Trevor Howard - Acting Career

Acting Career

Howard moved back to the theatre in The Recruiting Officer (1943), where he met the actress Helen Cherry; they married in 1944 and stayed together until Howard's death in 1988; they had no children.

A short part in the British war film The Way Ahead (1944) provided an entry into the cinema. This was followed by The Way to the Stars (1945), which led to the role for which Howard is probably best remembered, the doctor in the 1945 Noel Coward film Brief Encounter, meeting and falling in love with a bored housewife played by Celia Johnson. Directed by David Lean, the film won an award at the Cannes Film Festival and considerable critical acclaim for Howard. Next came two successful Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat thrillers, I See a Dark Stranger (1945) and Green for Danger (1946), followed by They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), to which the roots of British realism in cinema can be traced. In 1947, he was invited by Laurence Olivier to play Petruchio in an Old Vic production of The Taming of the Shrew. Despite The Times declaring, "We can remember no better Petruchio", the opportunity of working again with David Lean, in The Passionate Friends (1949), drew Howard back to film and, although he had a solid reputation as a theatre actor, his dislike of long runs, and the attractions of travel afforded by film, convinced him to concentrate on cinema from this point. The Passionate Friends though, in which Howard played a similar character to Alec in Brief Encounter also featured Ann Todd and Claude Rains, but was not successful.

Howard's film reputation was secured in The Third Man (1949). As Major Calloway, he played the character type with which he became most associated, the slightly dry, slightly crusty, but capable British military officer. During filming in Vienna, Howard visited the fairground which was, at that time, under the jurisdiction of the Russians, where, still wearing the uniform of a British Army Major, he was promptly arrested. He was returned to the SIB after his true identity was ascertained. He also starred in The Key (1958; based on a Jan de Hartog novel) for which he received the best actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Sons and Lovers (1960), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Another notable film was The Heart of the Matter (1953), from another Graham Greene story.

Over time Howard shifted to being one of Britain's finest character actors. Howard's later works included such films as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Father Goose (1964), Morituri (1965), Von Ryan's Express (1965), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Battle of Britain (1969), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Superman (1978), and Gandhi (1982). The Dawning (1988) was his final film. One of his strangest films, and one he took great delight in, was Vivian Stanshall's 1980 Sir Henry at Rawlinson End in which he played the title role.

In television, Howard began to find more substantial roles. In 1962, he played Løvborg in Hedda Gabler, her former love, with Ingrid Bergman. He won an Emmy award the following year as Disraeli in The Invincible Mr Disraeli. In the 1970s, he played an abbot in the ITV Saturday Night Theatre production of Catholics (1973). He received an Emmy nomination in 1975 for his role as Abbé Faria in a television version of The Count of Monte Cristo. The decade ended with him reunited with Celia Johnson in Staying On (1980), an adaptation of Paul Scott's postscript to his Raj Quartet novels.

The 1980s saw a revival of Howard's career as a film actor. The role of a Cheyenne Indian in Windwalker (1981) revitalized his acting. He continued with cameo roles, including Judge Broomfield in Gandhi (1982). His final films were White Mischief and The Dawning, both released in 1988.

He declined a CBE in 1982.

Howard did not abandon the theatre altogether in 1947, returning to the stage on occasion, most notably as Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard (1954) and the captain in The Father (1964). His last appearance on the British stage was in Waltz of the Toreadors in 1974.

Throughout his film career Howard insisted that all of his contracts held a clause excusing him from work whenever a cricket Test Match was being played.