Warren Mitchell

Encyclopedia : W : WA : WAR : Warren Mitchell

Warren Mitchell, (born 14 January 1926, Stoke Newington, London) is a British-born actor with Australian citizenship.

Best known for his role as the bigoted cockney West Ham supporter, Alf Garnett, Warren Mitchell has a long and distingushed career on stage and television. Ironically, his real life persona is quite the opposite, that of a Jewish Spurs supporter. Mitchell joined the RAF in company with his contemporary Richard Burton in 1944 and completed his navigator training just as the war ended.

Mitchell had been reading physics at University College, Oxford. Richard Burton's description of the acting profession convinced him that it would be better than completing his physics degree and so Mitchell attended RADA for two years. In 1951, Mitchell became a professional actor but his big break did not occur until 1965 with the role of Alf Garnett in a Comedy Playhouse play. This was the pilot edition of the series Till Death Us Do Part with Dandy Nichols, Una Stubbs and Anthony Booth (now Tony Blair's father-in-law).

Because Warren Mitchell is best known for his character Alf Garnett, he is somewhat typecast in this role by the media. This overshadows the fact that he is considered a highly versatile actor. He received extensive critical acclaim for his performances in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker at the National Theatre; and Pinter's The Homecoming and Miller's The Price in the West End.

Warren Mitchell suffered a stroke in August 2004 and was back on stage a week later performing in Arthur Miller's "The Price", a two-hour one-man show.

External link

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.