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Charles Kimbrough, the Emmy-nominated actor best known for his splendid decade-long portrayal of staid network anchor Jim Dial on Murphy Brown, has died. He was 86.

Kimbrough died Jan. 11 in Culver City, his son, John Kimbrough, told The New York Times.

A veteran of the stage, Kimbrough received a Tony Award nomination in 1971 for best featured actor in a musical for playing Harry in the original production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. He then appeared as two characters in another acclaimed Sondheim musical, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sunday in the Park With George, which debuted in 1984.

Kimbrough also starred in 1995 in the original off-Broadway production of the A.R. Gurney comedy Sylvia opposite Sarah Jessica Parker and appeared on the Great White Way in Candide, Same Time, Next Year, Accent on Youth, Hay Fever, The Merchant of Venice and, most recently, with Jim Parsons in a 2012 revival of Harvey.

The Minnesota native also...

Stage and screen actor known for playing battle-axe aunts, village gossips and servants

When Mel Brooks visited the film set of Up at the Villa (2000), in which his wife, Anne Bancroft, was starring, he proclaimed Barbara Hicks, who has died aged 89, the funniest woman he had ever met. This stalwart character actor, always lodged some way down any cast list as if to prove the truth of Stanislavski's dictum that there are no small parts, only small actors, was a fund of stories, many of them unprintable. And Hicks, though slight of build, with a long face and asymmetrical features, was certainly not a small actor.

As another admirer, Alan Bennett, once told her wistfully: "When you go, Barbara, there'll be a terrible hole in Spotlight." And so there is, for since first appearing on television in 1962 playing Miss Print, a comedy sidekick to Richard Hearne's popular Mr Pastry,...

Dan Stevens, who plays Matthew Crawley on the PBS series "Downton Abbey," will make his Broadway debut in a revival of "The Heiress," with Jessica Chastain and David Strathairn. Stevens has appeared on the stage in London in David Leveaux’s 2009 West End production of Tom Stoppard’s "Arcadia," André Previn’s "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour" at the National Theatre in 2009 and Noel Coward's "Hay Fever" in 2006 at the Royal Haymarket Theatre. Also read: Zooey Deschanel Signs on for 'Coal Miner's Daughter' Musical He also played Orlando opposite Rebecca Hall in Peter Hall's...

The actor, 50, on the government, Hollywood, and skylarks

Because of the parts I've played – Mr Knightley in Emma, Ivor Novello in Gosford Park – people probably think I'm a toff, a public schoolboy and a Conservative voter. None of which I am.

My dad was an academic and the things that were valued in our household were conversation, sharing, books, music. We didn't have money and my folks had to be cautious people, so there was a sense of sharing and fairness among the family. It was a very warm upbringing.

I don't know much about that world of the aristocrat. But the business is what the business is and if you do something well you're liable to be hired for the same thing next time. Part of turning 50 for me is going, fine, if you want to put me in a dinner jacket I might as well go with it.

After sitcoms and serious drama, Olivia Colman is about to start West End rehearsals in a Noel Coward classic

Tomorrow morning, Olivia Colman is alarmed to remind herself, she is due at the first rehearsal for a West End play. "It is Hay Fever by Noël Coward. And I am very nervous about going back on the stage. I am playing Myra, or Myrna, is it?"

Colman will be appearing alongside Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Northam, David Haig and Freddie Fox, but the list of illustrious co-stars does not help. "I used to do stage all the time, but it has been such a long time. I feel they are all going to be shaking their heads soon enough, saying to each other, 'I can see we are going to have to carry this one.'"

The 37-year-old has applied her subversive wit to a wide selection of critically acclaimed television comedies over the past decade,...

Even by the colourful standards of her own family's public profile and professional achievements, Lynn Redgrave, who has died of breast cancer aged 67, was an exceptional personality. Her death seems particularly cruel after the loss of both her niece, Natasha Richardson, after a skiing accident last year, and her brother, Corin Redgrave, last month. The third child of the actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Lynn was a gifted comedian who received her first Oscar nomination for a delightful, clownish performance in the title role of Georgy Girl (1966), one of the defining movies of the so-called swinging 60s. She went on to spend many years living and working in America. Less politically engaged than her older siblings, Vanessa and Corin, she was no less a remarkable talent.

Her 1991 television remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? with...

Lynn Redgrave, who shot to international fame for her performance as a free-spirited bird in 1966's "Georgy Girl," died Sunday at her home in Connecticut after a battle with breast cancer. She was 67.

Redgrave's turn as a chubby, childlike Londoner pursued by her father's middle-aged boss (James Mason) won her an Oscar nomination for best actress and the New York Film Critics Circle Award. She garnered another Academy Award nomination for supporting actress in "Gods and Monsters" (1998), playing a testy housekeeper.

Redgrave hailed from a venerable theatrical family. She was the younger sister of actress Vanessa Redgrave and actor Corin Redgrave and the daughter of Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson.

Her death comes a year after her niece Natasha Richardson died from head injuries sustained in a skiing accident and just a month after the death of Corin. Redgrave was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2002, had a mastectomy in January 2003 and underwent chemotherapy.

Director Len Wiseman and actress Kate Beckinsale attend the opening of the exhibition "Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward" presented by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences at the Academy’s Fourth Floor Gallery in Beverly Hills on Friday, January 22, 2010. The Noel Coward exhibition runs until Sunday, April 18. Admission is free. Among Coward’s stage classics are Hay Fever, Private Lives, Cavalcade, Design for Living, Blithe Spirit, and the operetta Bitter Sweet. His compositions include “I’ll See You Again,” “Mad About the Boy” and “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.” The exhibition also covers Coward’s friendships with many of the 20th century’s top artists and [...]...

Noel Coward with Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Boom! (top); with Marlene Dietrich, 1937 (bottom) Noel Coward — playwright, composer, director, actor, (purported) spy, nationalist, propagandist, semi-closeted gay guy — is the subject of an exhibition currently being held at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward,” which runs until Sunday, April 18, in the Academy’s Fourth Floor Gallery in Beverly Hills. Admission is free. The son of a piano salesman, Coward became the embodiment of the affected, stiff-upper-lip, upper-class Englishman. Among his stage classics are Hay Fever, Private Lives, Cavalcade, Design for Living, Blithe Spirit, and the operetta Bitter Sweet. His compositions [...]...