Henri Szeps, star of the ABC's Mother and Son, dies aged 81
Szeps played Robert Beare, a philandering, mustachioed dentist, opposite Garry McDonald and Ruth Cracknell from 1984 to 1994. He also starred in the racy soap opera Number 96; the medical dramas A Country Practice, GP and All Saints; and war drama Vietnam, in which he played prime minister Harold Holt opposite a young Nicole Kidman.
Szeps revealed during a 2021 television appearance with his son Josh that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He had lived in a residential care facility since 2023.
The actor was beloved by the public and his peers for the intensity, audacity and variety of his performances. Trained in 'the Method' at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre – where a green room is now named in his honour – he made a name of himself in a 1968 production of The Boys in the Band. It was there that he met his future wife, the actress Mary Ann Severne, who was by his side when he died on Wednesday.
Aged in their 20s, the pair moved to London, where they became prominent members of the 1970s acting scene. Szeps starred in I, Claudius alongside David Warner and toured in the Prospect Theatre Company with Derek Jacobi.
Returning to Australia for his 30th birthday, he became a fixture of Australian stage and television. Geoffrey Atherden's Mother and Son was voted the best Australian television program ever, and Szeps lovingly called his character, Robert, 'the arsehole of the family'.
The son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, Szeps was born in a Swiss refugee camp in 1943. His father had already left the family to join the French Resistance and his mother had Henri fostered out to a Swiss couple when he was a baby. He lived with the couple on and off until 1949.
He was then reclaimed by his mother, Rose, but due to illness, he spent time in a French orphanage until 1951, when he migrated to Australia with his mother and younger sister Maria.
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