Andrew Ray
Encyclopedia
Andrew Ray was an English
actor
who was best known as a child star.
He was born Andrew Olden (Ray was his father's stage name), in North London, the son of the famous radio comic Ted Ray
and his wife, showgirl Dorothy (Sybil). Ray's life was transformed at the age of 10 when he was cast in the title part of The Mudlark
, a 20th Century Fox
film starring Alec Guinness
and Irene Dunne
. He played a street urchin who ends up meeting Queen Victoria. The film was chosen as the Royal Command Performance
in 1950 and catapulted Ray to child stardom.
He featured in numerous films during the next few years including The Yellow Balloon
(with Kenneth More
, 1953), Escapade
(with John Mills
, 1955), Woman in a Dressing Gown
(with Sylvia Syms
, 1957), Serious Charge (with Anthony Quayle
and Cliff Richard
, 1959), Twice Round the Daffodils
(1962, with Juliet Mills and Kenneth Williams
) and The System
(with Oliver Reed
and David Hemmings
, 1964).
Noteworthy theatre roles included Flowering Cherry (with Sir Ralph Richardson
and Celia Johnson
), and Taste of Honey on Broadway (with Angela Lansbury
and Joan Plowright
).
At the age of 19 he married the Rhodesia
n actress Susan Burnet
, and they later had two children.
Despite a rocky period in his twenties, Ray subsequently appeared in numerous film, theatre and television roles over the years—including as nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs
for Anglia Television, and as King George VI
in Crown Matrimonial
on stage and television. So successful was his depiction on stage of the stammering George VI that he was cast in the same role (though then Prince Albert, Duke of York) in the television series Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978).
He also featured in television series such as Tales of the Unexpected
, Upstairs, Downstairs
, Inspector Morse
, and Peak Practice
. He portrayed Herbert Pocket in the ITC
remake
of Charles Dickens
's Great Expectations
(1974).
In later years Ray was a committed member of Equity
and served as a Councillor of the Actors' union.
Andrew Ray died at the age of 64, in 2003 from a heart attack
. His brother Robin Ray
was a well-known television and radio personality, who died in 1998, also at the age of 64.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
who was best known as a child star.
He was born Andrew Olden (Ray was his father's stage name), in North London, the son of the famous radio comic Ted Ray
Ted Ray (comedian)
Ted Ray was a popular English comedian of the 1940s, 50s and 60s....
and his wife, showgirl Dorothy (Sybil). Ray's life was transformed at the age of 10 when he was cast in the title part of The Mudlark
The Mudlark
The Mudlark is a 1950 film made in Britain by 20th Century Fox, is a fictionalized account of how Queen Victoria was eventually brought out of her mourning for her dead husband, Prince Albert...
, a 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
film starring Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...
and Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...
. He played a street urchin who ends up meeting Queen Victoria. The film was chosen as the Royal Command Performance
Royal Command Performance
For the annual Royal Variety Performance performed in Britain for the benefit of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, see Royal Variety Performance...
in 1950 and catapulted Ray to child stardom.
He featured in numerous films during the next few years including The Yellow Balloon
The Yellow Balloon (film)
The Yellow Balloon is a 1953 British drama film starring Kenneth More, Bernard Lee, Andrew Ray, Kathleen Ryan and Sid James.-Plot:Playing around the ruins of a devastated bombed-out neighbourhood of London, 12 year old Frankie accidentally leads a boy into his death when he falls from a second...
(with Kenneth More
Kenneth More
Kenneth Gilbert More CBE was a highly successful English film actor during the post-World War II era and starred in many feature films, often in the role of an archetypal carefree and happy-go-lucky middle-class gentleman.-Early life:Kenneth More was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the...
, 1953), Escapade
Escapade
Escapade, or ESP for short, is a server-side scripting language that is designed to provide an easy interface to database contents. It was written in 1997 by Ed Carp and enjoys wide use in Europe, but has had limited acceptance in the United States...
(with John Mills
John Mills
Sir John Mills CBE , born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills, was an English actor who made more than 120 films in a career spanning seven decades.-Life and career:...
, 1955), Woman in a Dressing Gown
Woman in a Dressing Gown
Woman in a Dressing Gown is a 1957 British film directed by J. Lee Thompson. Yvonne Mitchell won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival....
(with Sylvia Syms
Sylvia Syms
Sylvia M. L. Syms OBE is a British actress. She is probably best known for her roles in the films Woman in a Dressing Gown , Ice-Cold in Alex , No Trees in the Street , Victim and The Tamarind Seed...
, 1957), Serious Charge (with Anthony Quayle
Anthony Quayle
Sir John Anthony Quayle, CBE was an English actor and director.-Early life:Quayle was born in Ainsdale, Southport, in Lancashire to a Manx family....
and Cliff Richard
Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
, 1959), Twice Round the Daffodils
Twice Round the Daffodils
Twice Round the Daffodils is a 1962 British comedy drama film directed by Gerald Thomas and starring Juliet Mills, Donald Sinden, Donald Houston, Kenneth Williams, Ronald Lewis, Andrew Ray, Joan Sims and Jill Ireland. A new group of patients arrive at a hospital to be treated for tuberculosis where...
(1962, with Juliet Mills and Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Charles Williams was an English comic actor and comedian. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the Carry On films, and appeared in numerous British television shows, and radio comedies with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.-Life and career:Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February...
) and The System
The System (film)
The System is a 1964 British drama film directed by Michael Winner and starring Oliver Reed, Jane Merrow and Barbara Ferris...
(with Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed was an English actor known for his burly screen presence. Reed exemplified his real-life macho image in "tough guy" roles...
and David Hemmings
David Hemmings
David Edward Leslie Hemmings was an English film, theatre and television actor as well as a film and television director and producer....
, 1964).
Noteworthy theatre roles included Flowering Cherry (with Sir Ralph Richardson
Ralph Richardson
Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....
and Celia Johnson
Celia Johnson
Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE was an English actress.She began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success in West End and Broadway productions. She also appeared in several films, including the romantic drama Brief Encounter , for which she received a nomination for the...
), and Taste of Honey on Broadway (with Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
and Joan Plowright
Joan Plowright
Joan Ann Plowright, Baroness Olivier, DBE , better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English actress, whose career has spanned over sixty years. Throughout her career she has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two BAFTA Awards...
).
At the age of 19 he married the Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
n actress Susan Burnet
Susan Burnet
Susan Burnet was a British actress born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia . After winning a scholarship to LAMDA at the age of 15 she had a brief but successful career in British television, film and on stage. Critics likened her looks to Brigitte Bardot's...
, and they later had two children.
Despite a rocky period in his twenties, Ray subsequently appeared in numerous film, theatre and television roles over the years—including as nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who in 1950 was convicted of supplying information from the American, British and Canadian atomic bomb research to the USSR during and shortly after World War II...
for Anglia Television, and as King George VI
George VI of the United Kingdom
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death...
in Crown Matrimonial
Crown Matrimonial
The Crown Matrimonial is a legal concept used to describe a person's right to co-reign equally with his or her spouse.The Crown Matrimonial was offered to King Francis II of France, husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, by the Parliament of Scotland and Mary's mother, Mary of Guise, who was regent of...
on stage and television. So successful was his depiction on stage of the stammering George VI that he was cast in the same role (though then Prince Albert, Duke of York) in the television series Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978).
He also featured in television series such as Tales of the Unexpected
Tales of the Unexpected (TV series)
Tales of the Unexpected is a British television series originally aired between 1979 and 1988, made by Anglia Television for ITV. Filming began in 1978.The series was an anthology of different tales...
, Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs, Downstairs is a British drama television series originally produced by London Weekend Television and revived by the BBC. It ran on ITV in 68 episodes divided into five series from 1971 to 1975, and a sixth series shown on the BBC on three consecutive nights, 26–28 December 2010.Set in a...
, Inspector Morse
Inspector Morse (TV series)
Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis. Dexter makes a cameo appearance in all but three of the episodes....
, and Peak Practice
Peak Practice
Peak Practice is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale — a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District — and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time...
. He portrayed Herbert Pocket in the ITC
ITC Entertainment
The Incorporated Television Company was a British television company largely involved in production and distribution. It was founded by Lew Grade.-History:...
remake
Remake
A remake is a piece of media based primarily on an earlier work of the same medium.-Film:The term "remake" is generally used in reference to a movie which uses an earlier movie as the main source material, rather than in reference to a second, later movie based on the same source...
of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's Great Expectations
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
(1974).
In later years Ray was a committed member of Equity
British Actors' Equity Association
Equity is the trade union for actors, stage managers and models in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1930 by a group of West End performers....
and served as a Councillor of the Actors' union.
Andrew Ray died at the age of 64, in 2003 from a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
. His brother Robin Ray
Robin Ray
Robin Ray was an English actor, musician and broadcaster, the son of comedian Ted Ray and the brother of actor Andrew Ray.-Career:...
was a well-known television and radio personality, who died in 1998, also at the age of 64.
External links
- Andrew Ray, official memorial site.
- Andrew Ray at the Internet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...