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The death of British actor Freddie Jones has been announced, he passed away after a short illness. He arrived late to the acting profession, after deciding his day job (in a ceramics factory) was going to be the death of him if he continued with it. He soon established himself on stage, television and film as one of the most distinctive performers around, and audiences swiftly warmed to his offbeat characterisations. Television in the 1960s included Z Cars, The Baron and The Avengers, but he was making waves in films like Marat/Sade, Far from the Madding Crowd and The Bliss of Miss Blossom, with his role as the "monster" in Hammer's Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed widely acclaimed by horror fans.
Into the 70s, and he appeared in The Man Who Haunted Himself, Goodbye Gemini, Assault, Kidnapped, Sitting Target, Son of Dracula, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Juggernaut, Vampira and Never Too Young to Rock, while his TV work included anything from The Goodies and The Ghosts of Motley Hall to Children of the Stones and Pennies From Heaven. The 80s saw him hit big internationally, thanks to David Lynch's The Elephant Man: following that were Firefox, Krull, Firestarter, Dune, The Black Cauldron, Young Sherlock Holmes and Erik the Viking, with Wild at Heart his third Lynch collaboration.
Into the 90s and beyond he showed no signs of slowing down, though television, with countless guest appearances, was his main medium, including a thirteen-year run on popular soap opera Emmerdale that would be his last work. He was the father of another cult actor, Toby Jones, and they worked together on his final film, the oddball By Our Selves. You were guaranteed entertainment with Freddie Jones, a unique presence in over two hundred appearances. |
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