David Warner, a talented British actor who played roles in sci-fi cult classics as well as tragedies by Shakespeare, has passed away. He was 80.
Warner’s family reported that he passed away on Sunday at Denville Hall, a retirement facility for entertainers in London, from a cancer-related illness.
Warner, who was frequently cast as the bad guy, appeared in the films “Titanic,” “The Omen,” “Time After Time,” and the horror classic “The Omen” as the evil valet Spicer Lovejoy. He also played Jack the Ripper in the 1979 time-travel adventure “Time After Time.”
Warner, a youthful star of the Royal Shakespeare Company who received his training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, has played parts such as King Henry VI and King Richard II. One of the best of his generation, he gave one of the company’s performances of “Hamlet” in 1965, under the direction of Peter Hall.
Warner’s Hamlet, who was portrayed as a troubled student, “seemed the embodiment of 1960’s youth, and caught the radical spirit of a turbulent age,” according to Gregor Doran, artistic director emeritus of the RSC.
Warner appeared alongside Helen Mirren and Diana Rigg in Hall’s 1968 adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Despite his success as a theatrical actor, Warner spent many years preferring film and TV work due to his persistent stage fear.
In the 1966 film “Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment,” directed by Karel Reisz and starring as the titular character, he was nominated for a British Academy Film Award. For his performance as Roman politician Pomponius Falco in the 1981 TV miniseries “Masada,” he later received an Emmy nomination.
In both Britain and the United States, he had a successful career in film and television. He gained popularity among sci-fi enthusiasts for his parts in Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes” adaptation, Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits,” “Tron,” and the “Star Trek” series, where he appeared in a variety of characters.
