“Would you care to run over your scene with me?”
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John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud was an English actor and theatre director. With his contemporaries Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and Ralph Richardson, he made up a quartet of male actors who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, his career spanned eight decades, and gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyll…
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entertainment · English actor and theatre director (1904–2000) · theatre director · stage actor · film actor · television actor · film director · art collector · actor · director · musician · performing artist · also John Gielgud, Sir John Gielgud, John Gielguld, Gielgud
Born 14 April 1904 · Died 21 May 2000 · Q204685
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2026· 2 entries
“I am surprised that the audience did not throw things at me.”
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2000· 4 entries
Died 2000-05-21.
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Had a non-speaking role alongside Pinter in a film of Beckett's short play Catastrophe directed by David Mamet
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“I feel so sorry for those poor men sitting up there all day. They must be so cold.”
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“I'm sure there isn't an after-life. If there were, Ivor Novello would have got a message to us.”
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1994· 3 entries
Awarded Praemium Imperiale (1994).
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"I was stupid enough to toss my head and stick to the stage while watching Larry and Ralph sign lucrative Korda contracts
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The Globe Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue was renamed the Gielgud Theatre
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1991· 1 entry
Awarded Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for Summer's Lease (1991).
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1990· 1 entry
Gielgud made his last film appearance in a leading role, playing Prospero in Prospero's Books, Peter Greenaway's adaptation of The Tempest
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1982· 1 entry
Awarded Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Arthur (1982).
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1980· 1 entry
Awarded honorary doctorate presented by The Open University (1980).
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1975· 1 entry
Awarded BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Murder on the Orient Express (1975).
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1974· 1 entry
As the Old Cardinal in Joseph Losey's Galileo and the manservant Beddoes in Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express
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1970· 1 entry
Gielgud played another modern role in which he had great success; he joined Ralph Richardson at the Royal Court in Chelsea in David Storey's Home
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1967· 1 entry
When Olivier, with whom he was to co-star at the National Theatre in The Pretenders, was ill
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1964· 1 entry
Gielgud directed Burton in Hamlet on Broadway
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1962· 1 entry
Gielgud met Martin Hensler (1932–99), an interior designer exiled from Hungary
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1961· 1 entry
Awarded Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play (1961).
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1959· 1 entry
And an audio recording in 1979 received a Grammy Award
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1957· 1 entry
But Gielgud was not in tune with the new wave of writers
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1956· 1 entry
Which was dismissed by the critics as old-fashioned, though it ran for more than a year
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1955· 2 entries
Was much better received; in The Manchester Guardian, Philip Hope-Wallace called it "Shakespearean comedy for once perfectly realised"
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Gielgud made his second appearance in a film of Shakespeare, portraying Clarence in Olivier's Richard III
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1953· 3 entries
Gielgud took over management of the Lyric, Hammersmith, for a classical season of Richard II, Congreve's The Way of the World, and Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd, directing the first, acting in the last, and doing both
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And the Gielgud Theatre was named after him in 1994
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Gielgud made his first Hollywood film, the sole classical actor in Joseph L
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1952· 1 entry
Was much less successful, with poor notices for the star and worse ones for the director
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1949· 1 entry
When he was brought in at the last moment to direct Richardson and Ashcroft, saving what seemed a doomed production; it ran for 644 performances
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1944· 1 entry
Was approached by Ralph Richardson, who had been asked by the governors of the Old Vic to form a new company
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1940· 1 entry
As Disraeli in Thorold Dickinson's The Prime Minister
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1939· 1 entry
Gielgud devoted two pages to describing the things about filming that he detested
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1934· 1 entry
Gielgud returned to Hamlet in London and on tour, directing and playing the title role
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1932· 2 entries
Starred in Richard of Bordeaux by Elizabeth MacKintosh
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Gielgud turned to directing
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1929· 1 entry
Harcourt Williams, newly appointed as director of productions at the Old Vic, invited Gielgud to join the company for the forthcoming season
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1928· 2 entries
Made his second film, The Clue of the New Pin
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Gielgud made his Broadway debut as the Grand Duke Alexander in Alfred Neumann's The Patriot
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1926· 1 entry
The producer Basil Dean offered Gielgud the lead role of Lewis Dodd in The Constant Nymph, a dramatisation of Margaret Kennedy's best-selling novel of the same name
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1925· 1 entry
Studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1925).
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1924· 1 entry
And had successes with The Good Companions (1933) and Julius Caesar (1953), he did not begin a regular film career until his sixties
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1922· 1 entry
His cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry invited him to tour in J
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1921· 2 entries
Gielgud persuaded his reluctant parents to let him take drama lessons on the understanding that if he was not self-supporting by the age of twenty-five he would seek an office post
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Studied at Westminster School (1917–1921).
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1912· 1 entry
Aged eight, Gielgud went to Hillside preparatory school in Surrey as his elder brothers had done
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1904· 1 entry
Born 1904-04-14.
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