Ryall continued to be a regular face in the theatre, but his film and TV career took off and his face is very familiar from work in TV shows including The Village, The Singing Detective, Holby City, Morse, Goodnight Sweetheart, Trollied, and the original version of House Of Cards. He also played Churchill three times in separate television projects.
His film career was equally varied with roles in The Elephant Man, Around the World in 80 Days, and Truly, Madly, Deeply. In recent years, he was particularly well known for his role as the Grandfather in Outnumbered and for his cameo as Elphias Doge in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
He was an actor with ‘twinkling charm’ and a ‘lightness and musicality’ to his voice, and his final film part was a wonderful role in Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet where he and Trevor Peacock regale an audience with Are You Havin' Any Fun imploring them to live life to the full. What better epitaph for a man who loved what he did, and was in turn loved by all who worked with him.
David Ryall, 08 March 1930 - 25 December 2014.
A tribute from Edward Kemp
I had the immense privilege of working with David twice in the 1990s. The first time was at the RSC where he played God in a version of the medieval Mystery Plays I adapted for Katie Mitchell. David in many ways not only led the company but became the spirit of the production: provocative, thoughtful, joyous, mischievous; his God, whom one could easily imagine making Creation in his shed out of old bits of bicycle, a tea chest and some Swarfega, was quite literally wonder-full.
He displayed the same mixture of gruffness and twinkle as Charon the ferryman of the Dead in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love in which I later worked with him at the National. Around these experiences we developed a vibrant correspondence – we were the only two members of the Mystery cast who were regularly on email (it was the mid 90s) – and plotted numerous future projects. I was so pleased that he did finally get to play Lear – though sorry I didn’t get to direct him in it.
Character actor with a distinguished stage, TV and film career that included a Harry Potter cameo
Article by Michael Coveney for The Guardian.
David Ryall, who has died aged 79, was one of the most distinguished character actors at the National Theatre over many years, playing important roles for successive artistic directors, Laurence Olivier and Peter Hall, in the 1970s and 80s, and appearing in the premieres of plays by Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Peter Shaffer, Adrian Mitchell, Peter Nichols and Simon Gray.
And as do many character actors today, he wore the Harry Potter label, appearing in the seventh of the eight films, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One (2010), as Dumbledore’s friend Elphias Doge, who greets Harry at the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour before he “disapparates” in the mayhem caused by the Death Eaters. But even in this cameo, you can see the twinkling charm of the actor, and gauge the lightness and musicality of his voice, which emanated from a benign, rubbery visage that could all the same cloud and harden with darker emotions.
He was familiar in patrician, or grandfatherly, roles in the most adventurous series on television in the last few decades: suffering from dementia as Claire Skinner’s father, Frank, in the semi-improvised family comedy series Outnumbered; as patriotic Eric in Goodnight Sweetheart starring a time-travelling Nicholas Lyndhurst; or as old Bert, who recounts his life in a series of flashbacks, in The Village, starring John Simm and Maxine Peake.
He last appeared at the National in 2011, when he played a wry, decrepit Feste in Peter Hall’s 80th birthday present production of Twelfth Night, with Hall’s daughter, Rebecca, as Viola. The theory was that this Feste might have been a defrocked priest in a former life; he certainly came with a lot of buried baggage, and made it tell.
And having once played Gloucester, beautifully, to the King Lear of Oliver Ford Davies at the Almeida theatre in 2002, he signed off as Lear himself in a low-key fringe production at the Cockpit theatre, London, in March 2014. This was a remarkable performance. Recovering from a course of chemotherapy, Ryall played the monarch with a script in hand, and with his daughters in the cast, as his carers, almost: Imogen was the doctor, and Charlie, the younger sibling, was a touching Cordelia.
As Lear, he entered in a wheelchair. At the end, he put Cordelia in the same chair and died with his head in her lap, letting the script, at last, fall to the floor, all passion spent. At the time of this performance, he described in the Guardian the effect Olivier had had on him in their years of working together: “When he left the room, it was as if all the furniture went with him. Nothing was left behind.”
The only child of John, a clerical worker with P&O, and Gladys, he was born in Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, and went to Shoreham grammar school. David joined the merchant navy for a brief while but his father, noting his enthusiasm for amateur dramatics, encouraged him to try for drama school. He won a scholarship to Rada in 1962, appeared in repertory theatre in Salisbury, joined the National in 1965 on a year’s contract and stayed for eight. He appeared in Stoppard’s Jumpers and Shaffer’s The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Nichols’s The National Health and Carl Zuckmayer’s The Captain of Köpenick, in which Paul Scofield gave one of his greatest performances.
In 1973, he joined Peter O’Toole for a season at the Bristol Old Vic, appearing in Shaw’s The Apple Cart and Ben Travers’s Plunder, while becoming increasingly busy on television in such series as The Pallisers in 1974 (he played Sexton Parker) and, later on, Lovejoy, Casualty, The Bill, Doctors, The Singing Detective, Prime Suspect, Inspector Morse and Holby City.
Back at the National, and now on the South Bank, he featured in Richard Eyre’s glorious revival of Guys and Dolls in 1982, as well as Eyre’s production, in the same year, of The Beggar’s Opera with Imelda Staunton and Paul Jones, followed by a string of performances for Hall: as Sicinius Velutus in Ian McKellen’s magnificent Coriolanus in 1984, and in a masked, semi-anthropomorphic Animal Farm. He won the Clarence Derwent award for a supporting actor in 1985.
He played Winston Churchill three times in separate television projects, a jowly, rhetorical flourish easily encompassed. Everything he did, in fact, looked easy and unforced, and at the same time naturally funny.
When he switched horses from the National to the Royal Shakespeare Company, briefly, at the end of the 90s, he was an ideal Polonius in a strangely underrated Hamlet with Alex Jennings. He then embroiled himself in John Barton’s long simmering, never satisfactory Tantalus epic, directed by Hall, before returning to the National to play Herbert Wehner in Frayn’s Democracy ( in 2003, with Roger Allam as Willy Brandt), directed by Michael Blakemore.
Film roles included the Man with Whores in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), with Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt, George in Anthony Minghella’s Truly Madly Deeply (1990), the Mayor in Christopher Hampton’s Carrington (1995) and Lord Salisbury in Frank Coraci’s Around the World in Eighty Days (2004). His last film was Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet (2012), scripted by Ronald Harwood, in which he played a lovely Flanagan and Allen duet of Underneath the Arches with Trevor Peacock in a retirement home for old musicians.
He is survived by his third wife, Penny (nee England); by a son, Jonathan, a music manager, and daughter, Imogen, a jazz singer, from his first marriage, to Gillian Eddison, which ended in divorce; and by a daughter, Charlie, an actor, from his second marriage, to Cathy Buchwald, which ended in divorce.
David Ryall, actor, born 5 January 1935; died 25 December 2014.
David Ryall, right, with Trevor Peacock in Quartet (2012), his last film. (photo: Sportsphoto/Allstar/BBC)
Harry Potter actor David Ryall dies aged 79
Actor David Ryall, known for playing Elphias Doge in the Harry Potter Deathly Hallows film, has died aged 79.
The actor passed away on Christmas Day but no more information has been given.
Ryall had a five-decade career across film, TV and theatre, including in movie The Elephant Man and on TV, The Village and Outnumbered.
Daughter Charlie Ryall said: "Please take a moment to remember his huge five-decade-spanning career outside of the more well-known TV & film."
In a tweet, Sherlock writer Mark Gatiss called Ryall "a twinkling, brilliant, wonderful actor I was privileged to call a friend. RIP".
Gatiss directed Ryall in TV movie The Tractate Middoth in 2013.
Ryall replaced Peter Cartwright as Elphias Doge in 2010's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.
His character was a close friend of Albus Dumbledore in addition to being a Ministry of Magic jurist and an Order of the Phoenix member.
His other film roles included parts in 2004's Around the World in 80 Days, 1990's Truly, Madly, Deeply and 1980's The Elephant Man.
On TV, character actor Ryall appeared in many well-known shows including The Singing Detective, Holby City, Casualty, Midsomer Murders, Goodnight Sweetheart and the Andrew Davies version of House Of Cards.
Most recently, he was perhaps best known as Frank, the grandfather who suffers from dementia, in BBC comedy Outnumbered.
He is also recognisable to TV viewers as Britain's oldest man Old Bert, the narrator of BBC One's The Village, who recalls his life through a series of flashbacks.
He also appeared in the Sky One comedy Trollied and in BBC drama Our Girl.
On Twitter, fans and colleagues of the actor paid tribute.
"So very sad to read of the death of actor David Ryall may he RIP," said Colette Mayer.
TV writer David Brown said: "RIP David Ryall - one of the best Inspector Morse baddies. Derek Whittaker - driving test psycho who tried to knife Morse."
Actor Clive Merrison added: "I'm so sorry to hear David Ryall has died. He was a wonderful actor and a dear colleague."
Ryall began his career on the stage before becoming a familiar face on British TV.
He received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1962, during which time he won the Caryl Brahams Award for a musical.
Ryall went on to join Laurence Olivier's company with the National Theatre, during which time he was involved in several well-known plays, such as Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
His work at the National Theatre also included Guys and Dolls, The Beggar's Opera and Animal Farm, Coriolanus, The School of Wives, Democracy and The UN Inspector.
Ryall continued to be a regular face in the theatre, with appearances in Patrick Marber's Don Juan in Soho at the Donmar Warehouse in 2007.
Ryall is survived by his son, music manager Jonathan Ryall, and two daughters, singer Imogen Ryall and actress Charlie Ryall.
David Ryall with Claire Skinner in Outnumbered (photo: Hat Trick/BBC)
David Ryall: Celebrated stage actor who later gained wider recognition in the Harry Potter franchise and the sitcom 'Outnumbered'
Article by Simon Farquhar for The Independent.
He spent eight years at the National Theatre from 1965 and quickly established himself as a treasure in comic roles
Twinkle-eyed and brimming with mischief, the tireless character actor David Ryall played everything from classical buffoons (his Polonius for the RSC in 1997) to a jovial old God (The Mysteries at the Pit in 1998). His sweet-facedness could shade into menace quite alarmingly, and he was also a fine conveyor of honour and optimism. But it was as a comic actor that he scored his highest marks, most memorably playing provincial little men flailing in indignation.
David John Ryall was born in 1935 in Shoreham-by-Sea in Sussex. He was educated at grammar schools in Shoreham and Wallington, and at 21, he scored a new production of the Victorian melodrama The Drunkard, which, under the title Dear Father, Come Home, was performed by the Beddington, Carshalton and Wallington Operatic Society, for whom he also played the villain of the piece. The company went on to revive the work several times in later years.
He graduated from Rada in 1963, winning the Caryl Brahms Prize. His first professional work was as Smiler in a revival of Arnold Wesker's Chips with Everything at the Leicester Phoenix the following year; from there, he joined the Salisbury Arts Theatre, kicking off with an "agile, intelligent and able" Feste in Twelfth Night, and marrying fellow company member Gillian Eddison.
He spent eight years at the National Theatre from 1965, and quickly established himself as a treasure in comic roles, notably as a bumptious prompter in Trelawny of the Wells (1966), as Squire Sullen in George Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem the same year, and as Sir William Honeywood in a happy production of Goldsmith's The Good Natured Man (1971).
In 1972 Ryall formed a partnership with Michael Mundell, who had dramatized a selection of Dylan Thomas's unpublished letters and stage works as From Fern Hill to St Vincent. It played as a late-night show at the Bush Theatre in 1973; the pair then took The Late Late Dylan Thomas Show to the New End Theatre the following year, and performed Beyond Milk Wood at the Luton Library Theatre and the Greenwood Theatre in 1975. As the Barrellhouse Theatre Company, they performed it on a P&O cruise ship in 1980, as a triple-bill with a two-hander on Boswell and Johnson, and a miscellany of maritime words and music.
Taking a step outside of conventional theatre wasn't rare for Ryall, though: the cabaret Something Will Turn Up, based on David Copperfield, turned up at East London's Dickens Inn in 1977; the following year he played in Herrings and Brandy, a seaspray of anecdotes about smuggling and fishing at the Gardner Arts Centre as part of Brighton's seaside festival. The same year he returned again to the county of his birth to direct Turgenev's charming one-act play A Provincial Lady with the Brighton Actors' Workshop Company at the Sea House.
For the Bristol Old Vic he starred with Peter O'Toole in Shaw's The Apple Cart in 1974, and that Christmas in a Julian Slade musical, Out of Bounds. He joined Birmingham Rep in 1978, debuting as the Player in Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Ryall had appeared in the original National Theatre production in 1967, and in 1972 had originated the role of Inspector Bones in Stoppard's Jumpers). Two years later at Birmingham he was a sad, grand figure as Solness in Ibsen's The Master Builder.
His relationship with the National seemed untainted by an unhappy court case (which he lost) after he was injured during rehearsals for the musical flop Jean Seberg. As well as marking a century since the birth of P G Wodehouse by playing the writer in Words by Wodehouse (1982) on the Olivier stage, he was a sly Squealer in Sir Peter Hall's excellent Animal Farm at the Cottesloe in 1984, and a blustering Kroll in Ibsen's Rosmersholm there in 1987; that same year he was also an enjoyably roguish Arnolphe in Molière's The School for Wives at the Lyttleton. His final role for Hall was in a frightening, masked Bacchae in 2002.
He appeared twice as Lear, first at Birmingham in 1980, where he was much praised for his economy and control, even in rage, and again – after a heartbreaking Gloucester to Oliver Ford Davies' Lear at the Almeida in 2002 – in a final, extraordinary performance at the Cockpit Theatre nine months ago. Having undergone chemotherapy, he played the King wheelchair-bound and script in hand (until it dropped to the floor at his dying); his actress-daughter Charlie was poignantly cast and poignant in the performing as Cordelia.
His passport to immortality will be his role as Elphias Doge in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 in 2010, and his television work, which was colossal. Of the scores of performances, a couple worth singling out are the rough-round-the-edges newspaper editor in the House of Cards trilogy (Ryall is glorious as the biter-bit when he is blackmailed by Frances Urquhart over some incriminating photographs), and as the declining Grandad in the charming sitcom Outnumbered (2007). The character was something of a long-service medal for Ryall, coming on every now and again to steal a scene with one line – and utterly deserved.
David John Ryall, actor and director: born Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex 5 January 1935; married 1964 Gillian Eddison (one son, one daughter), 1985 Cathy Buchwald (one daughter); died 25 December 2014.
David Ryall alongside Diana Rigg in 1977's TV drama Celluloid Dreams.
