Biography

Excellent British character actor who played in the theater from 1939 to 1986 ("French Without Tears", "Othello" [as "the Moor", a role he had already played at the age of seventeen in a school production], "She Stoops to Conquer", "Jeeves"...) and also appeared in scores of movies, TV movies and TV series. Often cast as aristocratic types, he is best remembered for his role as "Pistol" in Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1965). On TV, among many others, he starred as P.G. Wodehouse's famous valet "Jeeves" in Thank You, P.G. Wodehouse (1981), co-starred with Robin Bailey in the mini-series Charters & Caldicott (1985) and was a picturesque "Professor Digory Kirke" in the television version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1988).
- IMDb mini biography by: Guy Bellinger

The son of a doctor, he was educated at Watford Grammar School and Gresham School Holt, where he took his first steps on the stage. He was determined on that as his chosen career and got a part in every show that the school's dramatic society put on. Ben Travers was one of the school governors and Michael buttonholed him after one performance, asking him if he thought a stage career was a good choice. He got a less than satisfactory recommendation. Undeterred, as soon as he left school, Michael joined the local rep and made his debut at the Palace Theatre in Watford in August 1939 in French Without Tears. Theatre ambitions were soon interrupted by war service as an RAF rear gunner, observer and navigator in South and East Africa. Demobbed in 1946, he went back into rep where he built the foundations of a solid career. In 1950, he joined the Old Vic, playing in classics by Shakespeare, Goldsmith and Moliere, underpinning this with a season at the Bristol Old Vic in 1951/52. At one time, he was rarely out of the West End, except by choice, for seasons at Stratford and Chichester, He also appeared on television, in particular as the wastrel Rollo Aspen in the H. E. Bates serial Love For Lydia in 1977 and as the retired headmaster Seynour Utterthwaite in Last of the Summer Wine. Away from work, he enjoyed sailing his 25 ft sloop out of Chichester, were he lived for some years before moving to Greenwich. He married Kirsten Rowntree, with whom he had three daughters.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tonyman 5

Had a 25 foot Bermudan sloop in which he did regular trips to the Channel Islands.

He was a skillful carpenter.

His main interests were sailing, market gardening, watching cricket and playing tennis, and he also liked to make his own bread and jam.