The Mausoleum Club Forum

I remember seeing Keith Michell in his wonderful role as Henry VIII in the BBC drama series. He then went on to play the same character in the movie of the series. It was brilliant when he reprised the role a third time almost 25 years later in the tv series 'The Prince and the Pauper'. Ian Holm also played the role of Napoleon in several unrelated movies over the period of about half a century as well.

Are there any other actors who played the same character in unrelated tv/films?

Michael Sheard played Hitler in; The Tomorrow People, Rogue Male, Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...

Robert Hardy numerous times (6?) as Winston Churchill.

I'm sure I've posted this elsewhere, but John Barrie and William Gaunt also appeared as Sergeant Cork and Detective Constable Marriott in one of N. F. Simpson's Four Tall Tinkles on BBC 2 in 1967.

marsey wrote:I remember seeing Keith Michell in his wonderful role as Henry VIII in the BBC drama series. He then went on to play the same character in the movie of the series. It was brilliant when he reprised the role a third time almost 25 years later in the tv series 'The Prince and the Pauper'.

He also appeared as Henry VIII in a Chichester Theatre revival of Shakespeare's play in 1991 - with Dorothy Tutin, Tony Britton, Christopher Timothy, Benjamin Whitrow, Fiona Fullerton and Ruthie Henshall. Thats what I call a starry cast!

I can't remember her name, but there was that actress who was the Queen's double and would pop up if a comedy or sketch programme (esp. The Goodies) needed the Queen. Not sure if this counts though.

Billy Smart wrote:

marsey wrote:I remember seeing Keith Michell in his wonderful role as Henry VIII in the BBC drama series. He then went on to play the same character in the movie of the series. It was brilliant when he reprised the role a third time almost 25 years later in the tv series 'The Prince and the Pauper'.

He also appeared as Henry VIII in a Chichester Theatre revival of Shakespeare's play in 1991 - with Dorothy Tutin, Tony Britton, Christopher Timothy, Benjamin Whitrow, Fiona Fullerton and Ruthie Henshall. Thats what I call a starry cast!

Wow, would love to have seen that.

Cole wrote:I can't remember her name, but there was that actress who was the Queen's double and would pop up if a comedy or sketch programme (esp. The Goodies) needed the Queen. Not sure if this counts though.

Jeanette Charles?

Tim Scrafton wrote: Robert Hardy numerous times (6?) as Winston Churchill.

He also played him in a West End musical!

Mary Reynolds, the poor man's Jeanette Charles as Her Maj in Doctor Who - Silver Nemesis and Michael Winner's Bullseye!
Janet Brown as Thatcher in For Your Eyes Only, TOTP, Mike Yarwood, Election '79, and John Wells as Denis in FYEO, Anyone for Denis?, About Face, a Basil Brush panto.
Julian Glover as Richard Couer De Lion in Dr Who and Ivanhoe. Both Camfield.

Patrick Macnee as bowler-hatted, umbrella-wielding British secret agent "S" in The Hardy Boys. Guy DOleman in Murder, She Wrote as a Chief of British Intelligence - codename Corsair who was either his Number 6 or Colonel Ross from the Harry Palmer films, likely the latter, possibly both.

Roger Moore as James Bond in Mainly Millicent - in 1964.

Huw Edwards appears in both Doctor Who and Skyfall - therefore he is the first actor/character to appear in both franchises, thereby semi-officially linking the two. Sadly, Who has Bond as fiction, but then it also hinted as Who itself being fiction in the world, in Remembrance of the Daleks.
Similarly, Kenneth Kendall played a sort of future version of himself in 2001 - A Space Odyssey and as himself in Doctor Who.
And Gordon Honeycombe links the Professionals, the Fourth Protocol, the Medusa Touch, Castaway, the Gentle Touch and Bullseye! among others (plus Bullseye could be argued as being in the Whoniverse, as Mary Reynolds - Britain's second-most famous Queen lookalike plays the Queen in both Bullseye! and the Who story Silver Nemesis)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0860285/ Also Jeremy Thompson of Sky has varied credits.

From Gallifreybase
Howard K. Smith played himself in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS, THE PURSUIT OF D.B. COOPER, NASHVILLE, THE CANDIDATE, "The Bionic Woman", a deleted scene in the Pink Panther Strikes Again, "V - the miniseries" (1983), and "V - the TV series" (1984-85).

Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche in Trading Places/Coming to America.


Ken Tobey as his Thing character, Hendry in the Naked Monster.

Dick Miller as Walter Paisley from A Bucket of Blood in various.

And Dan Aykroyd as Ray in Ghostbusters and Casper. Dirk Bogarde turns up as Dr Simon Sparrow in 'We joined the navy', Bruce Willis as John McClane appears in 'Loaded Weapon 1' and Cushing and Lee as Frankenstein and Dracula make an appearance in 'One more Time'.

John Laurie played Ebenezer Balfour in both the 1956 BBC version of Kidnapped and the 1960 Disney film version.

Charles Gray as Mycroft in The Seven Per Cent Solution.

Buddy Ebsen cameos in The Beverley Hillbillies movie - as Barnaby Jones.

Also, I think the Sharif assassin in Pink Panther Strikes Again/Tamarind Seed character is Agent Cedric in Top Secret!

Jim Mckrell as news reporter 'Lew Landers' appears in both The Howling and Gremlins.

Patrick Macnee was Dr Watson to both Roger Moore and Christopher Lee (who played two different versions of Holmes)

Peter Cushing played three different versions of Sherlock Holmes (TV series, film, TV Movie)

Kevin McCarthy turns up as his Invasion of the Bodysnatchers character Bennell in the original, the remake and 'Looney Tunes - Back in Action'

And Douglas Wilmer reprised Sherlock in"The Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother".
Christopher Plummer also played Holmes in Silver Blaze (1977) before he did Murder By Decree (with Frank Finlay reprising his role of Lestrade from A Study in Terror and Hilary Sesta playing the same prostitute she did in Barlow and Watt - Jack the Ripper). In Silver Blaze his Watson was played by Thorley Walters, who also played Watson in Smarter Brother, The Deadly Necklace and the Best House in London!



Hattie Jacques as Matron in the Carry Ons, though none of them are in the same continuity, apart from Carry On Doctor and Camping. She claims that she was working in a hospital in her last job and the doctor looked just like Kenneth Williams' headmaster...

Olive crossing from On the Buses to Rag Trade. But not quite in canon.

Cannon ( William Conrad) in "Barnaby Jones", and Mannix ( Mike Connors) in "Diagnosis Murder", which featured footage from an original "Mannix" episode.

Stratford Johns and Derek Newark as Barlow and Tucker in the first edition of the 75 "Two Ronnies" series.

George White wrote:Janet Brown as Thatcher in For Your Eyes Only, TOTP, Mike Yarwood, Election '79, and John Wells as Denis in FYEO, Anyone for Denis?, About Face, a Basil Brush panto.

Steve Nallon, the Spitting Image voice of Thatcher, also played her "in the flesh" in The New Statesman.

Simon Callow has played Charles Dickens on TV in An Audience with Charles Dickens and Doctor Who (twice), on stage, plus a couple of feature films.

Russell Hunter played Mr Stabs in Ace of Wands and Shadows.

If we extend to TV-to-film and vice versa, there's Glenda Jackson playing Elizabeth I in Elizabeth R and Mary, Queen of Scots. Donald Pleasance played Syme in the 1954 BBC Nineteen Eighty-Four, then appeared in the 1956 film version as Parsons, an amalgamation of that character and Syme.

Richard Greene played Robin Hood in both The Adventures of Robin Hood and Sword of Sherwood Forest.

More of an obscure coincidence, but after Ron Pember's turn as a London Underground ticket collector in a lift at Aldwych station in Death Line, he later appeared in Rogue Male as.... a London Underground ticket collector in a lift at Aldwych station.

Didn't Matlock turn up in Murder She Wrote or some similar series?

Don't know if this is relevant but I remember Stephen Lewis playing the part of a park keeper in the film, The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins". Pure Blakely in all but name!

Didn't Christopher Benjamin play the Potter character in at least one episode of, "Danger Man" and, "The Prisoner" episode, "The Girl Who Was Death"?

stearn wrote:Didn't Matlock turn up in Murder She Wrote or some similar series?

Magnum crossed with Murder She Wrote - maybe that is what you are thinking of?

Stephen Lewis plays the same character in 'Sparrows Can't Sing', which is from his own play.

Ronnie Barker played Lord Rustless in both LWT's Hark at Barker and the BBC's His Lordship Entertains. The rest of the cast play the same characters so it may be thought of as the show moving, but I think the premise was altered too, hard to tell as only one BBC episode still exists.

Howard Lang as Churchill in the Winds of War (replaced by Robert Hardy in War and Remembrance) and Jane.

Couple of actors apparently have "DOCTOR WATSON" written on their foreheads. It's just that it eludes me right now which ones they appeared in. (Actually John Cleese played Sherlock twice as well, but that's coincidence.)

I got my cheesy US crime drama wrong, it was Diagnosis Murder that Matlock turned up in, not Murder, She Wrote.

It would seem that to stem falling ratings, Diagnosis Murder did a lot of crossover guest starring, including Barbara Bain from Mission Impossible.

Previous thread on crossovers: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3241

Thorley Walters, that's a returning Doctor Watson.

Focus II wrote:Don't know if this is relevant but I remember Stephen Lewis playing the part of a park keeper in the film, The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins". Pure Blakely in all but name!

That's more a case of them getting him to play the same schtick he was famous for at the time, the same as his appearance as an ARP warden in The Krays.

Probably the most successful example of characters created for a specific film taking on lives of their own, are Basil Radford's and Naunton Wayne's characters Charters and Caldicott......they turn up in cameos and in more important roles in many later films, eventually having to change the character names (But not the characters themselves) because Launder and Gilliatt owned the rights to them, and eventually several radio series, until Radford's death in mid-production, 15 years after making their film debuts.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charters_and_Caldicott

I remember an episode of, "The Sweeney" featuring Russell Hunter as Popeye. Think it might have been the series 2 episode, "Stay Lucky Eh?"

Hunter's portrayal of Popeye was pure Lonely from, "Callan" in all but name.

John Altkin played the young Frank Skinner in the first, "Timeslip" story. He also appeared as Frank in some episodes of, "A Family At War" which might have been purely coincidental!