Freddie Jones

British character player, most typically in eccentric comedy roles, which he has often played in a deliberately over-the-top manner. Jones worked for years as a laboratory assistant while he dabbled in amateur dramatics on the side. A scholarship to the Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama enabled him to return to school and effect a career change. After working in repertory theater and TV, Jones was finally able to blaze his bug-eyed, roguishly endearing stuff at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

After performing in "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade" in London and New York, he recreated his role for director Peter Brook's screen version in 1966. Critical reaction was mixed, but it started Jones's film career, which would soon spread to both sides of the Atlantic. First, though, Jones was to play the TV role which clinched his appeal with the British public. He played Claudius in the Granada miniseries "The Caesars" (1968), which, though less well-known than the similar "I, Claudius" in the US, was a witty and strikingly acted telling of the machinations which led to the fall of Rome.

Subsequent TV work in England and the US has included "All Creatures Great and Small" (1975), Dennis Potter's landmark miniseries "Pennies from Heaven" (1979) and a number of adaptations of classic novels and plays ("Sweeney Todd" 1982, "Silas Marner" 1987, "Vanity Fair" 1988, "Adam Bede" 1992), for which Jones's theatrical manner and Dickensian sense of caricature have been well suited. Jones's film career has varied from "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed" (1969) to "Antony and Cleopatra" (1970), to such outlandish fare as "Dune" (1985) and "Wild at Heart" (1990). He enjoyed one of his biggest roles as an agent who assists Clint Eastwood in the otherwise mediocre "Firefox" (1982), was memorable as the cruel carnival barker who sells "The Elephant Man" (1980), and twinkled as the aging and frequently drunk journalist of Fellini's "And the Ship Sails On" (1983).