Date of Birth: 20 August 1909
Place of Birth: St. Pancras, London, England, UK
Date of Death: 28 November 1978
Place of Death: London, England, UK
Main Occupations: actor
Also Known As: Cecil André Mesritz
A British actor, popular with Hammer Film Productions who cast him in many of the 1960s films. The first choice to play the eponymous scientist in Nigel Kneale’s television drama The Quatermass Experiment (1953), he turned the offer down and did so again when he was invited to take the part in the sequel Quatermass II (1955). He eventually appeared as Bernard Quatermass in the third television production, Quatermass and the Pit (1958) though he declined to appear in Hammer’s 1967 big screen adaptation. Outside the genre, his most famous roles are arguably as Colonel Green in David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and as Lord Gustavus Adolphus Wendover in Stabley Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975). He was married to actress Joan Greenwood and their son Jason is also an actor.
Genre Filmography
- Wuthering Heights (1948) – actor (Hindley Earnshaw)
- Seven Days to Noon (1950) – actor (Superintendant Holland) [as Andre Morell]
- Stolen Face (1952) – actor (David) [as Andre Morell]
- Three Cases of Murder (1953) – actor (Dr Audlin) [as Andre Morell]
- Sunday Night Theatre: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954a) – actor (O’Brien)
- Sunday Night Theatre: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954b) – actor (O’Brien)
- The Black Knight (1954) – actor (Sir Ontzlake) [as Andre Morell]
- Quatermass and the Pit (1958-1959) – actor (Professor Bernard Quatermass)
- Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959) – actor (Prof James Pickford) [as Andre Morell]
- Ben-Hur (1959) – actor (Sextus)
- The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) – actor (Doctor Watson) [as Andre Morell]
- Invisible Man: Man in Power (1959) – actor (General Shafari) [as Andre Morell]
- One Step Beyond: The Avengers (1961) – actor (General Guenther Haitmann) [as Andre Morell]
- The Shadow of the Cat (1961) – actor (Walter Venable) [as Andre Morell]
- The Avengers: Death of a Batman (1963) – actor (Lord Basil Teale) [as Andre Morell]
- The Avengers: Death at Bargain Prices (1965) – actor (Horatio Kane) [as Andre Morell]
- She (1965) – actor (Haumeid) [as Andre Morell; dubbed by George Pastell]
- Doctor Who: The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve (1966) – actor (Marshall Tavannes)
- The Plague of the Zombies (1966) – actor (Sir James Forbes)
- The Mummy’s Shroud (1967) – actor (Sir Basil Walden) [as Andre Morell]
- The Vengeance of She (1967) – actor (Kassim)
- Julius Caesar (1970) – actor (Cicero) [as Andre Morell]
- The Man and the Snake (1972) – actor (Dr Druring)
- The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976) – actor (bride’s father) [as Andre Morell]
- The Lord of the Rings (1978) – actor (Voice of Elrond) [as Andre Morell]
References
Periodicals
- Ciné-Revue vol.58 no.52 (28 December 1978) p.68 – obituary
- International Film Collector no.25 (March 1979) p.20 – obituary
- Little Shoppe of Horrors no.3 (February 1974) pp.13-14 – interview
- Screen International no.167 (2 December 1978) p.28 – obituary
- Shivers no.28 (April 1996) pp.4-7 – illustrated article (by Jonathan Rigby)
- Television Today 7 December 1978 p.19 – obituary
