Film, stage actor Scofield dies

LONDON (AP)—Paul Scofield, a commanding stage and screen actor indelibly stamped on filmgoers’ minds as the doomed philosopher-statesman Sir Thomas More in “A Man For All Seasons,” has died at age 86.

Agent Rosalind Chatto said Thursday that Scofield died in a hospital near his home in southern England. He had been suffering from leukemia and died Wednesday.

Scofield won an Academy Award and international fame for the 1966 film “A Man For All Seasons,” in which he played the Tudor statesman and author of “Utopia” executed for treason in 1535 after clashing with King Henry VIII.

He followed that breakthrough with relatively few film roles. Scofield was a stage actor by inclination and by his gifts, a dramatic, craggy face and an unforgettable voice likened to a Rolls-Royce starting up or the sound rumbling out of low organ pipes in an ancient crypt.

Even Scofield’s greatest screen role was a follow-up to a play, the London stage production of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” in which he starred for nine months. Scofield then turned in a performance in the 1961 New York production that won him extraordinary reviews and a Tony Award.

Scofield was a family man who lived almost his whole life within a few miles of his birthplace in southern England and hurried home after work to his wife and children. He didn’t seek the spotlight, gave interviews sparingly and, at times, seemed to need coaxing to venture out even onto the stage he loved.

David Paul Scofield was born Jan. 21, 1922, son of the village schoolmaster in Hurstpierpoint, eight miles from the southern coast of England. He married actress Joy Parker in 1943. He is survived by his wife and children.