Obituaries: David Warner, British actor remembered for The Omen
01.08.2022 - 14:07
/ msn.com
David Warner, actor. Born: 29 July 1941 in Manchester. Died: 24 July 2022 in London, aged 80Cinema offered escape for David Warner when he was a child.
Literally. His unwed parents repeatedly “stole” him from each other and whisked him off to a new home. In the cinema the young Warner was safe from upheaval and trauma for a while.
Frequent changes of home meant frequent changes of school. Warner was no good at academic subjects or sports and did not readily make new friends. But he found some direction in life after being cast as Lady Macbeth in a school play.
At 17 he was accepted into Rada, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, in London. And at 24 he caused a sensation as Hamlet, with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was not Olivier, commanding the stage, but rather an awkward, indecisive young man, wearing a long scarf and the angst of a 1960s college student, while spluttering out The Bard’s prose.
Then he was cast as the male lead opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the 1966 comedy-drama Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment. Despite falling cinema attendances, this was an exciting time in British cinema, with a new realism in movies and new stars, like Terence Stamp and Peter O’Toole, far removed from the theatrical traditions of the past. But Warner was no Terence Stamp or Peter O’Toole.
Before Morgan, Warner had had a significant supporting role as the unprincipled Blifil in the Oscar-winning romp Tom Jones, with Albert Finney as Jones. Director Tony Richardson later explained his thinking. “He told me, ‘Now Albert Finney’s young and brown, he gets all the women, and what we want is somebody who doesn’t look as though he could possibly get any.