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Actor

1933-01-10 · Ealing, London, England, UK · Male

26 series in the catalog

Anthony Rodgers (10 January 1933 – 1 December 2007) was an English actor and occasional director. He performed on stage, in film, in television dramas and sitcoms. He starred in several sitcoms, including Fresh Fields (ITV, 1984–1986), its sequel French Fields (ITV, 1989–1991), and May to December (BBC, 1989–1994).

In the 1960s and early 1970s, he appeared in many of the Lew Grade Incorporated Television Company classics. He was the memorable villain in the 1968 episode "One of Our Aircraft Is Empty" in the spy-fi Department S.

He also appeared in films, including Scrooge (1970) The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988).

Early life and career

Rodgers was born on 10 January 1933 in London, the son of William Robert Rodgers and Leonore Victoria (née Wood). His early education was at Westminster City School. The family was evacuated to Wisbech, Isle of Ely, during the war, where his father worked for Balding and Mansell, printers of ration books, permits and passes; Rodgers is sometimes erroneously reported as having been born in Wisbech. Later, he was educated at the Italia Conti Academy and LAMDA.

He appeared on stage from the age of 14. He was known for his television performances, specifically his long-running roles in the television sitcoms Fresh Fields in the 1980s and May to December from 1989 to 1994.

He also had a long career both on stage and in film. His stage roles ranged from contemporary comedy and satirical farce to Restoration comedy, Ibsen, Shaw and Wilde and Peter Nichols. He appeared in films such as The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Scrooge (1970, in which he performed the Academy Award-nominated Best Original Song "Thank You Very Much"), The Day of the Jackal (1973), and The Fourth Protocol (1987). He also narrated the children's animated TV series Old Bear Stories, and appeared as Andre, the comically corrupt French policeman who aided Michael Caine in his romantic and financial schemes in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

He narrated three programmes for the railway video production company Video 125

Personal life

Rodgers married Morna Watson, a ballet dancer, in Kensington in 1959, having a son and a daughter and later divorcing. Rodgers's second wife was the actress Elizabeth Garvie; they frequently appeared on stage together and toured giving readings from the works of Jane Austen and Robert Browning, among others.

He was a patron of the Angles Theatre, Wisbech.

Rodgers died in Reading, Berkshire on 1 December 2007, aged 74. At the time of his death, he was a resident of Whitchurch-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

Theatre

Rodgers made his first West End appearance in 1947, aged 14, in Carmen at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He followed this in same year with a tour of an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations playing Pip, and the title role in a revival of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy which toured the UK in 1948. After repertory experience at Birmingham, Northampton and Hornchurch, he trained at LAMDA.

Returning to London in November 1957, he joined the cast of The Boy Friend at Wyndham's Theatre. Thereafter, his credits include:

Voice

HST West (1986) & Far West (1990) – Narrator

HST Great West (1993) – Narrator

Old Bear Stories (1993–1997) – Narrator, Old Bear, Bramwell Brown, Little Bear, Rabbit and many others (41 episode)

Brambly Hedge (1997–1998) – Lord Woodmouse (2 episodes)

Wide-Eye (2003) – Wide-Eye, Great Grandma Toad and Father Natterjack (2 episodes)

The Paz Show (2005) – Pappy (15 episodes)

Anton Rodgers at the Internet Broadway Database

Obituary in The Times, 4 December 2007

Newley, Patrick (3 December 2007). "Actor Anton Rodgers dies". The Stage. Archived from the original on 11 June 2011. Retrieved 3 December 2007.