Sir AlanBATESFew actors of his generation could match the raw emotional power of Alan Bates who died on 27 December, 2003, aged 69.During a prolific 40 year career which began in the “kitchen sink” stage dramas of John Osborne and Harold Pinter and expanded into cinema and television, he achieved acclaim for intelligent performances of brooding menace and barely constrained inner turbulence.He is perhaps best remembered for wrestling naked in the firelight with Oliver Reed in Ken Russell’s Women in Love in 1969 - the first time audiences had seen full frontal nudity in a major studio production. It caused no little controversy at the time and is somewhat racy even by today’s standards.Alan Arthur Bates was born, the eldest of three brothers, on 17 February, 1934 in Allestree, Derbyshire. His father, an insurance salesman, played the cello and his mother the piano.His parents encouraged him to pursue a career as a concert pianist but by the age of 11, while he was a pupil at Herbert Strutt School in Belper, the young Bates had already decided to become an actor.After taking speech lessons and studying with an acting teacher he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where his contemporaries included Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole.Following two years National Service in the Royal Air Force, Sir Alan joined the Midland Theatre Company in Coventry where he made his professional stage debut in 1955.He then joined George Devine’s English Stage Company at London’s Royal Court Theatre where he made his West End debut in their first production in 1956.He shot to overnight fame later that year playing Cliff in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, a play that gave a name to a generation of post-war “angry young men.” Sir Alan made his film debut in 1960 as one of Laurence Olivier’s sons in Tony Richardson’s production of Osborne’s The Entertainer.He made a further 50 films ranging from Whistle Down the Wind (1961); Zorba the Greek (1964); Georgy Girl (1966); and The Fixer (1968) for which he received an Academy Award nomination; to the critically acclaimed Gosford Park (2001).His eclectic choice of screen parts demonstrates an almost wilful fear of being typecast and a true artist’s desire to test himself in the most challenging of roles – he seems rarely to have been motivated by commercial gain.He married Victoria Ward in 1970 and together they had twin sons, Benedick and Tristan, who died tragically, aged 19, from an asthma attack.Despite this loss and that of his wife two years later, Sir Alan continued to work constantly both as an actor and for various charities – leaving a lifetime’s work which was recognised by a CBE in 1995 and a knighthood in 2003.Perhaps his finest epitaph came from Glenda Jackson MP, Bates’ co-star in Women in Love, who said: “I just thought that, apart from being a first-rate actor, he was the most delightful person.”
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