Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE (31 May 1922 – 6 October 1992) was an English film, television and theatre actor with more than 120 film and television credits. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. In the 1980s, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in three consecutive years (his first for Coleman in Trading Places), the only actor ever to have achieved this. He is perhaps best known for portraying Dr. Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
Susan Robinson (m. 1962–1992), Virginia McKenna (m. 1954–1957)
Children
Jennifer Elliott, Mark Elliott
Awards
Guggenheim Fellowship for Social Sciences, US & Canada
TV Shows
Bangkok Hilton, Bleak House, The Man In Room 17, Follow the Yellow Brick Road
Star Sign
Gemini
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Quote
1
[on RADA] I was asked to leave. They said I had no talent. I disliked it intensely there. It was all filled with acting students who thought they were so grand and knew it all. It made me feel ridiculously stupid.
2
I always think instinct is more interesting than anything you can think up. I mistrust and am rather bored with actors who are of the Stanislavski school who think about detail. God almighty. Children just do it when they act. I think we should too - jump in and do it.
3
[on Trading Places (1983)] My agent said, 'If you accept the terms of the contract they are offering you, they will despise you. I know the Americans. You are not asking for enough money or first-class transportation or a very good hotel. Your per diem is ridiculous and your billing is non-existent.' Five days later they came back with double everything. I had a flight on the Concorde, the best hotel, star billing, everything. There's sort of a gratitude in their eyes that you got twice the amount of cash out of them because they think they are buying something. If they think they got you cheap, they are worried about it.
4
[on A Murder of Quality (1991)] I thought Guinness [Alec Guinness] was brilliant as Smiley. But I thought he was very, very dry. I decided to play him far more eccentric and with as much comedy as I could.
5
I think you can be terribly overexposed. I've been always very careful in my career to do theatre, it takes you out of the television eye and people are glad to see you back again. I mean if you're on every week...one week last year I was on I think five times a week in different things, re-runs of films and plays and things.
6
[in 1974] Where I am at the moment I know that I could be - if I wished to be - a top-ranking star because I have the power and the technique, I think, to take on anyone and the only thing that has stopped me from being a top-ranking star is my desire to be - which I've never wanted. It's only recently have I achieved the weight to if I want to be. I mean I could go to Stratford and play Prospero, I could have taken a television series and built myself up and done all sorts of things but I don't. I like an anonymity and I like sort of in a sense being an amateur.
7
I love my freedom and I hate the demands that are made on you. I mean the number of jobs actually that I've turned down is incredible. If I took them all and pushed and was seen in the right places and did all that nonsense, I suppose one could become a top-ranking star. I think the price is too high, quite honestly.
8
I'm often given parts that aren't as big as they are colorful, but people remember them. When it's a minor or supporting role, you learn to make the most of what you're given. I can make two lines seem like 'Hamlet'.
9
I like actors - such as Margaret Rutherford and Peter Lorre - who aren't afraid to over-act like real people. When I take a job I can always come up with ten different ways of doing the part. But I'll always choose the flashiest one. You've got to dress the window a bit.
On the list of possible actors for the roles of Fallanda, Bukovsky, Dr. Armstrong, and Sir Percy in Lifeforce (1985).
7
Due to Elliott's scene-stealing abilities, Gabriel Byrne, his co-star in Defense of the Realm (1986), once joked "never act with children, dogs, or Denholm Elliott".
8
In the 1980s, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in three consecutive years, the only actor ever to have achieved this.
9
He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) but was asked to leave after one term. As Elliott later recalled: "They wrote to my mother and said, 'Much as we like the little fellow, he's wasting your money and our time. Take him away!'".
10
Performed (with Joss Ackland) the first gay kiss seen on a West End stage in John Mortimer's play "Bermondsey" in 1971.
11
His daughter Jennifer was addicted to heroin and she hanged herself 2003.
12
Has a son named Mark.
13
His wife Susan, born March 7th, 1942 in Cleveland, died from injuries from a fire in her one bedroom flat April 12, 2007 in north London. Her neighbour, journalist Rob Lyons, tried to save her during the fire and was able to move her from her wheelchair down to the street waiting for the ambulance to arrive, she died a day later.
14
Father was Myles Layman Elliott and mother Nina Mitchell.
15
Rather than recast the role of Marcus Brody in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), director Steven Spielberg and writer David Koepp created a new character, Charles Stanforth, played by Jim Broadbent. The passing of Marcus Brody is acknowledged several times in the film, with a portrait of him hanging in the hallway outside Indy's classroom, a statue of him in a University courtyard, and a malt shop named "Brody's.".
16
Some sources state that he acquired the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion. However, his widow Susan documented their open marriage and her husband's bisexuality in her book "Denholm Elliott: Quest for Love", published two years after his death.
$500,000
