Career
Walker's first major television role was as a policeman in the British drama The Wednesday Play, in the episode entitled "Fable" (aired 27 January 1965). He is known for his comedic roles in Love Thy Neighbour (Thames Television), The Thin Blue Line and in Ali G Indahouse. He also appeared in Doctor Who, in the 1969 serial The War Games. He was one of the first black actors to be seen regularly on British television, and has always been proud of his role on the controversial Love Thy Neighbour as a result.
He appeared in the first episode of On the Buses, "The Early Shift", and the first episode of Mr. Bean as "The Examiner". Since 2001, he has played Patrick Trueman on EastEnders and in 2010 he appeared in the Internet spin-off series EastEnders: E20. He has also starred in a BBC1 sitcom called The Crouches, about a family from Walworth, in South East London. He played the grandfather for all seasons (2003–2005)
Although most of his work has been on television, he has appeared in several movies, including 10 Rillington Place, King Ralph (along with his Love Thy Neighbour co star, Jack Smethurst), and Let Him Have It. On the stage, he appeared in the first production of Mustapha Matura's Play Mas at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974, and has played the titular character in stage productions of Shakespeare's Othello, directed by David Thacker and Charles Marowitz, and also Caliban in a production of The Tempest directed by Jonathan Miller. He was also Gower in Thacker's 1989 production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Walker was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for his services to drama. A biography for children about him, written by Verna Wilkins, was published by Tamarind Books on 4 September 2008.
Read more about this topic: Rudolph Walker
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
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“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)