Early Life and Career
Keir was born Andrew Buggy in Shotts, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. He was the son of a coalminer, and had five brothers and one sister. When he was fourteen years old he left school and began working down the coal mine alongside his father. He began acting by chance, when he went to meet a friend at the Miners' Welfare Hall, and one member of the cast of an amateur dramatics production being performed at the Hall had failed to turn up. Keir was persuaded to take the minor role of a farmer in the play, and enjoyed the experience so much that he became a regular in the group's performances.
The group entered a competition in Inverness, where Keir's talent was spotted and he was offered the chance to become a professional actor at the Unity Theatre in Glasgow. As this was during the Second World War he could not easily leave his occupation as a miner; he was only able to accept the offer after he obtained a medical diagnosis of pneumoconiosis, which freed him from his work in the mine.
After a few months at the Unity Theatre, he was offered a place at Glasgow's Citizens' Theatre by director Tyrone Guthrie. He accepted, and remained with the Citizens Theatre company for nine years. At the Citizens' he was a contemporary of Phyllida Law and Fulton Mackay; Keir and Mackay used to escort Law from the theatre to the local tram stop so that she would not be accosted by local gangs because of the English accent she had developed at drama school.
He made his film debut in 1950 in The Lady Craved Excitement, but had his first notable role on screen in 1952's The Brave Don't Cry. The film told the story of the rescue of a group of miners trapped underground after an accident in the pit, and Keir played a miner who places a bet on a horse race via the mine's telephone system while trapped, and has the final line of the film as he emerges from the pit after his rescue and asks who won the race.
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