Maurice Evans (actor)
Maurice Herbert Evans ( born June 3, 1901 in Dorchester, Dorset, England; † March 12, 1989 in Rottingdean, East Sussex, England ) was a British- American film and theater actor and film producer.
Life
Maurice Evans grew up as the son of a magistrate and passionate playwright, about whom he got contact with the acting. As a boy sang Evans at St. Andrew 's Choir and later on stage in plays his father.
1926 Evans made his debut as a professional actor, and was mainly in London on stage. To be able to keep financially afloat, Evans worked as a laborer in a cleaning company. 1929 was his year in which Evans full-time actor was. So he worked 1930-1935 with twelve British films, but also stood at the Old Vic Theatre on stage. 1935 emigrated from Evans in the U.S., where he could achieve success on Broadway. Specifically plays by George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare had done it Evans. So it was from Hamlet to Macbeth often present in lead roles.
1941, shortly before the outbreak of the American World War II, Evans became an American citizen. During the Pacific War the actor acted as an entertainer of the troupe, and performed with his theater group founded in various military bases. He could make it as far as the military rank of major.
In 1951 Evans U.S. film debut. Despite or because of his success as a Shakespearean actor, it reached Evans that plays were adapted as films, and he self-produced 1953 Hamlet for U.S. television.
In 1965 he played with Charlton Heston in the Knight movie " The Normans come ".
Nevertheless, Evans remained largely failed major film and television roles. His most famous film role, he should get 1968. In Franklin J. Schaffner's science- fiction epic Planet of the Apes as well as in the sequel to 1970 Beneath the Planet of the Apes turned Evans, the orangutan Zaius represents, however, was barely visible through the thick makeup.
Apart from this role played Evans in another television series with, including Fantasy Iceland, Columbo, Solo for Oncel and Bewitched.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Evans retired from acting, and returned to England. Here Evans died in 1989, aged 87 years, of cancer.
Evans was never married and had no children.
Others
Maurice Evans was the first British actor ever to Shakespeare brought to the United States. He also counts opposite Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud to the most famous exponents of the British theater in the United States. Maurice Evans, who won two Tony Awards, is still one of the actor who had most commonly Richard II embodies on stage.