Nigel Hawthorne

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Hawthorne in "Yes, Minister"

Sir Nigel Hawthorne, CBE (5 April 192926 December 2001) was a renowned British actor. He was born in Coventry in Warwickshire, although he grew up in South Africa, where he was educated by the Christian Brothers. He returned to the United Kingdom in the 1950s.

In a long and varied career, which began with an advert for Mackeson stout and a bit part in Dad's Army, his most famous roles were as Sir Humphrey Appleby in the TV series, Yes, Minister (and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister), and as King George III in the film adaptation of Alan Bennett's The Madness of King George, for which he was nominated for an Oscar and received the Olivier Award. He was appointed a CBE in 1987, and was knighted in 1999.

An intensely private individual, he was deeply saddened when he was involuntarily "outed" as a homosexual in the run-up to the Oscars. Following surgery for pancreatic cancer (though his eventual death was of a heart attack at the age of 72), he wrote a candid autobiography, Straight Face, which was published posthumously.

Film and television appearances

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