Joss Ackland (1928-2023)

[Wowbagger]

I was astonished to learn that he died today. I thought he had been dead about 30 years. One of my mother's favourite actors and she has been dead 19 years. He was born on 29th February, so Wikipedia tells me. If ever he appeared on the screen she would say "Oh look! It's Joss Ackland!" I think she must have had a crush on him.

I can't remember any parts he played although Jan has just said "Didn't he play Uncle Jolyon?" I've no idea who Uncle Jolyon was.

[andrewc]

A very good actor.  I remember him in Tinker Tailor, Sherlock Holmes, White Mischief, a Pet Shop Boys video & something awful with Patsy Kensit.


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/19/from-white-mischief-to-bill-ted-joss-ackland-was-an-actor-of-rare-class-range-and-pathos

[spesh]

A look through Ackland's filmography suggests that he didn't play anyone called Jolyon.

Googling for Uncle Jolyon brings up Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga - and my best guess is that he was the eldest brother of the old Forsytes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forsyte_Saga#Main_characters

Getting back to Joss Ackland, when I think of him, I tend to think of the hapless Soviet Ambassador in The Hunt For Red October, having to explain to the US National Security Advisor that yes, they've lost another submarine...

A very good actor.  I remember him in Tinker Tailor, Sherlock Holmes, White Mischief, a Pet Shop Boys video & something awful with Patsy Kensit.

Ah yes, he was purveyor of the worst Seth Effrikan accent ever in Lethal Weapon 2.

[Wowbagger]

Re Uncle Jolyon, I think my wife was misremembering, but its the sort of thing he would have played. When I was young - probably about 8 years old* - the Forsyte Saga was interminably broadcast on a Sunday evening and my mother was utterly hooked on it. It was an early lesson to me in the evils of television because Sunday evenings were utterly dull. I think it went a long way towards influencing my antipathy to anything screened that required a lot of time and concentration.

*It was broadcast in 1967, so I would have been 12 or 13. It was still interminably dull.

[Mr Larrington]

The “something awful with Patsy Kensit” was one of the Lethal Weapon films.  Ackland played a villainous South African who was fond of claiming “diblomatic immunity” in a tirrible iccent whenever the polis tried to arrest him.

[Tim Hall]

He was the voice of God in the BBC Radio version of The Little World of Don Camillo.

[citoyen]

A very good actor.  I remember him in Tinker Tailor, Sherlock Holmes, White Mischief, a Pet Shop Boys video & something awful with Patsy Kensit.


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/19/from-white-mischief-to-bill-ted-joss-ackland-was-an-actor-of-rare-class-range-and-pathos

The Pet Shop Boys vid is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of him…

https://youtu.be/wDe60CbIagg?si=9JpctTS70ULBkWG5

[FifeingEejit]

That is itself an excerpt from "It couldn't happen here"

IIRC (and probably not)
Go Go
You've gone away
<something I've forgotten>

[MattH]

If you watch the "It couldn't happen here" film then the "Always on my mind" video makes more sense. Or at least as much sense as anything in that film makes. The film does feature him several times, including a scene as a blind priest trying to find the schoolboys he's taken on a trip to the seaside inside a theatre where nuns are doing a risque dance to "It's a sin" whilst a biker gang are in there with a bike.
Worth watching if only for the "what on earth did I just watch?" factor.

[T42]

First saw him playing Stevens in the BBC's excellent Kipling series, with Barbara Murray as Lucy Hawksbie.  He was slimmer then.  Judging from the way he went later I'm surprised he wasn't dead years ago. Tough stuff he was made of.  I didn't much like the film parts he got in later life, he seemed to be cast mostly as 'fat villainous slob with foreign accent'.

[Duckfoot1606]

I think the ‘something awful with Patsy Kensit’ was one of the Lethal Weapon movies where they gave him a shocking Sith Ifrican accent

A

[Peter]

Hmm his accent should have been ok - he lived in Cape Town for a while.

I always enjoyed his performances.  He didn't so much chew the scenery as swallow it whole.  The Sherlock Holmes story people cite is The Copper Beeches, in which he is creepy and subsequently violent.  My most vivid memory was of him playing a closet politburo paedophile in the TV Film Citizen X about the hunt for the serial killer Chikitilo, in the USSR. 

[spesh]

Hmm his accent should have been ok - he lived in Cape Town for a while.

I always enjoyed his performances.  He didn't so much chew the scenery as swallow it whole.  The Sherlock Holmes story people cite is The Copper Beeches, in which he is creepy and subsequently violent.  My most vivid memory was of him playing a closet politburo paedophile in the TV Film Citizen X about the hunt for the serial killer Chikitilo, in the USSR. 

That's the other Soviet role that came to my mind.

And on that theme, Mikhail Gorbachev in his later years was starting to look more and more like Joss Ackland - were they ever seen in the same room together?

[Peter]

Fool!

[citoyen]

That is itself an excerpt from "It couldn't happen here"

Ah yes, I vaguely recall now you mention it - never seen it though.

If you watch the "It couldn't happen here" film then the "Always on my mind" video makes more sense... Worth watching if only for the "what on earth did I just watch?" factor.

I shall seek it out!

[rogerzilla]

He was also Chuck de Nomolos in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey".  He gets Melvinned.