Celebrity Biographies
Ronald Pickup
At the age of 80 he has died after a long illness, and surrounded by his family, Ronald Pickup, according to his agent. The actor shone above all on the English stage, but he also has a solid career in television and a good handful of supporting roles in films that are part of cinema history. a spy among us
He’s worked pretty much to the end, with authentic character roles in The Crown , The Archbishop of Canterbury, and the reviled Neville Chamberlain in Darkest Hour . He is also remembered as an elderly guest in the two installments of The Exotic Marigold Hotel . But until we got there we have a solid career, where Ronald Pickup worked alongside the greats of the British scene, Laurence Olivier , Ian McKellen , Derek Jacobi , Patrick Stewart and Anthony Hopkins ., with performances of the classic works of William Shakespeare, but also of authors closer in time such as Peter Shaffer, Samuel Beckett and Eugene O’Neill.
Ronald Pickup was born in Chester, England, in 1940. He trained as a performer at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and has been associated as a stage actor with the National Theater and the Old Vic in London where he participated in several dozen performances.
In 1964 he married Lans Traverse, with whom he remained until the end of his days, and with whom he had two children, Simon and Rachel, the latter also an actress. It was in the same year that he was seen for the first time on a television screen, in the chapter “The Thyrant of France” of the mythical and long-running Doctor Who series .
Both on the small and on the big screen, his roles were secondary, but he always contributed his good work as a character actor. In cinema, his presence stands out in classics such as Jackal (1973), Zulu Dawn (1979), Eleni (1985) and La misión (1986). In addition, in 1989 he doubled in two interesting films, Danny, World Champion and An Arid White Season . He was even in a video game adaptation, Prince of Persia. The Sands of Time , in 2010.
On television, he gave the voice to the lion Aslan in the television series based on The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis from the 80s. He did not stop working for British television, with such a long tradition in series and miniseries, for example he was in Holby City , broadcast from 2002 to 2007, with a presence in 22 episodes, and in the recent A Spy Among Us (2019), one of his latest works.
When Pickup was asked about what he noticed differently when it came to working in theatre, television and cinema, he answered Helen Earnshaw in Female First in 2012 that “they are different and yet… it is something that perhaps I would not have said years ago, but in the end it is the same, what you are looking for is the truth”.