Alan Bates

17 February, 1934

| 1.76 m

Actor

Producer

Soundtrack

Biography

Alan Bates

Alan Bates decided to be an actor at age 11. After grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. His West End debut in 1956, at 22, was also the company's first production. In the same year Bates appeared in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger," a play that gave a name to a generation of postwar "angry young men." It made Bates a star and launched a lifetime of his performing in works written by great modern playwrights -- Harold Pinter, Simon Gray, Storey, Bennett, Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard (as well as such classic playwrights as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and William Shakespeare). Four years later Bates appeared in his first film, a classic: Music-hall (1960), in which he plays one of Laurence Olivier's sons. More than 50 film roles have followed, one of which, Żyd Jakow (1968) (from a novel by Bernard Malamud) earned an Academy Award nomination for Bates. He married Victoria Ward in 1970. Their twin sons, Benedick and Tristan, were born in 1971. Tristan died during an asthma attack in 1990; Ward died in 1992. Bates threw himself into his work to get through these tragedies, and spoke movingly about the effects of his losses in interviews. He was the Patron of the Actors Centre in Covent Garden, London; Bates and his family endowed a theatre there in memory of Tristan Bates, who, like his father and brother, was an actor. With few exceptions, Bates performed in premium works, guided by intuition rather than by box office. For each role he created a three-dimensional, unique person; there is no stereotypical Alan Bates character. Women appreciate the sensitivity he brought to his romantic roles; gay fans appreciate his well-rounded, unstereotyped gay characters; and the intelligence, humor and detail - the smile that started in the eyes, the extra pat or squeeze,...

Movies

A reserved English writer travelling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba.

The tragic life of a self-destructive female rock star who struggles to deal with the constant pressures of her career and the demands of her ruthless business manager.

Two best friends fall in love with a pair of women, but the relationships soon go in very different directions.

A tale of torrid and forbidden love between a couple in the English countryside.

Bathsheba Everdene, a willful, flirtatious young woman, unexpectedly inherits a large farm and is romantically pursued by three very different men.

Wealthy Erica Benton from Manhattan's Upper East Side struggles to deal with her new identity and her sexuality after Martin, her husband of sixteen years, leaves her for a younger woman.

Martin, an I.R.A. hitman, is seen by a Catholic priest while carrying out a hit. He grows a bond with the priest and his niece. But his past and his former employers put all their lives in danger.

Tale of a former Nazi executioner who becomes a target of hitmen and police investigators.

A traveller by the name of Crossley forces himself upon a musician and his wife in a lonely part of Devon, and uses the aboriginal magic he has learned to displace his host.