| Cyril Shaps | |
|---|---|
| Born | Cyril Leonard Shaps 13 October 1923 Highbury, London, England |
| Died | 1 January 2003 (aged 79) London, England |
| Occupation | actor |
Cyril Shaps (13 October 1923 – 1 January 2003) was an English actor.
Shaps was born in Highbury, London; he was of Polish ancestry and his father was a tailor. He was a child broadcaster, providing voices for radio commercials at the age of 12. After grammar school and Army service he trained at RADA and then worked for two years as an announcer, producer and scriptwriter for Radio Netherlands. His short stature and round face then led to a steady flow of character roles in film and television for nearly five decades.
Shaps's films included bit parts in a wide range of high-profile international films, including the Academy Award Best Picture winner Lawrence of Arabia (1962), with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif (as the officer's club bartender), To Sir, with Love (1967, as neighbour Mr. Pinkus), and the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, as Dr. Bechmann). One of his showier turns came in 1994, in The Madness of King George, portraying Dr. Pepys, a royal physician obsessed with the colour of His Majesty's stool. In 2002, at the age of 79, he made his final theatrical film appearances, as a pew opener in The Importance of Being Earnest, and had a larger role as concentration camp victim Mr. Grun in another Best Picture Oscar winner, The Pianist (2002).
Television work ranged from science fiction, including multiple appearances on Doctor Who, to classic literature in the BBC serials of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and Our Mutual Friend (1998) to detective shows with appearances in Lovejoy (1993), The Saint (1966), and as Emperor Franz Joseph in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1991). He appeared in two Jim Henson Company television films, Gulliver's Travels (1996, as an elderly madman in Bedlam) and Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001, as "Bent Little Man," the peddler who sells beans to the original Jack). To Supercar fans he is well known, for he provided the voice of Professor Rudolf Popkiss in the second series.
His television appearances include Quatermass II, Danger Man, The Mask of Janus, The Spies, Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, The Saint, Out of the Unknown, Alexander the Greatest, The Rat Catchers, Man in a Suitcase, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Department S, Doctor Who (in the serials The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ambassadors of Death, Planet of the Spiders and The Androids of Tara), The Liver Birds, When the Boat Comes In, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, The Onedin Line, The Persuaders!, Porridge, The Sweeney, Wilde Alliance, The Young Ones, The Bill, Dark Season, Lovejoy, Midsomer Murders and Doctors.
He also supplied the voice of Mr. Gruber in The Adventures of Paddington Bear and Great Grandfather Frost in one episode of Animated Tales of the World.
His work for radio included a spell with the BBC Drama Repertory Company in the early 1950s. Broadcast parts (his characters were often old men and/or priests) included Firs in The Cherry Orchard, Justice Shallow in Henry the Fourth, Friar Lawrence in Romeo & Juliet, Polonius in Hamlet and Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest.