US Edition James Hazeldine, the actor who has died aged 55, learned his skills in repertory and became an accomplished performer on the stage, although he was best known as Mike "Bayleaf" Wilson in London's Burning, LWT's long-running saga of London firefighting folk.
For most of his career, Hazeldine was regarded as an "actor's actor", a solid craftsman held in high regard by colleagues and directors, but noted rather than adored by the public. Before joining "Blue Watch", he had worked steadily and conscientiously at a series of gradually improving and generally heavyweight roles - mostly on the stage.
But it was in London's Burning that Hazeldine won a popular following. He was part of the original cast in 1988, and remained with the series until 1995. Nicknamed "Bayleaf" because he played the brigade's mess manager, Hazeldine was one of the most sympathetic members of the cast. He went on to direct the series, fulfilling an ambition he had cherished since childhood.
The son of a dustman, James Hazeldine was born at Salford on May 4 1947 and grew up on a council estate. He was obsessed with films as a child, in particular with A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and East of Eden. Realising that the common factor was the director, Elia Kazan, he set his heart on becoming a director.
Hazeldine did no acting at school but, reading about his hero, he discovered that Kazan had been an actor before becoming a director, and decided to follow his example. After leaving school aged 15 following the death of his mother, he was taken on by Salford Repertory Theatre as an assistant student stage manager for £1 a week. After four months, he got to cross the stage and say "Now then . . ." in All Things Bright and Beautiful.
His next part was a more substantial one in Wesker's Chicken Soup with Barley, and he soon graduated to juvenile leads. After moving to London aged 20, he understudied at the Royal Court for some years before Peter Gill gave him his first critical success with a part in Over Gardens Out (1969).
Subsequently he appeared in, among other plays, E A Whitehead's The Foursome (Theatre Upstairs, 1971), and in John Antrobus's Crete and Sergeant Pepper (Theatre Upstairs, 1972). He portrayed a homosexual destroyed by an unacknowledged love in Peter Gill's Small Change (Royal Court, 1976), and won acclaim as the younger brother in Gill's domestic drama Kick for Touch (Cottesloe, 1983).
He played the husband opposite Cheryl Campbell in D H Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law (Hampstead Theatre, 1985), and was the eerie suspect who becomes David Suchet's murder victim in John Hopkins's psychological drama This Story of Yours (Hampstead Theatre, 1978) .
With the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played Troilus in Troilus and Cressida; John Clare in Edward Bond's The Fool; Alcibiades in Timon of Athens; and he won praise for his portrayal of Nemov in Solzhenitsin's autobiographical drama The Love Girl and the Innocent (Aldwych, 1981). On Broadway, Hazeldine played opposite Glenda Jackson, as Sam Evans, in Strange Interlude, and he was Harry Hope in Howard Davies's production of The Iceman Cometh, with Kevin Spacey.
On television, he was the first Jimmy Porter in Look Back In Anger; played a composer in Maggie Wadey's Forgotten Love Song (BBC2, 1978); appeared in LWT's Kids, a 13-part series on children in care (1979); and, in The Omega Factor (BBC1, 1979), he was a writer with an interest in the psychic world, intent on tracking down the Satanist Aleister Crowley. In Streets Apart (BBC1, 1988) he was cast as a taxi driver re-discovering his old East End flame.
Oddly, considering his early passion for films, Hazeldine's screen career started on an unhappy note with the part of Stalin in Nicholas and Alexandra (1971). He had a pleasant time being driven around Madrid in a limousine, but the script was heavy going.
Things looked up, and he played Mr Weston in Emma (1996), and took parts in Business as Usual (1988) and Pink Floyd: The Wall (1983), among other productions. But it seemed that the film world did not really excite him any more; he much preferred lower paid, but higher quality, work in the theatre. His last role on the stage was in Arthur Miller's All My Sons (2000), with Julie Walters and Catherine McCormack.
Hazeldine became ill on December 10, four days after appearing as Sigmund Freud in a preview of the new Christopher Hampton play, The Talking Cure, at the National Theatre. He died on Wednesday.
Hazeldine is survived by his wife, Rebecca, whom he married in 1971, and by a son and a daughter.