Clive Revill

Clive Revill
Revill as Fagin from the 1963 Broadway production of Oliver!
Born	Clive Selsby Revill (1930-04-18) 18 April 1930 Wellington, New Zealand
Occupation	actor, singer
Years active	1955-present

Clive Selsby Revill (born 18 April 1930) is a New Zealand-born character actor best known for his performances in musical theatre and on the London stage.

Early life and stage career

Revill was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Eleanor May (née Neel) and Malet Barford Revill. He attended Rongotai College. He originally trained to be an accountant in New Zealand, but decided to change his career path in 1950 when he made his stage debut as Sebastian in Twelfth Night. He then moved to England, where he appeared in The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company's celebrated 1956–1958 season of productions in Stratford, which included Hamlet, Love's Labour's Lost, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and The Tempest. He went on to have such varied stage roles as Ratty in Toad of Toad Hall and Jean-Paul Marat in Marat/Sade.

He made his Broadway debut in 1952, playing Mr. Pickwick in The Pickwick Papers, and subsequently appeared in Irma La Douce, The Incomparable Max and Oliver!, for which his Fagin was nominated for a Tony Award. He is also known for his roles in the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, on both stage and television. He starred in the first national tour of the musical Drood, replacing George Rose, who was murdered during the run.

He also participated in the workshop production of Tom Jones: The Musical, playing the role of Squire Western and reprising it on the cast recording.

Film career

His red hair and distinctive Mr. Punch-like features often saw him cast as comic eccentrics in a number of British films of the 1960s and 1970s such as Kaleidoscope (1966), Modesty Blaise (1966), Fathom (1967), The Assassination Bureau (1969) and One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975). He also had notable supporting turns in Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) opposite Laurence Olivier, Mack the Knife (1989), and his American film debut A Fine Madness (1966), as well as a rare leading role in the horror film The Legend of Hell House (1973).

He was often cast as humorous foreign characters (he has played everything from Chinese to Russian). Two of his highest profile roles of this kind were in two films for Billy Wilder: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and Avanti! (1972), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his part as put-upon hotel manager Carlo Carlucci.

Television career

In the 1978 television miniseries Centennial, he played the Scottish accountant Finlay Perkin. He played both Ko-Ko (the starring role) in The Mikado, and the title character, John Wellington Wells, in The Sorcerer for the Brent Walker television series of Gilbert and Sullivan productions, shown by the BBC in 1983.

After relocating to the United States, he guest-starred in many television series, such as Columbo, Hart to Hart, Wizards and Warriors, Dynasty, Magnum, P.I., The Love Boat, Remington Steele, Murder, She Wrote, Babylon 5, The Feather and Father Gang, Newhart, MacGyver, Dear John, The Fall Guy, Maude, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He starred as the wizard Vector in the short-lived cult series Wizards and Warriors. He voiced Alfred Pennyworth in the first three episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.

Voice work

He is also known for his voice work, which includes the voice of Emperor Palpatine in the original 1980 version of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (he was later replaced by Ian McDiarmid in the 2004 DVD version for continuity's sake, though Revill is still credited), numerous cartoons such as The Transformers, Batman: The Animated Series and DuckTales and more recently video games, including Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Conquest: Frontier Wars.

Filmography

• Peter Pan's Flight (1955)
• The Headless Ghost (1959)
• Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
• Modesty Blaise (1966)
• A Fine Madness (1966)
• Kaleidoscope (1966)
• The Double Man (1967)
• Fathom (1967)
• The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968)
• Italian Secret Service (1968)
• The Assassination Bureau (1969)
• The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
• Boulevard du Rhum (1971)
• Avanti! (1972)
• The Legend of Hell House (1973)
• The Black Windmill (1974)
• Galileo (1975)
• One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975)
• Charlie Muffin (1979)
• Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
• Zorro, The Gay Blade (1981)
• Wizards and Warriors (1983)
• George Washington (1984)
• The Frog Prince (1986)
• The Transformers: The Movie (1986)
• Rumpelstiltskin (1987)
• Mack the Knife (1989)
• Jake Spanner, Private Eye (1989)
• Let Him Have It (1991)
• The Thief and the Cobbler (1993)
• Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995)
• Crime and Punishment (2002)
• Return to Never Land (2002)
• 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure (2003)
• The Jungle Book 2 (2003)

External links

• Clive Revill at the Internet Movie Database
• Clive Revill at the Internet Broadway Database
• Clive Revill at the TCM Movie Database
• Clive Revill at AllMovie
• Clive Revill at Film Reference
• Clive Revill(Aveleyman)
• Interview with Clive Revill – The Oklahoman, December, 2015.