Raymond Huntley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raymond Huntley
Raymond Huntley as Sir Geoffrey Dillon
Born	23 April 1904 Birmingham, Warwickshire, England
Died	19 October 1990 Los Angeles, California, United States
Notable roles	Sir Geoffrey Dillon in Upstairs, Downstairs

Raymond Huntley (23 April 1904–19 October 1990), was an English character actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s through to the 1970s.

Born in Birmingham in 1904, Huntley was often cast as supercilious bureaucrats or other authority figures, and his many film appearances included The Way Ahead, I See a Dark Stranger, Passport to Pimlico and The Dam Busters.

Huntley has been credited as the first actor to portray Dracula, but that is incorrect. Huntley was first to play the role in Hamilton Deane's stage adaptation, later revised by John L. Balderston and now the most successful stage version of Bram Stoker's novel. The very first stage performance of Dracula occurred in 1897, shortly after the novel was published; Stoker himself mounted a one-off dramatization of the novel at Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London, where Stoker was manager.

In Huntley's later years, he became well known on television as Sir Geoffery Dillon, the family solicitor to the Bellamys in LWT's popular 1970s drama series Upstairs, Downstairs.

Huntley died in Los Angeles, California, USA in 1990.

Other Films