The great British classical stage Tony Award winning actor Brian Bedford who was a star on and off-Broadway for years, has died at the age of 80. He was a protégé of John Gielgud and a theater-school classmate of Alan Bates, Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole, but because he performed only occasionally in movies and on television he never shared their celebrity.
A regular fixture on the NY stage since the 1960’s after making the US his home, he specialized in playing princes, kings, fops and faded aristocrats of Shakespeare, Molière and Chekhov. However even with this fine body of work, he will probably most fondly remembered for his last performance on Broadway in 2011 in which he played Lady Bracknell in drag in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” (which he also directed) and which won him his 7th Tony Best Actor Nomination. Watch this clip of him superbly filling the shoes of the late Dame Edith Evans as Lady B.
Brian Bedford is survived by his partner of 30 years, the actor Tim MacDonald whom he married in 2013.
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| Brian Bedford & Tim MacDonald |
Brian Bedford (16 February 1935 – 13 January 2016)
