Donald Pleasence, who breathed life into a series of odd and sinister characters ranging from the hero of the "Halloween" slasher movies to the tramp in Harold Pinter's "The Caretaker," died Thursday. He was 75.
His agent Tessa Sutherland said the actor, who had surgery to replace a heart valve shortly before Christmas, died at his home at St. Paul de Vence in the south of France."It was very unexpected. We talked to him last night, and he seemed well," Sutherland said. She did not know the cause of death.
Uncannily able to be both menacing and menaced, Pleasence began his dramatic life on the stage, later building a solid screen career with nearly 100 film roles and dozens of television productions.
Born in the central English town of Worksop, Pleasence grew up in the grimy northern industrial city of Sheffield.
At the age of 18, he left his first job as a railway station clerk, telling the station master he was off to become an actor.
Lacking any formal training, he joined one of England's many repertory companies, making his stage debut at the Playhouse, Jersey, in May 1939, with a performance as Hareton in "Wuthering Heights."
His first appearance on the London boards was as Valentine in "Twelfth Night," at the Arts theater in June 1942.
Serving with the Royal Air Force during World War II, he was shot down in 1944 and spent the last year of the war in a German prison camp. Two decades later, he was a star of the classic POW movie "The Great Escape."
After the war, he auditioned for the young director Peter Brook and got a part in a stage adaption of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" with Alec Guinness, with whom he would later star in Sartre's "Huis Clos."
In 1951, he made his New York stage debut with Laurence Olivier's company, playing in "Caesar and Cleopatra" and "Antony and Cleopatra" at the Ziegfeld theater.
Later stage performances include a season at Stratford-Upon-Avon, playing the outsiders Launcelot Gobbo in "The Merchant of Venice" and Gumio in "The Taming of the Shrew."
In 1960, he won huge critical acclaim for his performance as the wheedling and malodorous tramp Davies in "The Caretaker," winning the London Critics Award. He repeated the role to further praise on Broadway the following year. He reprised the role in London in 1991.