Seasoned stage and TV actor who also gave voice to Pathé newsreels and countless television adverts
Although he was a ubiquitous face on television and a seasoned stage actor, David de Keyser was more widely, if anonymously, known for his honeyed, dark caramel voice, heard narrating Pathé Pictorial cinema newsreels throughout the 1960s and, later on, countless television adverts.
Born in Islington, London, De Keyser began acting in the late 1940s and by the middle of the next decade was appearing alongside Paul Robeson in The Power and the Glory and as Guildenstern to Paul Scofield’s Hamlet, both for director Peter Brook, at the Phoenix Theatre. By then, his parallel career as a director had taken him into the West End with Bernard Kops’ Change for the Angel at the Arts in 1960.
As his screen career blossomed, theatre took a relative backseat, although success in Tom Kempinski’s Duet for One with Frances de la Tour at the Bush and then Duke of York’s in 1980 sparked a long Indian summer on stage.
He was seen with Adam Faith in the thriller Down an Alley Filled with Cats (Mermaid, 1985), in David Mamet’s Prairie du Chien and The Shawl (Royal Court, 1986), with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Arthur Miller’s The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1986) and at the Albery in Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife in 1987.
A run of West End appearances followed, including Ronald Harwood’s Another Time with Albert Finney, Janet Suzman and Sara Kestelman (Wyndham’s, 1989), James Saunders’ Making It Better (Criterion, 1992) and the Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick musical She Loves Me (Savoy, 1994).
De Keyser played the doctor to Henry Goodman’s Sigmund Freud in Terry Johnson’s Hysteria (Royal Court, 1993) and appeared in Wallace Shawn’s The Designated Mourner, directed by David Hare at the National Theatre in 1996. The same year, The Stage described his Shylock at the Sheffield Crucible as “a performance of immense authority”, later applauding his “consummate comic timing and bravado” as Horace J Fletcher in Strike Up the Band at London’s Barbican in 1998.
Later theatre included the Father in The Diary of Anne Frank (Wolverhampton Grand, 2000) and Gore Vidal’s Live from Golgotha (Drill Hall, 2002). On radio he will be best remembered for locking antlers with Tracy-Ann Oberman’s titular The Attractive Young Rabbi in Barry Grossman’s comedy serial for three seasons from 1999.
Amassing more than 130 screen credits, De Keyser’s television appearances ranged from Armchair Theatre, Doctor Who and Silent Witness to The House of Eliott. His small-screen swansong, in 2016, was in Lucky Man, starring James Nesbitt. On film, he was seen in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), with Barbra Streisand in Yentl, and in Ian McEwan’s The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983). He also appeared as Mandelstam in the 2008 film version of CP Taylor’s Good.
Rafael David de Keyser was born on August 22, 1927, and died on February 20, aged 93. He is survived by his theatre producer son, Tom, and a daughter, Pia, a barrister. Another son, Alexei, also a television producer, died aged 36 in 2004.
Invest in The Stage today with a subscription starting at just £5.99