(18 April 1930 - 11 March 2025)
The New Zealand-born actor Clive Revill has died at the age of 94 from the onset of dementia. He appeared in films both in the UK and the US and in a long and satisfying career was involved in making video games as well.
Clive Selsby Revill was born in Wellington, New Zealand, to Malet and Ethel Revill. His initial idea of a career was to be an accountant but in 1950 he made his stage debut as Sebastian in a local production of Twelfth Night. After that he left for the UK where he joined the Old Vic as a student. By 1952 he was making his Broadway debut as Sam Weller in the Dickens adaptation Mr Pickwick. Back in the UK he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and appeared in the Stratford production of The Tempest with John Gielgud which transferred to London’s Drury Lane Theatre Royal, which I remember very well from a school visit. Revill also played Fagin in Oliver! on Broadway for which he was nominated for a Tony.
Revill’s first film was Lewis Gilbert’s Reach for the Sky in 1956 with Kenneth More as Douglas Bader. He went on to get cast in The Horse’s Mouth with Alec Guinness and Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing. Four films in 1966 saw him in A Fine Madness playing a doctor to Sean Connery’s frustrated poet, a detective inspector on Jack Smight’s comedy thriller Kaleidoscope with Warren Beatty and Susannah York, and he was a Sheik in Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise, a film of the comic strip. So, Revill built up a gallery of character roles which continued throughout his career. They were often ‘foreign’ parts – a couple of Russians in Michael Anderson’s The Shoes of the Fisherman and Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, an Italian in Basil Dearden’s The Assassination Bureau, and the Spaniard Garcia in Zorro, The Gay Blade. He worked with Wilder again on Avanti!, a delightful comedy in which Revill was an over-zealous Italian hotel manager trying to bluff Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills about their parents’ secret trysts. It was a hilariously frustrated performance by Revill, playing it cool and calm and almost collected. The role landed him a Golden Globe nomination. Had the part of Inspector Clouseau not already been taken, Clive Revill would have made a fine bumbling French cop. Later films saw him with Michael Caine in Don Siegel’s spy thriller The Black Windmill, at Disney for One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing with Peter Ustinov, and in Mel Brooks’ mad comedy Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
Revill often did voiceover work, too, on The Empire Strikes Back, The Transformers: The Movie (as Kickback), Richard Williams’ The Thief and the Cobbler, Tom and Jerry: Robin Hood and His Merry Mouse and 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure. His last acting role was in The Queen of Spain, Fernando Trueba’s comedy-drama with Penélope Cruz, in 2016. Television also formed a large part of Revill’s career, as did video games. Altogether a very proud and versatile career.
Clive Revill was married and divorced twice; first to Valerie Nelson from 1971 to 1977, and then to Susan Schor from 1978 to 1988. They had a daughter, Kate Selsby.
MICHAEL DARVELL
