Peter Dennis - Career

Career

After graduating from RADA, he returned to the Birmingham Rep to play numerous leading roles. He went on to perform at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, the Liverpool Repertory Theatre, and in London's West End. He also began to be a regular presence on British television, appearing in The Avengers among many other shows.

14 October 1976 marked the premiere of his one-man show Bother! The Brain of Pooh at the ADC Theatre, Cambridge, given in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh written by A.A. Milne. It contained selected readings from When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, Now We Are Six, and The House at Pooh Corner.

At the invitation of Anna Strasberg, Head of the Actors Studio, Bother! received its American premier in December 1986 at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in Hollywood, where it was honoured with the Drama-Logue Award and the Los Angeles Theatre Award. Dennis’s one-man bravura performance of Milne’s writings would lead to performances of Bother! throughout the coming decades of his career at more than eighty venues throughout America and Europe from the Hollywood Bowl under the baton of conductor George Daugherty to the Palace of Westminster in London at the invitation of the Prime Minister.

His American television career grew to include appearances on a number of popular series including Friends, (there is a sly reference to A.A. Milne in the script) Murphy Brown, Alias, Prime Suspect, and Murder, She Wrote. Highlights of his film career include Sideways and Shrek. Peter Dennis died on 18 April 2009 in Shadow Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.