Eric Porter

Actor

April 8, 1928 (67 years)

† May 15, 1995

Shepard's Bush, London, UK

Biography

A highly respected Shakespearean for five decades until his death of colon cancer in 1995, classical actor Eric Porter's claim to international fame would, ironically, be outside of that realm, with one superb portrayal in one superb miniseries, The Forsyte Saga(1967), in which he won the BAFTA award. The son of Richard John Porter and Phoebe Elizabeth Spall, Porter first attended Wimbledon Technical College before stepping onto the stage as a walk-on in a production of William Shakespeare's "Tw…

Filmography

6.6

Play for Today

Stanley Wilkinson

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

8.2

Sherlock Holmes

Professor Moriarty

Sherlock Holmes uses his abilities to take on cases by private clients and those that the Scotland Yard are unable to solve, along with his friend Dr. Watson.

5.3

BBC Play of the Month

Cyrano de Bergerac

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.

7.0

Playhouse

Petersham

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.

7.2

Theatre 625

'Newton'

Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.

6.3

Performance

James Player

An anthology series of various plays and dramatic performances.

8.5

The Forsyte Saga

Soames Forsyte

The Forsyte Saga is a 1967 BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's series of The Forsyte Saga novels, and its sequel trilogy A Modern Comedy. The series follows the fortunes of the upper middle class Forsyte family, and stars Eric Porter as Soames, Kenneth More as Young Jolyon and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene. It was adapted for television and produced by Donald Wilson and was originally shown in twenty-six episodes on Saturday evenings between 7 January and 1 July 1967 on BBC2, at a time when only a small proportion of the population had television sets able to receive this channel. It was therefore the repeat on Sunday evenings on BBC1 starting on 8 September 1968 that secured the programme's success with 18 million tuning in for the final episode in 1969. It was shown in the United States on public television and broadcast all over the world, and became the first BBC television series to be sold to the Soviet Union.

7.5

The Day of the Jackal

Colonel Rodin

An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.

6.8

The World of Hammer

Self (archive footage)

The World of Hammer is a thirteen-part British documentary series created and written by Robert and Ashley Sidaway for Channel 4. Initially broadcast from 12 August to 4 November 1994, the series is narrated by English actor and frequent Hammer collaborator Oliver Reed.

6.5

The Jewel in the Crown

Dimitri Bronowsky

In India, during the final years of British rule in World War II, an unjust arrest for rape sets off questions of identity and personal responsibility being explored against a background of war and personal intrigue.

N/A

Theatre Night

Vadim Romanoff

A BBC television series of forty-five-minute excerpts from stage plays running in London.

6.5

The Fall of the Roman Empire

Julianus

In the year 180 A.D. Germanic tribes are about to invade the Roman empire from the north. In the midst of this crisis ailing emperor Marcus Aurelius has to make a decision about his successor between his son Commodus, who is obsessed by power, and the loyal general Gaius Livius.

7.0

Anna Karenina

Karenin

Anna Karenina was a 1977 BBC television adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel & tragic story of the love affair between Vronsky, a Russian Count and Anna Karenina, a married upper class woman. Nicola Pagett takes the role of Anna, a young woman who is married to a man twenty years her senior (Eric Porter), and who begins a passionate affair with the handsome Count Vronsky (Stuart Wilson). When she falls pregnant, Anna decides to dissolve her marriage and wed Vronsky, but true happiness proves elusive.

8.0

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Professor Moriarty

In the second series of the widely celebrated ITV detective programme, Dr John Watson finds a mystery in an empty house, while Holmes and he later solve the mysteries of an abbey grange, the Musgrave ritual, a second stain, a man with a twisted lip, the priory school, and a half-dozen plaster busts of Bonaparte.

8.2

Civilisation

Macbeth (voice)

Sir Kenneth Clark guides us through the ages exploring the glorious rise of civilisation in western man. Beginning with the bleakness of the dark ages to the present day, we consider civilisation's articulations and expressions in some of man's finest works of art.

6.3

Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years

Neville Chamberlain

Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years is an 8-part 1981 drama serial based on the life of Winston Churchill, and particularly his years in enforced exile from political position during the 1920s and 30s. It was written and directed by Ferdinand Fairfax and Churchill was played by Robert Hardy. Hardy's brilliant performance as Churchill won critical acclaim and a BAFTA award in 1982. He reprised the role in The Sittaford Mystery, Bomber Harris and War and Remembrance and at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II in 1995 when he quoted a number of Churchill's wartime speeches in character.

5.9

Oliver Twist

Fagin

When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.

7.3

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Mr. Havisham

Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.

6.9

The Heroes of Telemark

Terboven

Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.

7.0

Nicholas and Alexandra

Stolypin

Tsar Nicholas II, the inept last monarch of Russia, insensitive to the needs of his people, is overthrown and exiled to Siberia with his family.