Actor Ronald Pickup IS DEAD TO ME

Why do so many obits always mention someone died after "a long illness", then, neglect to add what the illness was?!

We may know some of his self-effacing comic roles of the last years but we don't know his serious performances when he played serious roles Ibsen and Shakespeare. They are completely unknown to the average Datalounger.

^ Well, I declare

At least this thread about Ronald Pickup won't be as disastrous as the one about Ian Holm.

Theatre actor Ronald Pickup didn't star in movies which appealed to American teenagers.

We don't know him.

(he only appeared here once and I for one was getting my hip replaced that year)

He had no sensational private life. And he wasn't a publicity-seeking luvvie.

He was merely an actor. He was not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

An attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence . . .

Survived by his twin grandsons, Chevy and Curbside.

He is pretty much unknown on the is side of the Atlantic. He was never pretty; he looked too intellectual to be in movies.

He was as physically-unappealing as Ian McKellen —who is in fact two years OLDER than him— but if he were gay he might be as famous to Americans as McKellen.

He was very memorable in "Fortunes of War," the British mini-series (later on Masterpiece Theatre) that first brought together kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson when they were very young. He played a great character from the original Olivia Manning novels about brits caught on the eastern end of the Mediterranean during WW2 on which the miniseries was based: Count Yakimov, the penniless, likeable, but incredibly selfish White Russian aristocrat, who is ultimately shot to death by Greek police when he refuses not to smoke during a blackout raid in Athens.

Also remembered for the iconic trucks he designed, which still bear his name.