News from the Helpers' Network US for fans of Beauty and the Beast...

Here's the wire service notice of our Sunday event that hit the wires today. Enjoy!

Ted

by ELLIS NASSOUR

    Veteran stage, TV and screen star Roy Dotrice, who began his acting career in World War II in a German prisoner-of-war camp,  is being honored by  Shakespeare-at-Play on Sunday, May 26 in Los Angeles as their Person of the Year.  The occasion will also mark his 79th birthday.

     Dotrice received the 2000 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Awards for his performance as Phil Hogan in the revival of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten.  He received a 1981 Tony nomination for Lead Actor for his work in A Life.

      Ted Kryczko, a spokesman for the organization, said the award celebrates not only outstanding achievement in theater but also is meant to recognize an actor who exemplifies what is possible before a live audience.

       When contacted at his Los Angeles home, Dotrice laughed and said, "I suspect that it's some kind of survival award."

       Some of those who have shared stage and screen with Dotrice will pay tribute to Dotrice's unique acting craft. These include Gabriel Byrne, who not only starred on Broadway with Dotrice and Cherry Jones in A Moon for the Misbegotten but also with him in the ABC-TV series Madigan Men; Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman, Dotrice's co-stars in the TV series Beauty and the Beast; Gary Oldham, a co-star in The Scarlett Letter; and Diana Douglas (Michael's mom).

     Dotrice will return next month to the U.K. where he will star in the pre-West End run of Anthony Wilkinson's stage adaptation of the 50s best-selling novel Ebenezer Le Page, co-produced by Elliott Martin, who also produced the Moon revival and numerous Broadway plays.

     After his release in 1945 from the Royal Air Force, Dotrice became an actor and prodigious producer and director in British repertory (over 300 plays, most often performing and/or directing a new one each week).

     In rep, he met actress Kay Newman. The couple, married for 55 years, have three daughters -- all actresses -- Karen (Jane Banks in Mary Poppins; the BBC series Upstairs, Downstairs), Michele (English TV and theater, who's married to film and TV star Edward Woodward) and Evette (Coronation Street and numerous British TV).

     Beginning in 1957, Dotrice spent nine years with the Royal Shakespeare Company playing leading roles with some of the world's greatest actors and directors.

      "I also have the distinction of introducing American baseball to the RSC," he beamed," and I was also the star pitcher on the 1959 RSC softball team. You might say, we had quite the star line-up: Paul Robeson at first base, Sam Wanamaker at second and  Laurence Oliver at third. Peter O'Toole was our shortstop with Albert Finney catching and Charles Laughton as umpire."

      In the late 60s, he starred in 28 episodes of the enormously popular BBC Radio adaptation of the novel (about the oldest living resident of  the Isle of Guernsey).  In one week, Dotrice received 28,000 pieces of mail.   

     On Broadway, Dotrice appeared in ten shows, including two one-man shows, Brief Lives (1968 and 1974), which holds the distinction of having the most performances of any one-person show in theater history, and Mister Lincoln (1980), 1981's Kingdoms (as Pope Pius VII), the 1986 revival of Hay Fever (opposite Rosemary Harris) and 1991's Roundabout Theatre Company revival of The Homecoming and numerous plays there.

    His film work includes playing Leopold Mozart in Amadeus, Nicholas and Alexandria and Swimming with Sharks (with Kevin Spacey).  On television he was a regular in five television series, including Going to Extremes, Picket Fences and Mr. and Mrs. Smith and made frequent guest appearances in such series as Murder, She Wrote, The Equalizer, Magnum P.I. and L.A. Law.

    The Shakespeare-at-Play event, to be held at the at the Lunaria Jazz Club on Santa Monica Boulevard, is being video-taped.

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