Roy Dotrice, OBE, (born 26 May 1923) is a British actor. He fought in World War II as part of the Royal Air Force and spent four years in a German prisoner of war camp. He began acting upon his return to England. He achieved critical success as John Aubrey in the one-man play Brief Lives, beginning in 1965. Dotrice played the role in 1,782 performances over several decades, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the greatest number of solo performances by an actor in a play. He also achieved critical acclaim for his portrayal of Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in the high-acclaimed and successful 1984 movie Amadeus. He was made a Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 Honours List.
Dotrice began a long-running relationship with the science fiction and fantasy genre by playing the role of Commissioner Simmons in two episodes of Space 1999 in 1975. He would go on to appear in genre and near-genre shows such as Picket Fences, Sliders, Angel, Babylon 5 and Hercules:The Legendary Journeys. His most recent major genre role was as King Balor in the 2008 film Hellboy II: The Golden Army, where all of his dialogue was in Gaelic.
Dotrice first met George R.R. Martin whilst they were both working on the 1988 TV series Beauty and the Beast. Dotrice played the role of Father, the leader of an underground community, whilst Martin worked on the show as a writer, script-editor and producer. They became friends and Martin later asked Dotrice to read the audiobook editions of his Song of Ice and Fire novels. Dotrice read the first three and the fifth books in the series, although was unable to work on the fourth due to time commitments. Dotrice is thus the actor most familiar with the source material for Game of Thrones upon his casting. His role in reading the audiobooks has since earned him a second Guinness World Record, this time for the largest number of characters voiced in an audiobook.
In the series Dotrice was originally hired to play Grand Maester Pycelle. George R.R. Martin confirmed his casting on 23 June 2010. Unfortunately, Dotrice suffered from health problems which necessitated a four-month convalescent period, just before production was due to begin. As a result Dotrice had to withdraw from the series and was replaced by Julian Glover, a former colleague of his from a previous project. Martin and the production team were hopeful of finding another role for Dotrice to play further down the line, and on 7 August 2011 Martin was able to confirm that Dotrice would indeed be playing the role of Hallyne in Season 2 instead[1].
See also
- Roy Dotrice's Wikipedia entry.
- Roy Dotrice's entry at the Internent Movie Database.
- Roy Dotrice's official website.