Earl Cameron (actor)
Encyclopedia
Earl Cameron, CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born August 8, 1917) is a Bermudian
Bermudian
Bermudian or Bermudan may refer to:* Something of, or related to Bermuda* A person from Bermuda, or of Bermudian descent. For information about the Bermudian people, see Demographics of Bermuda and Culture of Bermuda. For specific Bermudians, see List of Bermudians.* Bermudian English, the variety...

 actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

. He is known as one of the first black
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

 actors to break the "colour bar" in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, along with Cy Grant
Cy Grant
Cy Grant was a Guyanese actor, singer, writer and poet, who in the 1950s became the first black person to appear regularly on British television...

. He also had repeated appearances on many British science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 programmes of the 1960s, including Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

, The Prisoner
The Prisoner
The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series first broadcast in the UK from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968. Starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan, it combined spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory and psychological drama.The series follows a British former...

and The Andromeda Breakthrough
The Andromeda Breakthrough
The Andromeda Breakthrough was a 1962 sequel to the popular BBC TV science fiction serial A for Andromeda, again written by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot....

.

Early career

Cameron was born in Pembroke
Pembroke Parish, Bermuda
Pembroke Parish is one of the nine parishes of Bermuda. It is named after English aristocrat William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke ....

, Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

. As a young man, he joined the British Merchant Navy, and sailed mostly between New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

. When war broke out he found himself stranded in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, arriving on 29 October 1939. As he himself put it in an interview for The Royal Gazette
The Royal Gazette
The Royal Gazette, founded in 1828, is the only daily newspaper in the island nation of Bermuda. It is published Mondays through Saturdays; there is no Sunday edition....

newspaper, "I arrived in London on 29 October 1939. I got involved with a young lady and you know the rest. The ship left without me, and the girl walked out too."

His first stage experience came in 1942 when he talked his way into a West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 production of Chu Chin Chow
Chu Chin Chow
Chu Chin Chow is a musical comedy written, produced and directed by Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, based on the story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves...

. He went on to act in a number of plays in London, including The Petrified Forest
The Petrified Forest
The Petrified Forest is a 1936 American film, starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart. A precursor of film noir, it was adapted from Robert E. Sherwood's 1936 stage play of the same name...

. In 1946 Cameron returned to Bermuda for five months but decided to return to work as an actor in the UK. He then took a job on the London stage as an understudy in the play Deep are the Roots. This play was staged in London for some months and then went on tour. It was during this tour that Earl first met, and worked alongside, Patrick McGoohan
Patrick McGoohan
Patrick Joseph McGoohan was an American-born actor, raised in Ireland and England, with an extensive stage and film career, most notably in the 1960s television series Danger Man , and The Prisoner, which he co-created...

 during a production of that play in Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

.

He understudied in Deep are the Roots with fellow understudy, Ida Shepley, a well known singer. As Earl was having problems with his diction at the time Ida introduced him to a very good voice coach named Armanda Ira Aldridge. Miss Aldridge was the daughter of Ira Aldridge, a legendary black Shakespearian United States|American]] actor of the 19th century. His breakthrough acting role was in Pool of London, a 1951 film set in post-war London involving racial prejudice, romance and a diamond robbery. He won much critical acclaim for his role in the film.

Film career

His next major film role following his work in Pool of London was in the 1955 film Simba
Simba (film)
Simba is a 1955 British drama film directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and starring Dirk Bogarde, Donald Sinden, Virginia McKenna and Basil Sydney...

. This was a drama about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

 in which Earl Cameron played the role of Peter Karanja, a doctor trying to reconcile his admiration for Western civilisation with his Kikuyu heritage. He played the Mau Mau general Jeroge in Safari in the same year.

From the 1950s to the present day he had major parts in many films including: The Heart Within
The Heart Within
The Heart Within is a 1957 British drama film directed by David Eady and starring James Hayter, Clifford Evans and David Hemmings. A Jamaican dockside worker goes on the run in London suspected of the murder of another Jamaican.-Cast:...

(1957) in which he played a character Victor Conway in a crime movie yet again set in the London docklands; and Sapphire
Sapphire (film)
Sapphire is a 1959 British crime drama. It focused on racism in London toward immigrants from the West Indies. The film was directed by Basil Dearden, and stars Nigel Patrick, Earl Cameron and Yvonne Mitchell. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Film and screenwriter Janet Green won a 1960 Edgar...

(1959) in which played Dr Robbins, the brother of a murdered girl; and The Message (1976) – the story of the Prophet Muhammad.

His other film appearances have included: Tarzan the Magnificent
Tarzan the Magnificent
Tarzan the Magnificent is a 1960 British film, the follow-up to Tarzan's Greatest Adventure . It was directed by Robert Day and produced by Sy Weintraub. Gordon Scott makes his last appearance as Tarzan while Jock Mahoney appeared as villain Coy Banton...

(1960) in which he played Tate; Flame in the Streets
Flame in the Streets
Flame in the Streets is a 1961 British drama film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring John Mills, Sylvia Syms, Brenda De Banzie, Earl Cameron and Johnny Sekka.-Synopsis:...

(1961) in which he played Gabriel Gomez; Tarzan's Three Challenges
Tarzan's Three Challenges
Tarzan's Three Challenges is a British-American adventure film filmed in Metrocolor, which is a followup to 1962's Tarzan Goes to India. The movie was Jock Mahoney's second and final turn as the apeman, was produced by Sy Weintraub, written by Robert Day and Berne Giler, and directed by Robert Day...

(1963) in which he played Mang; Guns at Batasi
Guns at Batasi
Guns at Batasi is a 1964 drama film starring Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Flora Robson, John Leyton and Mia Farrow. It is set in an overseas colonial military outpost during the last days of the British Empire in East Africa....

(1964) in which he played Captain Abraham; Battle Beneath the Earth (1967) in which he played Sergeant Seth Hawkins; The Sandwich Man
The Sandwich Man
The Sandwich Man is a 1966 British comedy film starring Michael Bentine, Dora Bryan, Harry H. Corbett, Bernard Cribbins, Diana Dors, Norman Wisdom, Terry-Thomas and Ian Hendry. It was written by Bentine in conjunction with Robert Hartford-Davis...

(1966) in which he played a bus conductor; and the James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

 movie Thunderball
Thunderball (film)
Thunderball is the fourth spy film in the James Bond series starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, which in turn was based on an original screenplay by Jack Whittingham...

(1965) in which he played Bond's Caribbean assistant Pinder Romania.

His most recent film appearances include a major role in The Interpreter
The Interpreter
The Interpreter is a 2005 political thriller film starring Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, and Catherine Keener. It was the final film to be directed by Sydney Pollack.-Plot:...

(2005) in which he played the fictitious dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...

 Edmond Zuwanie. His performance was universally praised. The Baltimore Sun wrote: "Earl Cameron is magnificent as the slimy old fraud of a dictator..." The Rolling Stone described Mr. Cameron's appearance as "subtle and menacing". Philip French in The Observer referred to "that fine Caribbean actor Earl Cameron". In 2006 he appeared in a cameo as a painter in the film The Queen
The Queen (film)
The Queen is a 2006 British drama film directed by Stephen Frears, written by Peter Morgan, and starring Helen Mirren as the title role, HM Queen Elizabeth II...

, alongside Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...

. In 2010 he appeared as 'Elderly Bald Man' in the film Inception
Inception
Inception: The Subconscious Jams 1994-1995 is a compilation of unreleased tracks by the band Download.-Track listing:# "Primitive Tekno Jam" – 3:23# "Bee Sting Sickness" – 8:04# "Weed Acid Techno" – 8:19...

.

TV career

He has had roles in a wide range of TV shows but one of his earliest major roles was a starring part in the BBC 1960 TV drama The Dark Man, in which he played a West Indian cab driver in the UK. The show examined the reactions and prejudices he faced in his work. In 1956 he had a smaller part in another BBC drama exploring racism in the workplace, Man From The Sun, in which he appeared as community leader Joseph Brent.

He appeared in a range of popular TV shows including five episodes of the TV series Danger Man
Danger Man
Danger Man is a British television series that was broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the program and wrote many of the scripts...

(Secret Agent in the US) alongside series star Patrick McGoohan
Patrick McGoohan
Patrick Joseph McGoohan was an American-born actor, raised in Ireland and England, with an extensive stage and film career, most notably in the 1960s television series Danger Man , and The Prisoner, which he co-created...

. He worked with McGoohan again in 1967 when he appeared in the TV series The Prisoner
The Prisoner
The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series first broadcast in the UK from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968. Starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan, it combined spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory and psychological drama.The series follows a British former...

as the Haitian supervisor in the episode "The Schizoid Man".

His other television work includes Emergency - Ward 10, The Zoo Gang
The Zoo Gang
The Zoo Gang was a 1974 ITC Entertainment drama series that ran for six one-hour colour episodes, based on the 1971 book of the same name by Paul Gallico....

, Crown Court
Crown Court (TV series)
Crown Court was an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984....

(two different stories, each 3 episodes long, in 1973), Jackanory
Jackanory
Jackanory is a long-running BBC children's television series that was designed to stimulate an interest in reading. The show was first transmitted on 13 December 1965, the first story being the fairy-tale Cap o' Rushes read by Lee Montague. Jackanory continued to be broadcast until 24 March 1996,...

(a BBC children's series in which he read five of the Brer Rabbit stories in 1971), Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...

, Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

- The Tenth Planet
The Tenth Planet
The Tenth Planet is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 8 October to 29 October 1966. It was William Hartnell's last regular appearance as the First Doctor, and the first story to feature the Cybermen...

, Neverwhere
Neverwhere
Neverwhere is an urban fantasy television series by Neil Gaiman that first aired in 1996 on BBC Two. The series is set in "London Below", a magical realm coexisting with the more familiar London, referred to as "London Above". It was devised by Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry, and directed by Dewi...

, Waking the Dead
Waking the Dead (TV series)
Waking the Dead is a British television police procedural crime drama series produced by the BBC featuring a fictional Cold Case Unit comprising CID police officers, a psychological profiler and a forensic scientist. A pilot episode aired in September 2000 and there have been a total of nine series...

, Kavanagh QC, Babyfather, EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...

(a small role as a Mr Lambert), Dalziel and Pascoe
Dalziel and Pascoe (BBC TV series)
Dalziel and Pascoe is a popular British television crime drama based on the Dalziel and Pascoe books by Reginald Hill, which was first broadcast in March 1996. It is set in Yorkshire, and is about two detectives...

, and Lovejoy
Lovejoy
Lovejoy is a TV series about the adventures of Lovejoy, a British antiques dealer and faker based in East Anglia, a less than scrupulous yet likeable rogue. The episodes were based on a series of picaresque novels by John Grant...

.

He also appeared in a number of other one-off TV dramas including: Television Playhouse (1957); A World Inside BBC (1962); ITV Play of the Week (two stories – The Gentle Assassin (1962) and I Can Walk Where I Like Can't I? (1964); the BBC's Wind Versus Polygamy (1968); ITV's A Fear of Strangers (1964) in which he played Ramsay, a black saxophonist and small-time criminal who is detained by the police on suspicion of murder and who is also racially abused by a Chief Inspector Dyke played by Stanley Baker
Stanley Baker
Sir Stanley Baker was a Welsh actor and film producer.-Early career:William Stanley Baker was born in Ferndale, Rhondda Valley, Wales. In the mid-1930s his parents moved to London, where Baker spent most of his formative years...

; Festival: the Respectful Prostitute (1964); ITV Play of the Week – The Death of Bessie Smith (1965); Theatre 625: The Minister (1965); The Great Kandinsky (1994); and two episodes of Thirty-Minute Theatre (Anything You Say 1969 and another in 1971).

Personal life

Cameron is a practitioner of the Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'í Faith
The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....

, and held a reception in London in 2007 to honour his 90th birthday. He currently lives in Warwickshire in England. He is married to Barbara Cameron. His first wife, Audrey Cameron, died in 1994. He has five children.

He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.

Filmography

  • Pool of London
    Pool of London
    The Pool of London is a part of the Tideway of the River Thames from London Bridge to below Tower Bridge. It was the original part of the Port of London. The Pool of London is divided into two parts, the Upper Pool and Lower Pool...

    (1951)
  • Emergency Call
    Emergency Call
    Emergency Call is a British film released in 1952 by Nettlefold Films. The film was directed by Lewis Gilbert and stars Jack Warner in a familiar role playing a policeman, Anthony Steel, Joy Shelton and Sid James as a dubious boxing promoter....

    (1952)
  • Simba
    Simba (film)
    Simba is a 1955 British drama film directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and starring Dirk Bogarde, Donald Sinden, Virginia McKenna and Basil Sydney...

    (1955)
  • The Woman for Joe
    The Woman for Joe
    The Woman for Joe is a 1955 British drama film starring Diane Cilento, George Baker, Jimmy Karoubi and David Kossoff. The owner of a circus sideshow and his prize attraction become romantically involved with the same woman.-Cast:...

    (1955)
  • Safari (1955
  • The Buccaneers
    The Buccaneers (TV series)
    The Buccaneers was a 1956 Sapphire Films television drama series for ITC Entertainment, networked by CBS in the US and shown on ATV and selected ITV companies in the UK....

    (1956)
  • Odongo
    Odongo
    Odongo is a 1956 British drama film directed by John Gilling and starring Rhonda Fleming, Macdonald Carey and Juma. In Kenya a hunter falls in love with a vet.-Partial cast:* Rhonda Fleming - Pamela Muir* Macdonald Carey - Steve Stratton* Juma - Odongo...

    (1956)
  • The Heart Within
    The Heart Within
    The Heart Within is a 1957 British drama film directed by David Eady and starring James Hayter, Clifford Evans and David Hemmings. A Jamaican dockside worker goes on the run in London suspected of the murder of another Jamaican.-Cast:...

    (1957)
  • The Mark of the Hawk
    The Mark of the Hawk
    The Mark of the Hawk is a 1957 drama film, directed by Michael Audley with a screenplay by Lloyd Young and H.Kenn Carmichael...

    (1957)
  • Sapphire
    Sapphire (film)
    Sapphire is a 1959 British crime drama. It focused on racism in London toward immigrants from the West Indies. The film was directed by Basil Dearden, and stars Nigel Patrick, Earl Cameron and Yvonne Mitchell. It received the BAFTA Award for Best Film and screenwriter Janet Green won a 1960 Edgar...

    (1959)
  • Flame in the Streets
    Flame in the Streets
    Flame in the Streets is a 1961 British drama film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring John Mills, Sylvia Syms, Brenda De Banzie, Earl Cameron and Johnny Sekka.-Synopsis:...

    (1961)
  • Guns at Batasi
    Guns at Batasi
    Guns at Batasi is a 1964 drama film starring Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Flora Robson, John Leyton and Mia Farrow. It is set in an overseas colonial military outpost during the last days of the British Empire in East Africa....

    (1964)
  • Mohammad, Messenger of God (1976)
  • The Interpreter
    The Interpreter
    The Interpreter is a 2005 political thriller film starring Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, and Catherine Keener. It was the final film to be directed by Sydney Pollack.-Plot:...

    (2005)

External links

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