Tim Woodward, who has died of most cancers aged 70, was an actor nicely suited to authority roles – detectives, medical doctors and magistrates – and made his largest impression when he starred on tv as RAF officers in two dramas, Wings and Piece of Cake, set in wartime.
Satirically, in his youthful days Woodward had rebelled in opposition to Officer Coaching Corps classes at Haileybury faculty and persuaded his dad and mom – the actors Edward Woodward and Venetia Barrett – to take him out of faculty earlier than he could possibly be expelled.
However Woodward had modified his views barely by the point he discovered fame. “I’m a member of CND, however that doesn’t suggest I’m a pacifist,” he stated in 1988. “Generally, one must combat for justice and freedom. I’m not within the jingoistic perspective in direction of patriotism, however I like my nation simply as a lot as the following man.”
He shot to fame in Wings (1977-78) within the lead function of 2nd Lieutenant Alan Farmer, a blacksmith turned fighter pilot serving within the Royal Flying Corps in the course of the first world conflict. It gave Woodward the prospect to take to the skies in a Tiger Moth. At one level Alan was believed useless after being shot down over France, however by the second collection, he had been promoted to sergeant, resented by different officers due to his class and by NCOs for his promotion. When Woodward took certainly one of his three bikes to Dublin and broke his leg in “a bit accident”, his damage was written into the story, with Alan shot within the leg.
A decade later, the actor was donning flying goggles once more to play the charismatic however conceited Squadron Chief Rex in Piece of Cake (1988). Based mostly on Derek Robinson’s novel in regards to the fictitious Hornet squadron, it coated the primary 12 months of the second world conflict as much as the Battle of Britain in 1940. “He brings the squadron collectively into an efficient unit,” stated Woodward of his character.
A scarcity of airworthy Hurricanes, the aircraft that had featured within the e-book, meant that Spitfires have been used on display. This time, they have been piloted by the previous Crimson Arrows show staff chief Ray Hanna and others, though Woodward and fellow forged members simulated flight in a rig spinning spherical and spherical, and the other way up. “It was unusual – very like a hangover!” he recalled. “It’s not straightforward making an attempt to recollect your strains the other way up.”
As Wings had accomplished, Piece of Cake portrayed the issues of sophistication divisions and snobbery because the pilots sat by the “phoney conflict” in France till German bombing hit western Europe.
There was class friction once more within the 1987 drama collection A Killing on the Alternate, during which Woodward starred as John Discipline, a comprehensive-educated British service provider banker competing with an American billionaire’s son for a prime job.
Starring roles subsequently eluded Woodward, however he turned a prolific character actor throughout British tv channels.
He was born in London, the primary little one of Venetia (nee Collett), who acted beneath the title Barrett, and Edward Woodward.
Like his siblings, Peter and Sarah, Tim adopted his dad and mom into appearing. He spent two years as an assistant stage supervisor at Richmond theatre, Surrey, then educated at Rada. Whereas there, he efficiently screen-tested in Italy with Liza Minnelli for a movie to be directed by Franco Zeffirelli that was by no means made. He briefly returned to Rada however left earlier than his remaining time period to affix the Residents theatre firm in Glasgow.
He made his display debut – directed by Joseph Losey – within the movie Galileo (1975) because the younger noble Ludovico Marsili, one of many scientist and thinker’s college students. In the identical 12 months, in a BBC adaptation of Arnold Wesker’s play Chips With Every part, he was Pip Thompson, the nationwide service RAF conscript and privately educated idealist eager to keep away from officer coaching.
After Wings, Woodward had good starring roles in two miniseries: a 1982 TV model of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Cousin Phillis, as Edward Holdsworth, a railway engineer competing for the love of the clergyman-farmer’s daughter of the title; and The File on Jill Hatch, a 1983 racial drama, as a police officer dealing with misconduct expenses after serving to his black American niece in the course of the Brixton riots.
Later, he performed a detective in Homicide Metropolis (2004-06); the US military interrogator John Amen within the drama-documentary collection Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial (2006); the husband of a lady who dies in a automobile crash with one other man in With out You (2011); Musker, the division retailer’s monetary backer, within the first collection of Mr Selfridge (2013); a corrupt police officer in Mad Canines (2011-13); and Sir Marion Carew in Jekyll and Hyde (2015).
In cleaning soap operas, he performed John Thompson – an accountant taking cost of his lacking brother’s affairs – within the first 12 months of Households (1990-91) and a bishop for a brief run within the second Crossroads revival (2003).
Woodward, his son Sam and his father teamed as much as play three generations of a gangster household in The Invoice in 2008. He had beforehand appeared alongside his father in a 1989 episode of The Equalizer.
His different movie roles included Felix Younger in The Europeans (1979).
In 1997, Woodward married Amanda Smith. She and their three youngsters, Might, Gabriel and Dylan, survive him, together with Sam, his son from an earlier relationship, with the actor Jan Chappell, Sybil, his daughter from a relationship with Kate Barnwell, and his brother and sister.
