- Born
- Died
- Birth nameEdmund Jeremy James Walker
- Height1.88 m
- This fair-haired, craggy-faced English character actor was born Edmund Jeremy James Walker, scion of Yorkshire landed gentry. After national service with the Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch, Kemp adopted his mother's maiden name as his stage moniker and studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He then made the rounds of repertory theatre and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Old Vic for two seasons. On the London stage from 1958, he tended to specialise in portraying military or aristocratic types. That same year, Kemp won the Carleton Hobbs Bursary award which led to a six-month contract with the BBC's Radio Drama Company.
His screen career had actually begun four years earlier but had not amounted to much until the early 60s. Kemp spent a year as PC Steele in the original cast of the long-running police series Z Cars (1962) and his consequent popularity ensured that a number of juicy (mainly military) roles came his way on both the small and the big screen: Squadron Leader Tony Shaw in the wartime POW drama Colditz (1972), the aristocratic German fighter ace Willi von Klugermann mentoring Le crépuscule des aigles (1966), the spy Colonel Kurt Von Ruger in Darling Lili (1970), Brigadier General Armin von Roon in Le souffle de la guerre (1983) (and its sequel) and General Horatio Gates in the miniseries George Washington (1984). He was also a memorably crusty Robert Picard, Patrick Stewart's conservative older brother in Family (1990).
Though once described as "a sinister-looking bloke with a smile like a razor", Kemp was a confident, natural performer with a larger-than-life personality. He was not averse to occasionally spoofing his screen personae, which he did to brilliant effect in Le prisonnier de Zenda (1979) (as Prince Michael) and in Top Secret ! (1984) (as the East German General Streck, featuring in some of the film's funniest scenes).
Jeremy Kemp retired from acting in 1998 and died after a long illness on July 19 2019 at the age of 84.- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis
- ParentsEdmund Reginald WalkerElsa May Kemp
- Towering height and broad frame
- Fair hair
- The son of an engineer, Kemp studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
- Jeremy Kemp often played Germans.
- He used his mother's maiden name Kemp as his stage surname.
- Although he played Liv Ullmann's father in Jeanne, papesse du diable (1972), he is less than four years her senior in real life.
- [on working in the US on Darling Lili (1970)] Hollywood is very old fashioned in its film-making; it hasn't exactly moved with the times. A lot of the technical and studio personnel are much older than in England and Europe, and they are inclined to regard the moderns and their film-making methods as full of what you would call 'ratbaggery.' I found working in Hollywood studios a lot more like working in a factory, somehow - there is not the same good working atmosphere as in Europe.
- I think myself - and this is the line I have taken - the actor's aim should be not to get his name above the title of the film and have the whole responsibility on his shoulders. If an actor's name is on the credits big, before the title, he is rated responsible for its failure, if any, and can become associated with disaster. I have tried not to be.
- The trouble with people is that they always like people - actors - to stay the same.
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