Charles Gray (actor) - Film and Television

Film and Television

Dikko Henderson
Character from the James Bond film series
Affiliation Tiger Tanaka
Portrayed by Charles Gray

During the 1960s, Gray established himself as a successful character actor and made many appearances on British television. Work in this period included Danger Man with Patrick MacGoohan and Maigret. Gray also appeared opposite Laurence Olivier in the film version of The Entertainer (1960) as a reporter. In 1964 he played murderer Jack Baker in the Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Bullied Bowler."

His breakthrough year came in 1967 when he starred with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in the WWII murder-mystery movie The Night of the Generals.

The following year he played an Australian intelligence officer assigned to the Australian Embassy in Tokyo, Henderson, in the 1967 Bond film You Only Live Twice. Four years later he appeared as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever, both films starring Sean Connery as Bond. These make Gray one of a small number of actors to have played a villain and a Bond ally in the film series (another being Joe Don Baker).

Gray's most prolific work as an actor was between 1968 and 1979 when he appeared in more than forty major film and television productions. In this period he is perhaps best known for portraying the Criminologist (the narrator) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a similar character, Judge Oliver Wright, in its 1981 sequel Shock Treatment. In 1983, he starred alongside Coral Browne and Alan Bates in the award-winning TV film An Englishman Abroad. In 1985, he starred in an episode of the BBC TV detective series Bergerac, entitled 'What Dreams May Come?' and involving black magic, disappearing mysteriously in the last scene.

Other well-known film work includes The Devil Rides Out, Mosquito Squadron, Cromwell, and The Beast Must Die.

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