The actor was part of an ensemble that included John Gielgud, Dirk Bogarde and Ellen Burstyn in the enigmatic but lightweight Providence (1977), directed by Alain Resnais, and played Heydrich in the mini-series Holocaust, starring Meryl Streep. In 1975, he divorced his first wife, Harriet Lindgren, whom he had married seven years earlier the two remained friends, Warner even stepping in when her new husband’s best man dropped out at the 11th hour. He starred in Joseph Losey’s film version of A Doll’s House (1973) and the shlock horror hit The Omen (1976), in which he was memorably decapitated by a sheet of glass. By that time, Warner had retreated from the theatre after suffering stage fright in 1972 during productions of I, Claudius and David Hare’s The Great Exhibition he would not return for another 30 years. He worked with Peckinpah once more, on the second world war drama Cross of Iron (1977). “He knew I wanted to get back in front of a camera,” said Warner, who limped noticeably on screen. Peckinpah brought him out of hospital to play a man with educational difficulties in the violent thriller Straw Dogs (1971). Not until he was much older did medical tests reveal a chemical imbalance which left him prone to vertigo and panic attacks.

The mysterious circumstances of the accident gave rise to rumours of drug use.

That year, Warner broke both his feet after falling from a balcony in Rome. Photograph: Hess/ANL/ShutterstockĪfter playing Konstantin in Sidney Lumet’s film of The Seagull (1968), he starred in The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), the first of three movies for Sam Peckinpah.

It also remains the screen work that best captures Warner’s particular mix of the kooky and the volatile.ĭavid Warner as Hamlet in Peter Hall’s 1965 RSC production. The picture was every bit as trenchant a commentary on class, conformity and rebellion as better-known examples such as If… and Billy Liar. “I’ve lost the thread.” Later he dons an ape suit, imagines commuters as wild animals and ends the film in a mental institution where he is last seen tending a flower-bed in the shape of a hammer and sickle. “You can’t count on me being civilised,” he tells his wife ( Vanessa Redgrave). He next landed the title role in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment as a daydreamer descending into apparent insanity. “I’m really a character actor, an old man actor,” he said, though he was only 24 at the time. Warner was then surprised by Hall’s invitation to play Hamlet. A dynamic BBC film of the plays, ambitiously shot with 12 cameras, reached a wide audience during its two broadcasts in 19. He was Henry VI in the RSC’s celebrated War of the Roses trilogy, which was adapted by John Barton from the three Henry plays and Richard III, and directed by Barton and Hall. He appeared as Snout in Richardson’s 1962 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was earmarked for the RSC by Hall, who saw him in Afore Night Come at the Arts Theatre. His first notable screen role was in Tony Richardson’s period romp Tom Jones (1963). He became interested in acting when he appeared in plays at school (“I was the tallest Lady Macbeth”) and eventually got a place at Rada, where one of his classmates was John Hurt, with whom he would later appear in the film version of David Halliwell’s play Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (1974). “My parents kept stealing me from each other, so I moved across England a lot.” He attended eight different boarding schools and floundered academically.

His upbringing became increasingly peripatetic. “There was no theatrical tradition but plenty of histrionics,” he remarked of them. His parents separated during his childhood. He was born in Manchester to Ada Hattersley and Herbert Warner, who owned a nursing home. I don’t want my child having a plastic baddie as a daddy.” A younger generation got the chance to boo him as a dastardly valet in the smash-hit Titanic (1997). He played Jack the Ripper in Time After Time (1979), Evil in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) and a computerised tyrant in Disney’s Tron (1982), for which he had only one stipulation for the studio: “There’s to be no doll of my character on the market. His distracted handsomeness, golden locks and formidable jaw could have made him a viable romantic lead were it not for the languid oddness that set him apart, sharpening gradually into menace as he became a popular screen villain. David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave in Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment, 1966, directed by Karel Reisz.

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