Friday, February 26, 2010

LIONEL JEFFRIES (1926 - 2010)

British character actor Lionel Jeffries was one of those people some of us saw a lot on the silver screen during our youth who was, in reality, much younger than he appeared to be.

First Men in the Moon, Those Fantastic Flying Fools (which I saw back in the late 1960s under the title of Blast Off), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Mary Poppins are just a few movies I remember him from; even as a child I knew who he was just by his "look"... the grandfather guy.

Jeffries died last week. Like many, I did not realized he was still alive. I checked his IMDB listing and found that he was still active in British television in the 1990s, appearing in such shows as Casualty, Inspector Morse, and Lovejoy. He also appeared in an episode of the Canadian-German co-produced TV series, Lexx.

He never seemed to be out of work for very long. Those are the actors I really admire. Not the "stars".

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