a young actor.

"He was an absolutely towering actor."

Scofield leaves a widow, a son and a daughter.

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