- Born
- Died
- Birth nameDenholm Mitchell Elliott
- Height1.79 m
- Denholm Elliott was a much-loved character actor who specialized in playing slightly sleazy or slightly eccentric and often flawed upper middle class English gentlemen. His career spanned nearly 40 years, becoming a well-known face both in Britain and in the States. After being educated at the private school Malvern College, he entered RADA at the age of 17, but dropped out after a year, having hated every minute being there. He joined the RAF in 1940, trained as a gunner/radio operator, and was shot down over Germany in 1942. In the POW camp he and his fellow prisoners staged various productions in a theatre constructed out of old packing cases.
After the war he joined a London repertory company, and his career took off particularly when Laurence Olivier chose him for the starring role in Venus Observed, for which he won a Clarence Derwent award. When another Olivier production, Ring Around the Moon, transferred to New York, Elliott replaced Paul Scofield in what became a Broadway hit. Returning to Britain, he was signed to a film contract and appeared in such movies as La mer cruelle (1953) and Le mur du son (1952). In the 1960s he appeared in Un Caïd (1965) and Alfie le dragueur (1966) among others, in addition to appearing on television and making countrywide theatre tours. He won an Evening Standard Best Actor award for Nicolas Roeg's film Enquête sur une passion (1980). He won a BAFTA Best Supporting Actor Award for his role as the butler in Un fauteuil pour deux (1983) and followed it with awards for his roles in Porc royal (1984) and Raison d'état (1985), as well as receiving an Academy Award nomination for Chambre avec vue... (1985).- IMDb mini biography by: berkbuns
- SpousesSusan Robinson(June 15, 1962 - October 6, 1992) (his death, 2 children)Virginia McKenna(March 1, 1954 - June 18, 1957) (divorced)
- ChildrenMark Elliott
- ParentsMyles Laymen Farr ElliottNina Mitchell
- RelativesNeil Emerson Elliott(Sibling)
- He frequently played upper-middle-class English characters
- He frequently played well-mannered, ineffectual characters
- He frequently played alcoholics
- He frequently played cads and confidence tricksters
- He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. His plane was shot down over Germany in 1942 and he spent the rest of the War in Stalag 8B Prisoner of War camp in Silesia.
- A bisexual with many partners during his life, he tested HIV positive in 1987 and was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. He continued working until a year before he died in 1992. Following his death, some sources stated that he acquired the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion. However, his widow Susan documented their open marriage and her husband's bisexuality in her book "Denholm Elliott: Quest for Love", published two years after his death.
- Rather than recast the role of Marcus Brody in Indiana Jones et le Royaume du crâne de cristal (2008), director Steven Spielberg and writer David Koepp created a new character, Charles Stanforth, played by Jim Broadbent. The passing of Marcus Brody is acknowledged several times in the film, with a portrait of him hanging in the hallway outside Indy's classroom, a statue of him in a University courtyard, and a malt shop named "Brody's.".
- He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) but was asked to leave after one term. As Elliott later recalled: "They wrote to my mother and said, 'Much as we like the little fellow, he's wasting your money and our time. Take him away!'".
- He appeared in four films with Sean Connery: La rose et la flèche (1976), Un pont trop loin (1977), Cuba (1979) and Indiana Jones et la Dernière Croisade (1989).
- I like actors - such as Margaret Rutherford and Peter Lorre - who aren't afraid to over-act like real people. When I take a job I can always come up with ten different ways of doing the part. But I'll always choose the flashiest one. You've got to dress the window a bit.
- I'm often given parts that aren't as big as they are colorful, but people remember them. When it's a minor or supporting role, you learn to make the most of what you're given. I can make two lines seem like 'Hamlet'.
- I love my freedom and I hate the demands that are made on you. I mean the number of jobs actually that I've turned down is incredible. If I took them all and pushed and was seen in the right places and did all that nonsense, I suppose one could become a top-ranking star. I think the price is too high, quite honestly.
- [in 1974] Where I am at the moment I know that I could be - if I wished to be - a top-ranking star because I have the power and the technique, I think, to take on anyone and the only thing that has stopped me from being a top-ranking star is my desire to be - which I've never wanted. It's only recently have I achieved the weight to if I want to be. I mean I could go to Stratford and play Prospero, I could have taken a television series and built myself up and done all sorts of things but I don't. I like an anonymity and I like sort of in a sense being an amateur.
- I think you can be terribly overexposed. I've been always very careful in my career to do theatre, it takes you out of the television eye and people are glad to see you back again. I mean if you're on every week...one week last year I was on I think five times a week in different things, re-runs of films and plays and things.
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