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John le Carré, A Murder of Quality (1962)

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The word you are looking for is an ensemble cast. You like the ensemble cast. Not found family.

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Nicole Kidman as Satine in Moulin Rouge! (2001)

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Terry Pratchett, Mort (1987)

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Michael K. Williams for the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (2010)

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‘It was the first day of shooting, or rather, rehearsal of the David Lean film, Great Expectations, and I turned up for work and on the set I met a very attractive, very slim young man called Alec Guinness and I was quite astonished. I realised right away that I was in the presence of a very remarkable actor. It was his first film and he was very nervous but he turned up with Mr Pocket intact; it was a perfect characterisation ready to be seen. And I remember going home that night, talked to Mary, and I said, “I’ve been working with a remarkable young actor today called Alec Guinness and I think he will be very soon one of our very greatest actors.”' 

- John Mills on meeting Alec Guinness, 7th August 2000

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Sally’s outfits in When Harry Met Sally (1989)

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John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1896

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I recall that once upon a time I had a quite extensive Discworld fancast thought out.

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John Laurie (1897–1980)

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Michael Gambon as Philip E. Marlow in THE SINGING DETECTIVE (1986), written by Dennis Potter

You just don’t know writers. They’ll use anything, anybody. They’ll eat their own young.

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Title cards from some classic noir movies (1940 - 1952)

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Philip Locke, the actor who has died aged 76, was a veteran of numerous productions at the Royal Court, the National Theatre and with the RSC, although he was better known to the film-going public as Vargas, the silent assassin in Thunderball (1965) who ends up impaled on a palm tree by 007’s speargun.

Tall, gaunt, balding and intense-looking, Locke was noted for his portrayals of nervy fanatics: Vargas (unlike his nemesis) “does not drink, does not smoke and does not make love”. But Locke was capable in genres from classical tragedy to light comedy. His Lear at the Young Vic (1980) reduced a Telegraph critic to tears. At the other end of the spectrum, he gave a finely-judged comic performance as the irascible Sir Roderick Glossop in Jeeves and Wooster (Granada TV, 1993).

In his autobiography, Almost a Gentleman, John Osborne described Locke as “special and reliable”, praise which, coming from such a curmudgeonly source, qualifies as almost fulsome. Osborne was particularly delighted with Locke’s performance as Father Evilgreene, who leads a Satanic dance in the playwright’s The World of Paul Slickey, a musical satire on the world of critics and gossip columnists, which was roasted by Osborne's targets after its opening in 1959.

Philip Locke was born on March 29 1928 at St Marylebone, London, and educated at St Marylebone Central School. After training at Rada, he made his professional debut with Oldham Rep in 1954 as Feste in Twelfth Night, before touring with the Old Vic as Flute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

From the late 1950s, he became a member of the ensemble at the Royal Court, taking mostly minor parts. After the late 1960s he made frequent appearances at the National Theatre and with the RSC, playing numerous Shakespearean roles, including Boyet in Love’s Labour’s Lost; Jacques in As You Like It (both 1969); Lord Stanley in Richard III (1970); Lepidus in Antony and Cleopatra (1973); Casca in Julius Caesar (1973); Junius Brutus in Coriolanus (1973); Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida (1976); and Kent in King Lear (1986).

Locke was particularly effective as a gentle and over-anxious Quince in Peter Brook’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970), and as a bespectacled, academic Horatio in Hamlet (Old Vic, 1975), for which he won a Plays and Players award for best supporting actor.

Other stage roles included the schoolmaster Medvedenko in Tony Richardson’s 1964 staging of The Seagull at the Queen’s Theatre; the English chaplain John de Stogumber in Shaw’s Saint Joan (Olivier, 1984); Mycetes, King of Persia in Tamburlaine the Great (Olivier, 1976); the Colonel in Stoppard’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Royal Festival Hall, 1977); and—his own favourite role—Gaev in The Cherry Orchard (Olivier, 1979).

In Gorky’s Enemies (Aldwych, 1971), Locke played the well-meaning but ineffectual head of a family firm at odds with his hard-line partner (Patrick Stewart) over how to deal with a workers’ revolt. In Thomas Bernhard’s poetic farce The Force of Habit (Lyttleton, 1976), he played a circus ringmaster struggling against fearful odds to bully his little troupe into playing the Trout Quintet.

His performance as Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes (Aldwych, 1974) won Locke a Tony award nomination. The Telegraph’s critic noted that the vigorous booing that greeted the character’s downfall was “a fine tribute from a grateful audience”.

Locke’s first film appearance was in a Rank B-movie, Cloak without Dagger, in 1955; in addition to Thunderball, he appeared in several Edgar Wallace productions, worked with Ronnie Barker in a film version of Porridge (1979), played Vogel in Escape to Athena (1979) and a prime minister on board a doomed ship in Fellini’s E La Nave Va (And The Ship Sailed On, 1983).

Locke’s television credits included many appearances on ABC’s Armchair Theatre, and he played the villain in numerous crime dramas, including The Avengers; Inspector Morse; Poirot; Bergerac; Minder; and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. He was an android in a Dr Who series, and the magical sage Arnold of Todi in the BBC Television version of Masefield’s Box of Delights (1984).

A private man who spent much of his time in his pyjamas, Locke died on April 19; he is survived by his companion Michael Ivan.

The Telegraph, 24 April 2004

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Are you my jolly sailor bold?