Burt Kwouk
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Burt Kwouk OBE |
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Kwouk in Last of the Summer Wine
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| Born |
Herbert Tsangtse Kwouk 郭弼 18 July 1930 Warrington, Lancashire, England |
| Died | 24 May 2016 (aged 85) Hampstead, London, England |
| Years active | 1957–2012 |
| Spouse(s) | Caroline Tebbs (m. 1961; his death 2016) |
| Children | 1 |
| Burt Kwouk | |||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 郭弼 | ||||||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Guō Bì |
| Wade–Giles | Ko1 Pi4 |
| IPA | [ku̯ó pî] |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Jyutping | Gwok3 Bat6 |
Herbert Tsangtse "Burt" Kwouk, OBE (pronounced KWOK; Chinese: 郭弼; 18 July 1930 – 24 May 2016) was a British actor, known for his role as Cato in the Pink Panther films. He made appearances in many television programmes, including a portrayal of Imperial Japanese Army Major Yamauchi in the British drama series Tenko and as Entwistle in Last of the Summer Wine.
Kwouk was born in Warrington, but was brought up in Shanghai. Between the ages of 12 and 16 he attended the Jesuit Mission School there, which he described as "the Far East equivalent of Eton". He left China in 1947 when his Chinese parents returned to Britain and was then sent to the United States to complete his education. In 1953 he graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. The Kwouk family fortune had been lost in the 1949 revolution and in 1954 he came back to Britain, where a girlfriend "nagged [him] into acting".
Kwouk made his film debut in the 1957 film Windom's Way. One of his earliest film roles was in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) where he played the leader of a prison revolt who later aids the main character in heroically leading orphans to safety. He subsequently appeared in numerous films and television programmes. He was best known for playing Cato (originally spelled "Kato") Fong, Inspector Clouseau's manservant, in the Pink Panther film series. The character was first introduced in A Shot in the Dark (1964), the second film in the series, and was a role that Kwouk would reprise on another six occasions until the 2006 series reboot. The running gag was that Cato was ordered to attack Clouseau when he least expected it to keep him alert, usually resulting in Clouseau's flat being wrecked. Amid the chaos, the phone would ring and Cato would calmly answer it with "Inspector/Chief Inspector Clouseau's residence", before dutifully handing the phone to his employer and being thumped by Clouseau.
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