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Charles Gray


Charles Gray was a Bournemouth born actor who has the distinction of appearing in two James Bond films playing different characters. He was arch-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in  Diamonds Are For Ever and British intelligence officer Dikko Henderson in You Only Live  Twice. Born in August 1928, the son of a surveyor, he went to the same Bournemouth school as Benny Hill. The comedian was evacuated to Bournemouth during the war.

Raised in Queen’s Park, Gray left his estate agent job to become an actor. He received voice training from the Royal Shakespeare Company and it was his voice which became his most valuable tool. Gray used this to play eccentric toffs and suave villains with oily malice to great effect. By the mid-1950s, Charles Gray was taking leading roles. He dubbed for actor Jack Hawkins when Hawkins was unable to speak his lines due to throat cancer. Gray’s distinctive voice was regularly heard on television commercials. In the decade from 1968, he appeared in more than forty television and film productions which included playing Mycroft, the brother of Sherlock Holmes. In 1975, he was the presenter in the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Bournemouth’s Charles Gray, the ‘square-jawed, ultimate, silken-tongued baddie’, died on 7th May 2000 in London.

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