Eric Porter

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Eric Porter (April 8, 1928 - May 15, 1995) was a distinguished English actor who appeared on stage as well as in cinema and television.

Porter was born in London and educated at Wimbledon Technical College before making his stage debut in Cambridge at the age of seventeen. In 1955, he played the title role in Ben Jonson's Volpone at the Bristol Old Vic. In 1960 he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Porter's greatest success was as the tortured solicitor Soames Forsyte in the BBC dramatisation of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga (1967). For this role he won a BAFTA Best Actor award.

Eric Porter was a leading member of Peter Hall's company at Stratford during the 1960s, where his roles included Ulysses, Macbeth, Leontes, Malvolio, Shylock, Lear, Bolingbroke and Henry IV, as well as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. On January 17, 2007, Peter O'Toole was interviewed on the Charlie Rose Show and was asked by Rose which actor had influenced him the most, and O'Toole replied: "Eric Porter."

He was a versatile actor who played memorable roles in television dramas such as Jewel in the Crown, Fagin in the 1985 BBC version of Oliver Twist and as Professor Moriarty opposite Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes in Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes stories The Red-Headed League and The Final Problem (both 1985). He also played Polonius in a 1980 television production of Hamlet, made as part of the BBC Shakespeare series, and starring Derek Jacobi in the title role.

Porter continued to act on stage, winning the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor in 1988 for his role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

He died of colon cancer in London.