Celebrity Biographies
Jon Whiteley
He was one of the few winners of the youth Oscar, a reduced version of the statuette, along with Shirley Temple, Hayley Mills, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. Jon Whiteley passed away on May 19, 2020, at the age of 75, as confirmed by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, where he taught art history for 38 years.
Born on February 19, 1945 in Aberdeenshire, Jon Whiteley was 6 years old when he made his acting debut in a BBC Radio serial. His work caught the attention of a London film producer, who recruited him for the drama Hunted (1952), where he worked alongside Dirk Bogarde .
Along with another child actor, Vincent Winter, he starred in The Kidnapers , for which they both received Academy Awards. “I couldn’t go because my family didn’t let me,” she recalled in an interview. “So the Oscar was mailed to me. When I opened the box I was so disappointed, because I was convinced it was going to be something special, and it was just an ugly statuette.”
Whiteley also shared the screen with Stewart Granger in Fritz Lang ‘s The Smugglers of Moonfleet . He reprized with Bogarde in The Spanish Gardener . But she soon withdrew from the screen. He studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, and became a restorer at the city’s Christ Church Picture Gallery.”