Cyril Luckham

Cyril Luckham
Born	Cyril Alexander Garland Luckham (1907-07-25)25 July 1907 Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, UK
Died	London, England, UK
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1945–1987
Spouse(s)	Violet Lamb

Cyril Alexander Garland Luckham (25 July 1907 – 8 February 1989) was a British film, television and theatre actor.

Career

Luckham played the White Guardian in the long running science fiction television series Doctor Who. He appeared in The Ribos Operation, the first serial in The Key to Time season, and Enlightenment. In the 1967 BBC serialisation of The Forsyte Saga, Luckham played Sir Lawrence Mont, father-in-law of Fleur Forsyte. He appeared in an episode of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (1969), as the villain. Luckham was a familiar face as a character actor in the 1970s: he appeared the 1978 TV series based on the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, as the evil psychic Edward Drexel in the 1979 supernatural thriller series The Omega Factor, and as the equitable Chair of the school board of Bamfylde in the 1980 Andrew Davies adaptation To Serve Them All My Days. He also portrayed Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in the film adaptation of A Man for All Seasons (1966) and the long-suffering Father O'Hara in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. He also played the benevolent grandfather in The Cedar Tree, a series that ran on ATV from 1976 to 1977.

Perhaps his most significant role was as the paternalist puppet prime minister in 1971's dialectical dystopian drama The Guardians in which Britain is plunged into a tacit fascist state policed by the ubiquitous Guardians or 'G's' as they are referred to with disturbing familiarity. This series was recently released on DVD by Network.

Selected filmography

• Stranger from Venus (1954)
• Out of the Clouds (1955)
• The Battle of the River Plate (1956)
• The Hostage (1956)
• Yangtse Incident (1957)
• The Birthday Present (1957)
• How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957)
• Invasion Quartet (1961)
• Some People (1962)
• Billy Budd (1962)
• The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
• The Great War (BBC TV, 1965)
• The Alphabet Murders (1965)
• A Man for All Seasons (1966)
• The Naked Runner (1967)
• Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
• One More Time (1970)
• Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971)
• North and South (TV serial 1975)
• "The Cedar Tree" Series (1976 - 1977)
• Providence (1977)

External links

• Cyril Luckham at the Internet Movie Database