Early Career
In 1955, McGoohan starred in a West End production of a play called Serious Charge in the role of a priest accused of being gay. Orson Welles was so impressed by McGoohan's stage presence ("intimidated," Welles said later) that he cast him as Starbuck in his York theatre production of Moby Dick—Rehearsed. (Welles said in 1969 that he believed McGoohan "would now be, I think, one of the big actors of our generation if TV hadn't grabbed him. He can still make it. He was tremendous as Starbuck.")
While working as a stand-in during screen tests, McGoohan was signed to a contract with the Rank Organisation. The producers may have been more interested in capitalizing on his boxing skill and appearance than his acting ability, casting him as the conniving bad boy in such films as the gritty Hell Drivers and the steamy potboiler The Gypsy and the Gentleman, and after a few films and some clashes with the management, the contract was dissolved.
Free of the contract, he did some TV work, winning a BAFTA in 1959, for a role the previous year in an episode of Armchair Theatre. His favourite part for the stage was the lead in Ibsen's Brand, for which he received an award, and appeared in a (still extant) BBC television production in August 1959.
Read more about this topic: Patrick McGoohan
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