From a sportive Falstaff for the RSC to a powerful Juan Perón in Evita, Ackland – who has died aged 95 – rarely had the star role but was a reassuring presence
Joss Ackland, who has died at the age of 95, was a fine actor: part, you might say, of the dependable backbone of the British entertainment industry. With more than 130 film and TV roles to his credit, he was constantly in work. And even if he was rarely the star – a notable exception was his performance as CS Lewis in the original 1985 TV version of Shadowlands – he was always a reassuring presence. Ackland had a gift for quiet understatement, and for exuding power and authority; those seemingly contradictory talents were visible in a quartet of superb stage performances for which I shall always remember him.
One of the hardest things for an actor to convey is a modest goodness, and Ackland did it consummately in John Osborne’s The Hotel in Amsterdam at the Royal Court in 1968. He played Gus, a film editor and one of a group of friends who flee for a weekend from a tyrannical producer. Gus, a fussy hypochondriac whose wife is being ardently pursued by a charismatic writer, was the butt of the group, but Ackland endowed him with an unforgettable calm cheerfulness.
