
Ian Charleson
Actor · 1949 – 1990 · Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ian Charleson (11 August 1949 – 6 January 1990) was a Scottish stage and film actor. He is best known internationally for his starring role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. He is also well known for his portrayal of Rev. Charlie Andrews in the 1982 Oscar-winning film Gandhi. Charleson was a noted actor on the British stage as well, with critically acclaimed leads in Guys and Dolls, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Fool for Love, and Hamlet, among many others. Over the course of his life Charleson performed numerous major Shakespearean roles, and the annual Ian Charleson Awards were established in his honour in 1991, to reward the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors aged under 30. The Houghton Mifflin Dictionary of Biography describes Charleson as "a leading player of charm and power" and "one of the finest British actors of his generation." Alan Bates wrote that Charleson was "definitely among the top ten actors of his age group." Ian McKellen said Charleson was "the most unmannered and unactorish of actors: always truthful, always honest." Charleson was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, and died in 1990 at the age of 40. He requested that it be announced after his death that he had died of AIDS, in order to publicize the condition. This was the first show-business death in the United Kingdom openly attributed to AIDS, and helped to promote awareness of the disease. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ian Charleson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Movies15
Movie7.6DramaHistoryIn the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.
Gandhi
1982 · 2.6K votes
Movie6.8DramaHistoryIn the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest.
Chariots of Fire
1981 · 1.1K votes
Movie6.4AdventureDramaA shipping disaster in the 19th Century has stranded a man and woman in the wilds of Africa. The lady is pregnant, and gives birth to a son in their tree house. Soon after, a family of apes stumble across the house and in the ensuing panic, both parents are killed. A female ape takes the tiny boy as a replacement for her own dead infant, and raises him as her son. Twenty years later, Captain Phillippe D'Arnot discovers the man who thinks he is an ape. Evidence in the tree house leads him to believe that he is the direct descendant of the Earl of Greystoke, and thus takes it upon himself to return the man to civilization.
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
1984 · 512 votes
Movie6.7HorrorMysteryA young opera singer is stalked by a deranged fan bent on killing the people associated with her to claim her for himself.
Opera
1987 · 543 votes
Movie6.0ComedyDramaQueen Elizabeth I visits late 1970s England to find a depressing landscape where life has changed since her time.
Jubilee
1978 · 82 votes
Movie4.7DramaHistoryVirginia Tregan returns to her home in the U.S. Deep South from a sojourn in Paris only to discover that her family plantation and its holdings have been lost. She determines to recoup her family's fortune.
MovieDramaTV MovieIvan Turgenev's comedy features an attractive woman approaching middle age. At her husband's country estate, with an admirer in constant attendance, she loses her heart (and her common sense) to her ward's handsome tutor.
Movie6.3ComedyIn the throes of a midlife crisis, a man buys a new Jaguar, and it immediately becomes his new love. What he doesn't know is that his wife is as attracted to the Jaguar salesman as he is to the car.
Car Trouble
1986 · 3 votes
Movie6.2DramaTV MovieHamlet comes home from university to find his uncle married to his mother, and his father's ghost haunting the battlements and scaring the watch. Then his father's ghost directs him to seek revenge.
Hamlet
1980 · 15 votes
Movie6.5DramaComedyHelena loves Bertram, but he's of noble birth, while she's just a doctor's daughter. But Bertram is at the court of the King of France, who is ill, and Helena has a remedy that might cure him and win her the right to marry Bertram. But does Bertram want to marry her?
All's Well That Ends Well
1981 · 4 votes
Movie4.6DramaWarAscendancy is a 1983 British film. It tells the story of a woman who is a member of the British landowning 'Ascendancy' in Ireland during World War I. Gradually, she learns about the Irish independence movement, and becomes involved with it.
Ascendancy
1983 · 10 votes
Movie7.3DramaHistoryOctavius Caesar (later renamed Augustus Caesar, son of the murdered Julius Caesar), Marc Antony, and Lepidus form the triumvirate, the three rulers of the Roman Empire. Antony, though married to Fulvia, spends his time in Egypt, living a life of decadence and conducting an affair with Queen Cleopatra. In Antony's absence, Caesar and Lepidus worry about Pompey's increasing strength.
Antony & Cleopatra
1981 · 4 votes
- Movie
Arthur is a confirmed bachelor. But when he meets Ann Mitchell his fixed attitudes are severely challenged.
- MovieMusicTV Movie
Television version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
MovieDramaWarJohnny has joined the army because he likes canoeing, but ends up in a war-torn city and is compromised into helping the enemy. However, desertion will not be a solution, and he finds himself more distressed than ever.
The Paradise Run
1976
Series12
TV5.3Talk ShowChat show hosted by Terry Wogan, featuring live studio interviews with famous and notable personalities.
Wogan
1982 · 7 votes
TV7.0DramaITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
ITV Playhouse
1967 · 3 votes
TV7.0CrimeDramaReilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatising the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th-century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.
Reilly: Ace of Spies
1983 · 25 votes
TV5.0DramaWar & PoliticsChurchill's People is a British anthology series based on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill's four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies. 26 episodes were produced by the BBC and initially broadcast from 30 December 1974 to 23 June 1975.
Churchill's People
1974 · 2 votes
TV7.5CrimeDramaCompelling crime anthology looks at some of Britain's most notorious murder trials, in which both male and female defendants stood accused of the murder of women. Presented by Robert Morley, seven hour-long dramas reconstruct sensational trials which shocked Britain, offering in-depth analyses of individuals' motives and methods.
Lady Killers
1980 · 2 votes
TV6.2DramaElderly Kate Blackwell looks back at her family's life beginning with her Scottish father Jamie McGregor's journey to South Africa to make his fortune in diamonds. The family history is littered with revenge, lust, betrayal, manipulation, and murder.
Master of the Game
1984 · 10 votes
TV7.0An anthology series of seven linked plays about the lives of people connected with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
Oxbridge Blues
1984 · 2 votes
TV6.0DramaAn anthology series of six contemporary plays from writers at relatively early stages in their careers.
Plays for Britain
1976 · 1 votes
TV9.0DramaComedyIn 1919, Major Brendan Archer arrives in Ireland to reunite with his fiancée, Angela Spencer. Unfortunately, the family home, The Majestic Hotel, is a decaying shadow of its former self, as is Angela. Puzzled by the changes, Archer's attentions are soon drawn to her lively friend, Sarah Devlin, a passionate Irish Nationalist. They fall in love, but the Major soon discovers some disturbing aspects about their relationship, which threatens to explode into violence, destruction, and murder.
Troubles
1988 · 3 votes
TV6.0War & PoliticsDuring the Cold War, a secret operative is dispatched to ferret out a suspected double agent within the KGB.
Codename: Kyril
1988 · 2 votes
TV7.7DramaAdaptation of the novel by Ernest Hemingway.
The Sun Also Rises
1984 · 3 votes
TVFriends, contemporaries and even enemies of Alexander the Great gather in a tent to tell his tale through their eyes.