Charles Gray (actor)
| Charles Gray | |
|---|---|
Gray as Dikko Henderson in You Only Live Twice
|
|
| Born |
Donald Marshall Gray 29 August 1928 Bournemouth, Hampshire,England, UK |
| Died | 7 March 2000 (aged 71) London, England, UK |
| Other names | Oliver Gray |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1957–2000 |
Charles Gray (29 August 1928 – 7 March 2000) was an English actor who was well known for roles including the arch-villain Blofeld in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, Dikko Henderson in a previous Bond film You Only Live Twice,Sherlock Holmes's brother Mycroft Holmes in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and as the Criminologist in the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975.
Gray was born Donald Marshall Gray in Bournemouth, Hampshire, the son of Maude Elizabeth (née Marshall) and Donald Gray, who was a surveyor. Gray attended Bournemouth School alongside Benny Hill, whose school had been evacuated to the same buildings, during the Second World War. Some of his friends remember that his bedroom walls were plastered with pictures of film stars.
By his mid-twenties, Gray left his first job as a clerk for an estate agent to become an actor. He began his stage experience at the theatre club next to Bournemouth's Palace Court Hotel, where he was a last-minute cast replacement in The Beaux' Stratagem. Gray surprised everyone, including himself, with the quality of his performance.
When he moved away from Bournemouth in the late 1950s, his parents remained at the family home until their deaths. On becoming a professional actor he had to change his name, as there was already an actor named Donald Gray. He chose Charles Gray partly because Charles was the name of his maternal grandfather, partly because he had a close friend named Charles, and partly because he thought it sounded nice. For his first appearance on Broadway, in the 1961 musical Kean, he went under the name Oliver Gray.
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