Colin Jeavons

Ubiquitous British actor who has excelled as deceptively mild-mannered characters in 1960s and 70s BBC literary adaptations. His first foray of note into this genre was as the unprincipled, hedonistic cad George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice (1958). A particular favorite for Dickensian parts, Jeavons was value-for-money as Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1959), as the feckless Jarndyce ward Richard Carstone in Bleak House (1959), the ever so 'umble' Uriah Heep in David Copperfield (1966) (often regarded as the definitive portrayal of one of literature's most insidious characters) and as the disreputable attorney Sampson Brass in The Old Curiosity Shop (1979). Jeavons returned in later iterations of Great Expectations (1981) and Masterpiece Theatre: Bleak House (1985), this time, respectively, as the dour, but kind-hearted legal clerk Wemmick and as the austere, manipulative solicitor Vhol, representing Richard Carstone in Chancery. Other endeavours on the classical scene saw Jeavons as Henry V in BBC's The Life and Death of Sir John Falstaff (1959), the Tudor noble Robert Clifford in The Shadow of the Tower (1972), lawyer Briggs in Jane Eyre (1983) and as the master criminal Professor Moriarty in The Baker Street Boys (1983). He also made a very lively (and considerably less obtuse) Inspector Lestrade in several episodes of Granada's acclaimed series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984). Novelist and Holmes expert David Stuart Davies extolled Jeavons' performance, saying "Lestrade was played with great panache throughout the Granada series by Colin Jeavons, who humanised and enhanced Doyle's sketchy portrait of the Inspector." Elsewhere, Jeavons has played fashion designers, undertakers, shop owners, civil servants, military officers, policemen and an unending array of clerics (including on the big screen in films like The Oblong Box (1969), Bartleby (1970) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)). For the stage, he portrayed the Reverend Tooker in a 1988 National Theatre production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. One of the most versatile of character players, able to change his features from immobile to expressive and from doleful to amiable, Jeavons has branched out into diverse genres, including science fiction (for instance, as the comedian Max Quordlepleen, host of the 'Restaurant at the End of the Universe' in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) and as the Atlantean surgeon Damon in the early Doctor Who (1963) instalment The Underwater Menace). His performance as the ill-fated child Donald in Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills (an episode of the anthology series Play for Today (1970)), has often been singled out by critics and reviewers as his best. Jeavons also stood out in the role of Tim Stamper in the original British version of House of Cards (1990), a role he reprised for the sequel To Play the King (1993). He has performed in various capacities --either as a character or as storyteller-- in multiple episodes of the long-running children's series Jackanory (1965). Colin Abel Jeavons began on stage in a 1946 Birmingham production of Twelfth Night. From 1956 to 1957, he appeared in several plays for the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company. He has also performed with the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was married to the ballet dancer Rosie Jeavons who passed away in 2018. Jeavons has been retired from acting since 1993.