Career
Michell taught art until he made his theatre debut in Adelaide in 1947 and he first appeared in London in 1951. He has starred in several musicals, including the first London production of Man of La Mancha, in which he played the dual role of Miguel de Cervantes and his fictional creation, Don Quixote. (An album set was also made of this performance.) In 1964 he starred as Robert Browning in the musical Robert And Elizabeth, opposite Australian soprano June Bronhill.
Michell has acted with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, as well as appearing extensively in film and television, notably as King Henry VIII in The Six Wives of Henry VIII in 1970, and as Heathcliff in BBC Television's 1962 adaptation of Wuthering Heights. He was the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre from 1974 to 1977.
On American television, Michell has made appearances on the mystery series Murder, She Wrote, playing Dennis Stanton, a former jewel thief turned insurance claims investigator who always solved his cases with unusual methods and sent a copy of the story to his friend Jessica Fletcher afterwards.
As well as acting, Michell pursues other interests: he wrote the musical Pete McGynty and the Dreamtime, an Australian rendering of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, the performance of which used Michell's own paintings as backdrops; he is a painter and has illustrated a limited edition run of William Shakespeare's sonnets, for which he also did the calligraphy; and he has written and illustrated a number of macrobiotic cookbooks. Michell himself is a proponent of the macrobiotic diet and philosophy.
Michell was also the illustrator of Captain Beaky, a collection of Jeremy Lloyd's poems. The Captain Beaky character enjoyed success in the UK in the early 1980s, among both children and adults. The song "Captain Beaky" peaked at #5 in the UK Singles Chart in 1980.
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