TOMAS MILIAN

23 May

(3 March 1933 - 22 March 2017)

The Cuban-born American-Italian actor and singer trained at the Actors Studio in New York. After a short spell on Broadway he was discovered for a film career in Italy that covered all manner of action films, from spaghetti Westerns and police thrillers to violent comedies. Director Mauro Bolognini put him in The Big Night, written by Pasolini, and more Italian films followed, including Boccaccio ’70 (the Visconti segment with Romy Schneider), then Carol Reed’s The Agony and the Ecstasy. Milian rarely escaped from action parts until The Last Movie in 1971 when director Dennis Hopper cast him as a priest. He was in Winter Kills with Jeff Bridges, Havana with Robert Redford, Oliver Stone’s JFK, Spielberg’s Amistad and Soderbergh’s Traffic. In 2014 he played Gramps in Fugly! with John Leguizamo, his final appearance in a career covering some 120 films.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

TOMAS MILIAN

ROGER MOORE

DINA MERRILL