Ten Actors Who Played Sherlock Holmes Through History

THE ANGLOTOPIA MAGAZINE
April 11, 2016 By John Rabon



Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous literary character of the last 150 years, ever since he first appeared in the 1887 edition of Beeton’s Christmas Annual in “A Study in Scarlet”.  Holmes has been portrayed on stage, screen, and television over 250 times since his creation, with the first being William Gillette in a play written by himself and Holmes originator Arthur Conan Doyle.  He’s one of the most depicted characters in the world and that tends to attract some of the best in the acting profession.  Examine our own list of ten of the best Sherlock Holmes actors from the first to the most recent and let us know your own favorites in the comments.

Sherlock Holmes, a play written in four parts by Doyle and Gillette, was first performed in 1899 in New York City.  Doyle had previously tried his hand at writing a play, but little came of it until he was approached by Gillette, an American actor who even put on a deerstalker cap and a cape to convince the author to work with him.  After several films were made with various other actors in the role, Gillette tried his hand at a film adaptation of the play in 1916.  He would perform the role at least twice more in radio dramas.


BASIL RATHBONE

Appearing in his first Holmes film not long after Wortner, Rathbone starred in 1939’s adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles.  In fact, it was Rathbone’s success with the film in the United States that caused Wortner’s adaptation of the “Silver Blaze” to change its name to Murder at the Baskervilles for its American release in 1941 (despite having nothing to do with the Baskervilles).  Rathbone has played Sherlock Holmes the most times in films with a total of fifteen from 1939 to 1946.  He even made a posthumous cameo in Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective as the voice of Holmes, whose 221B Baker Street address also housed the animated protagonist.

JEREMY BRETT



Besides Wilmer, Brett is considered by many to be one of the best television actors to play Holmes, having done so in four series running for more than a decade from 1983 to 1994.  During that time, Brett also performed in a stage show titled The Secrets of Sherlock Holmes from 1988 to 1989.  Brett described Holmes as “the hardest part I have ever played—harder than Hamlet or Macbeth”, and despite fears of typecasting, he appeared 41 times as the detective before ill health caused him to retire from acting, passing away only months after his final episode aired.  Brett’s performance developed many personality ticks for the character from his laughter to his hand gestures as the actor wanted to bring more passion to what appeared to him to be an obsessive and depressive character.  Cementing his reputation as Holmes, Brett won a poll in 2014 of the best Holmes actors, beating out the next three, more-recent, entries.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

With Holmes back in film, it wasn’t long before the detective returned to television as well, this time with an adaptation brought into the present day courtesy of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.  Moffat was auditioning for Holmes and Doctor Who at the same time, and ended up casting two men who would become world-famous for their portrayals, Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Matt Smith as the Doctor. Alongside Martin Freeman as John Watson, Cumberbatch’s performance is the opposite of Downey’s, embracing the character’s nature as a “high-functioning sociopath”.  While Cumberbatch had been acting for some time before Sherlock, his portrayal has made him a household name and led to other projects such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Imitation Game, and this year’s Doctor Strange. 

MORE... http://www.anglotopia.net/british-entertainment/brit-tv/ten-actors-played-sherlock-holmes-history/

Martin Clunes: My family values

THE GUARDIAN
Camilla Palmer
The Guardian, Friday 28 March 2014 09.00 EDT


Martin Clunes: 'There’s no preparation for having children, and as soon as Emily was born, I adored it.' Photograph: Richard Saker for the Guardian

My earliest memory is a picnic in the park near our house, which was next to Wimbledon Common. Why on earth we went to a park when we lived so near the common is a mystery, but it had formal gardens and lawns – perhaps it was that very difference that took my parents there. As a child, I remember being parked outside pubs with a bottle of pop and a packet of crisps and left to wait for the grownups. Later on, Wimbledon Common was my stamping ground – riding my bike, climbing trees – all sorts of hearty boy stuff. My sister is older than me – I was a typically infuriating little brother who nicked her toys and was probably a right pain.

Although Dad died of cancer when I was eight, he is very much there in my childhood memories. He was an actor and away from home a bit. I remember him being quite a strong, silent type – quite serious. Unlike my mother, who was unashamedly delighted when I decided to become an actor, I always feel that my father, had he lived longer, might have been a touch disapproving of some of my career – I think he might have tutted a bit at Men Behaving Badly. But he could be silly too – he and his colleagues would finish a show in the evening and then go and do a couple of hours' cabaret to wind down.

Both parents had roots in the theatre. Dad's parents were music hall entertainers – at one point in a troupe called the Brownies. I have a very funny picture of them dressed as leaves popping out from behind some wobbly looking staging. Mum worked as a secretary for Orson Welles, for what sounded like a very miserable year. Her brother was the actor Jeremy Brett, who became famous for playing Sherlock Holmes. He was an absolutely lovely man. Very exciting and glamorous, he'd always make me feel amazing and full of confidence; like I'd picked the right thing to do in life. He was a real force and we all loved him.

About a year after my father's death, I was packed off to boarding school. Life there seemed to be all about waiting for some adult or classmate to be beastly or thwack you. School was a weekly agony to be borne, cemented by my chronic bedwetting. I probably threw myself into plays and making people laugh just to have a break from being hit. At my next school, I was put in charge of the school menagerie – feeding, letting out, shutting up the animals – including the sheep. I loved it. There's something wonderful about the characters of animals, and I now have a family of them around me.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/mar/28/martin-clunes-doc-martin-my-family-values

Jeremy Brett - the OTHER Holmes, and equally magnificent

I am a great fan of Benedict Cumberbatch - that's fairly obvious, and rather recent.  But, I've been a Sherlock Holmes fan forever, from the early black and white film, Basil Rathbone days.



However, the only Holmes to compare with Benedict, in my mind, is the wonderful Jeremy Brett.  He speaks here about his character, and I could not help but believe that Benedict Cumberbatch would say many of the same things.  Jeremy Brett:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J_VJHMCTmY

"I'm too weird looking to be a leading man": But Martin Clunes "odd" face has made him a national treasure

DAILY MIRROR
Dec 12, 2012 00:00 By Claire Donnelly

"I work to provide for my family": Martin Clunes with his wife and daughter

With his Toby jug ears, fleshy lips and wide, wonky grin, his is one of the most recognisable faces on British TV.

But, as actor Martin Clunes readily admits, there was a time when he worried that his unconventional looks would prevent him being a success.

Decades later – with hugely popular roles in Men Behaving Badly and Doc Martin under his belt – he’s finally come to love the “odd” face that’s turned him into a national treasure as well as made his fortune.

He has carved a career out of playing interesting rather than romantic leads and he says he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I never intended to be a leading man because I’m tall and odd-looking,” he laughs. “And I’m certainly no sex symbol, no, no, no.

“I’ve never been a leading man in the Brad Pitt, Hugh Grant way, that kind of traditional romantic lead.

“I’m no Martin Shaw if you know what I mean, I’m not that kind of hero.

“But I don’t want to watch me being a hero, frankly. No, I’ve always played oddballs or an undertaker or a nasty doctor or a silly flatmate – but not Mr Handsome Saves The Day.”

At the start of Martin’s career, his cousin, the actor Jeremy Brett, even offered to pay for his cosmetic surgery – to have his ears pinned back.



http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/martin-clunes-im-too-weird-looking-1485393#ixzz2wLObM2QD 
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The Sherlockians Assess Benedict Cumberbatch

SEATTLE WEEKLY NEWS
by John Longenbaugh Tue., Mar 4 2014 at 05:19PM



I’m a Sherlockian, hardcore. It’s like being the guy who puts on Vulcan ears to watch his favorite Star Trek episodes. I’ve written a much-produced play, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol, which debuted at Taproot in 2010, and a yet-unpublished Holmes novel. I even own—though seldom wear—a deerstalker cap. And once a month I meet with like-minded fanatics at The Sound of the Baskervilles gatherings (more on that later), where both Arthur Conan Doyle’s original texts and the new Sherlock Holmes TV shows are avidly discussed.

Suddenly, thanks to those shows, casual Sherlock fans are everywhere—latecomers, we purists scoff. There have never been more high-profile adaptations of Sherlock Holmes than today. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law have starred in two recent Holmes action movies, with a third in the works.

On television we have Elementary on CBS, starring Jonny Lee Miller, and the BBC’s Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Both update Holmes to the contemporary world, though it’s the British version—which just streamed its third season on Netflix—that’s drawn the most critical approval, mine included.

Sherlock comes in big, meaty 90-minute episodes that feel like feature films, free of commercial breaks and the drawn-out storylines that plague American TV. While Sherlock’s London is contemporary, we still detect the underlying Victorian metropolis—the gristle and grit of the wonderful old city. The third season of Sherlock is, I would argue, the best yet, as it focuses on the subtleties of the very human friendship of its two central characters.

(Here let’s stipulate that the pedestrian, New York–set Elementary comes across as a pale copy of Monk or House ; Miller is mostly wasted playing yet another eccentric detective with a ho-hum drug habit; he’s not helped by Lucy Liu’s female yet otherwise unremarkable Watson; and the scripts are utterly mundane.)

Why is Sherlock so good? I am forced to concede that the show’s creators, Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat, are even bigger Sherlock nerds than I. They previously helped reboot Doctor Who, and they enliven this show with fancy edits, wipes, fades, and freezes that demonstrate Holmes’ mental processes. His mental observations—a worn collar cuff, a bit of dog hair, too much makeup—even appear on the screen in neat little white script. Graphics show us maps and diagrams as Holmes races through his “mind palace” in search of the correct clue. They also stuff each episode with references to the original Conan Doyle stories. In one repeating trope, a series of clients present their cases to Holmes in a flowing montage, with him providing solutions at lightning speed.

Granted, the show does make occasional missteps, puffing up its protagonist past superhuman and into superhero: Holmes surveys London from a rooftop as if he’s just been summoned by the Sherlock Signal; he leaps on a motorbike like James Bond.

The greatest pleasure to Sherlock is the perfect casting of Cumberbatch as the detective and Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson; both are clearly having the time of their lives in these iconic roles. Cumberbatch is an actor built to play gods and demons (see: Star Trek Into Darkness). He’s angular and not quite handsome, with a searing intelligence and patrician air. Like the two other great screen Holmeses, Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett, there’s a thin, quivering element to his performance that shimmers with impatience. Unlike those earlier actors, however, Cumberbatch embraces Sherlock’s least likable elements. When a policewoman calls him a psychopath, he replies, “I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.”


READ MORE HERE: http://www.seattleweekly.com/home/951397-129/arts-the-sherlockians-assess-benedict-cumberbatch

Maggie Smith, Laurence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi: National Theatre's 50th: the best shows from 1963-1973

THE TELEGRAPH

MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2013

By Dominic Cavendish

11:30AM BST 14 Oct 2013

The hope for a National Theatre stretches right back to the Victorian age but it wasn't until 1962 that the theatre's story officially began. After protracted discussions over funding, and a dismally slow construction pace, the decision was made to establish a National Theatre company without waiting for the theatre to be opened. In the interim, the company would perform at the Old Vic and in August 1962, the National's first artistic director was named as Laurence Olivier. The company's first performance (Hamlet) followed on 22 October 1963, and the National Theatre was born.



The Old Vic episode, though protracted, was in many ways glorious. Directors included William Gaskill, Franco Zeffirelli, Jonathan Miller and Olivier himself. The list of actors collected for Zeffirelli’s production of Much Ado about Nothing alone spelt magnificence – among them Maggie Smith, Robert Stephens, Albert Finney, Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen. Having an actor-manager of Olivier’s stature at the helm made the National a base for the best of British theatre, as it was intended to be.To select 10 productions from that first decade is an invidious task – the choices are open to challenge. But to try and measure the scale of the National Theatre's achievement one must identify those shows it’s still worth talking about and summon them up from the dusty vaults of national memory. Away we go…

Although the National Theatre Company launched in its temporary home at the Old Vic in 1963 with a Hamlet starring Peter O’Toole and directed by Laurence Olivier, its first hour was not its finest. Far more significant was when Olivier, the company’s artistic director, stepped into the title role of Othello (in black-face) to electrifying effect the following year. “Nowhere else in the world could a more completely realised performance than his have been seen,” Simon Callow observed in his history of the NT, published in 2007. The production, which also starred Maggie Smith as Desdemona, was rendered into a film the following year.

As You Like It, directed by Clifford Williams, starring Ronald Pickup, Anthony Hopkins and Derek Jacobi; 1967

This all-male production was a box-office hit and a sign of more liberated times, although the revival had a troubled history. John Dexter initially proposed a more sexually provocative approach but his vision was so diluted at Olivier’s insistence that he resigned. Ronald Pickup starred as Rosalind, other cast members included Anthony Hopkins, Robert Stephens, Derek Jacobi and Jeremy Brett. The New York Times was effusive: "As You Like It is fantastic, one of the most dazzling, sheerly enjoyable Shakespearean productions I have ever seen." He praised Pickup: "Within a minute or two you forget that this lanky, touching figure is a man (although he makes no effort to disguise his voice) and you see him as a soul in love.”

The National Health, directed by Michael Blakemore, starring Tom Baker and Jim Dale; 1969
Peter Nichols’s play collided the grim experience of those reaching the end of life in an NHS ward with a pastiche TV soap opera (Nurse Norton’s Affair); the result, shaped and directed by Blakemore, was a sensation that won the Evening Standard Best Play award. As Blakemore records in his memoir Stage Blood: “On one side of the stage… challenges were bravely met and tragedy averted; on the other death made its random and monotonous progress through the ward… Both Peter and I began to realise that we were on to something that maybe hadn’t been done on stage before.” The show marked a return to the NT’s popular health, after a slight dip in fortunes.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night, directed by Michael Blakemore, starring Laurence Olivier, 1971
Michael Billington in the Guardian was spellbound by this account of Eugene O’Neill's posthumously published autobiographical masterpiece, dominated as it was by the fading grandeur of Laurence Olivier in his last major role for the company: “Olivier’s James Tyrone is a massive performance moving from an initial nervy jocularity to a throttled, brick-red despair at his wife’s relapse to a thrilling, soul-baring intensity in his cups… For a genuinely great actor to play a nearly-great actor is the hardest technical feat of all: Olivier does it to perfection.” Of this highly popular production he added: “Such is the quality of acting and direction we seem to be not merely watching great drama but to be eavesdropping on life itself.”



READ MORE HERE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10361968/National-Theatres-50th-the-best-shows-from-1963-1973.html

Benedict Cumberbatch Honors Former ‘Sherlock’ Jeremy Brett By Kevin Wicks | Posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 (BBC AMERICA)

Jeremy Brett (Photo: Granada)

Robert Downey Jr.‘s blockbuster success aside, Benedict Cumberbatch is the definitive contemporary Sherlock Holmes to many diehards. But Cumberbatch himself has honored the man who previously defined Holmes for a generation, actor Jeremy Brett, who played Arthur Conan Doyle‘s complicated detective in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from 1984 to 1994.

“I saw that version when I was growing up,” said Cumberbatch told an audience at Cheltenham Literature Festival (via Radio Times). “I remember at my nan’s in Brighton we used to watch that on the telly, but I know much more of it now having watched it after we first incarnated our version of him.”

Cumberbatch relays his impressions of Brett with a writerly eloquence: “Even when I was younger I was still struck by this extraordinary hawk-like, magisterial, cold disconnect. And this incredible physique, as well – that wonderful beak of a nose, the swept back hair, the lips and those slightly mad eyes, which, sadly, became a lot madder.”


READ MORE: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2012/10/benedict-cumberbatch-pays-homage-to-former-sherlock-jeremy-brett/

Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Jr. give Jonny Lee Miller big 'Sherlock' shoes to fill By Bev Seinberg (ZAP 2 IT)

Benedict Cumberbatch: In the BBC series "Sherlock," which comes to U.S. viewers via "Masterpiece Mystery!" on PBS, Cumberbatch plays a thoroughly modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, who makes liberal use of texting, the Internet and GPS devices to solve crimes. It certainly doesn't hurt that the actor is exceedingly easy on the eyes.

Robert Downey Jr.: Although they're set in the Victorian England of the original stories, Downey's two (so far) feature-film turns as Holmes bring a certain 21st-century sensibility to the tales, making them accessible to an audience raised on big-screen blockbusters.

Jeremy Brett: Many consider Brett's portrayal of Holmes in four seasons of a British series -- also seen here on PBS - the definitive screen Sherlock of its time, if not all time. He played the role in a total of 41 episodes from 1984 to 1994 and might have continued had he not died at the relatively young age of 61.

Nicol Williamson: His single performance as Holmes wasn't in an Arthur Conan Doyle tale. Instead, he played the detective in the 1976 mystery "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution," which was adapted from a novel by Nicholas Meyer and dealt with the character's cocaine addiction and treatment by Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). While in Austria, however, he can't help getting involved in solving a crime.


READ MORE: http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2012/09/benedict-cumberbath-and-robert-downey-jr-give-jonny-lee-miller-big-sherlock-shoes-to-fill.html

Benedict Cumberbatch: ABC News Interview, with singing! (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=N_fXPfeJs48

Sherlock site to publish book of fans' Holmes stories Proceeds will go to the campaign to save Undershaw, the house in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote tales of the great detective Paul Jones (RADIO TIMES)

Fans of Sherlock Holmes have a chance to become part of a publishing tribute to the great detective by submitting stories for inclusion in a new book to be compiled by website Sherlockology.

Sherlock’s Home: The Empty House - named after the adventure in which Holmes reappears following his apparent demise at the foot of the Reichenbach Falls - will be a selection of short stories and poems.

Proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the campaign to save Undershaw, the former Surrey residence of Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in which he penned adventures including The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Empty House.

Aspiring writers are challenged to come up with a story based on Conan Doyle’s characters, or on Undershaw itself. Copyright issues mean fans of BBC1's Sherlock cannot use characters created specifically for the series (so well-loved lab geek Molly Hooper, for example, is off limits) but otherwise, it seems, pretty much anything goes...

“You can change the character's genders, ages or nationality,” suggests Sherlockology. “You are limited only by your imaginations; tell a story of [Holmes and Watson] as children, or maybe solving crimes in the Swinging Sixties...

READ MORE:  http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2012-04-20/sherlock-site-to-publish-book-of-fans'-holmes-stories

How Conan Doyle's detective destroyed Jeremy Brett (Neil Clark)

Friday, December 23, 2011

This piece of mine on the late, great Jeremy Brett, appears in the Sunday Express.

With a movie and TV series based on Sherlock Holmes out soon, Neil Clark recalls Jeremy Brett and the sacrifices he made to be the greatest Baker Street detective.

This weekend the latest Sherlock Holmes film, ‘A Game of Shadows’, starring Robert Downey Jnr in the title role, opened in cinemas across Britain. The New Year meanwhile sees the return of Benedict Cumberbatch in BBC‘s series ‘Sherlock’. Overall, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective has been played by more than 70 actors on the big and small screens but for Sherlockians-the hardcore fans of the pipe-smoking Victorian sleuth, one stands out from all the rest for his portrayal: Jeremy Brett.



Brett played Holmes in 36 one-hour episodes and five feature length specials on ITV between 1984 and 1994, programmes which are still regularly broadcast all over the world today. Brett’s Holmes is widely regarded to be the definitive version; the closest to the Sherlock Holmes in the original stories.



Brett was a perfectionist who took his role seriously but he paid a terrible price for his art. In a story as fantastic as any of Conan Doyle‘s tales, the brilliant but melancholy detective took over the life - and mind- of the sensitive British actor who played him.


"Holmes was a shell in which he (Brett) began to live. The dark, cerebral detective sometimes took him over, and the actor and the part he played for ten years eventually became one,” says Terry Manners, author of ‘The Man who became Sherlock Holmes- The Tortured Mind of Jeremy Brett’.

At the time he started playing Holmes, Brett was already a well-established actor. Born Peter Jeremy William Huggins, into a wealthy upper-middle class background in 1933, Brett’s father was the Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire, while his mother, Elizabeth Cadbury, was a member of the famous chocolate manufacturing family. After attending Eton, Brett set out to be an actor and made his stage debut in 1954. His most famous film role came 10 years later, when he played Freddie Eynsford-Hill in the classic musical My Fair Lady.

In 1982 he was offered the part that was to change his life. Terry Manners says that Brett’s close friend, the actor Robert Stephens- who had played Holmes in a 1970 film, warned him about the demands of the role. “Don’t bloody well do it! You will go into such a pit to get into that man that you will self-destruct“.

For Brett, however, the challenge of playing the great sleuth in the new Granada tv production was too big to pass up. Brett immersed himself in his new role. He re-read all Conan Doyle’s original stories. The producer of the series and his assistants compiled a 77-page ‘Baker Street File’ on everything relating to Holmes’ habits and mannerisms which became Brett’s Bible. “While other actors disappeared to the canteen for lunch, Brett would sit alone in the set’s Victorian sitting room , thinking about Holmes, fretting about him,. Terry Manners records. “Jeremy was anxious to capture not just the darkness and cerebral power of Holmes, but also the period. Day and night he would sit huddled over history books, trying to recapture the Sherlockian 1890s”.

Brett was determined not only to ape all of Holmes’ mannerisms, but to look exactly like the man he was supposed to be portraying. He grew his hair longer and lost a stone in weight to appear as Holmes appears in Walter Paget’s illustrations. His brother even taught him to smoke a pipe.


Brett’s meticulous performances earned him rave reviews. “Brett’s true brilliance is overlooked not because no one says he is splendid but because everyone does”, wrote Kevin Jackson. Dame Jean Conan Doyle, daughter of Sir Arthur, sent him a letter which said : “You are the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood”. Few knew the stresses that the actor was under however. The death of his second wife Joan from cancer in 1985, pushed Brett into depression. Playing Holmes added to his anguish. “Holmes is the hardest part I have ever played — harder than Hamlet or Macbeth. Holmes has become the dark side of the moon for me. He is moody and solitary and underneath I am really sociable and gregarious. It has all got too dangerous”, he admitted.

After suffering a nervous breakdown, Brett spent eight weeks at the Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London. He was diagnosed as a manic-depressive.

Brett’s mental torment took a toll on him physically. The lithium which he was prescribed for his depression made him appear bloated. During the filming of the last Holmes series in 1993, Brett, whose heart had been damaged by childhood illness, arrived on set in a wheelchair and needed an oxygen mask. When the programmes were televised, fans were shocked at his physical deterioration. Those who worked on the set with Brett, and who loved him for his generosity and kindness, were greatly saddened at his decline.

Brett died from heart failure in London in September 1995, aged just 61.

“Some actors fear if they play Sherlock Holmes for a very long run the character will steal their soul, leave no corner for the original inhabitant", he said in one of his final interviews.

As the latest incarnations of the world’s most famous detective appear at the cinema and on our television screens over the festive season, let us remember the ultra-dedicated professional who gave everything he had in his ambition to be the greatest Sherlock Holmes of them all.

http://neilclark66.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-conan-doyles-detective-destroyed.html