Actor Simon Fisher-Becker, known for ‘Harry Potter' and ‘Doctor Who,' dead at 63
Simon Fisher-Becker, a British character actor who had roles in notable projects like 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' and 'Doctor Who,' has died. He was 63.
Fisher-Becker's husband Tony Dugdale said in a post on Facebook that he died Sunday. Dugdale did not disclose any additional details about his cause of death.
Kim Barry, Fisher-Becker's agent at Jaffrey Management, also confirmed Fisher-Becker's death to CNN in a statement.
'I lost not only a client Simon Fisher-Becker, but a close personal friend of 15 years standing,' the statement said. 'He helped me out enormously and was always kind, gracious and interested in everyone.'
Fisher-Baker's first Hollywood credit came in the 1990s through a series of single-episode TV appearances on shows including 'Hale and Pace' and 'One Foot in the Grave.'
Arguably one of his most high profile roles was in the first installment of the Harry Potter franchise, playing a ghost that haunts the halls of Howarts.
Fisher-Becker also appeared in several episodes of the BBC's sci-fi TV series 'Doctor Who' as a recurring character named Dorium between 2010 and 2011. He also voiced the character Gen. Nylan in two episodes of the 2014 'Doctor Who Online Adventures' TV series.
He regularly made appearances on convention circuits, during which he would meet and interact with fans of some of the popular franchises in which he'd appeared.
Between 2013 and 2018, Fisher-Becker also appeared in three seasons of the TV series 'Waterside,' a UK-based sci-fi drama.
Through the 2020s, Fisher-Becker played the voice of Arthur Morstan on the 'Sherlock Holmes' mini series and is credited as a voice actor on several podcast series including 2022's 'Abnormal Stories' and, his final credit, 'Jenny – The Doctor's Daughter' in 2024.
Fisher-Becker spoke about being able to collaborate with other actors throughout his career, telling BTG Interviews in 2023 that 'most of the actors I've gotten to work with, especially the bigger names, have been utterly delightful and very kind.'
'I wouldn't be where I am today without the kindness of those people,' he added.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Marcel Ophuls, maker of The Sorrow and the Pity, which examined French collaboration with the Nazis
Marcel Ophuls, who has died aged 97, was a German-born documentary-maker who fled his homeland in the 1930s and spent much of his career interrogating the various legacies of the Second World War; his international breakthrough, the landmark The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié, 1969), revealed the extent to which his adopted France had collaborated with the Nazis. The son of the German-Jewish director Max Ophuls – known for such elaborate melodramas as La Ronde (1950) – Marcel began his career in film drama but achieved greater traction with complex, rigorous, meticulously edited non-fiction work. In documentaries such as The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus (1988), the filmmaker set multiple testimonies side by side, sometimes corroborating, often contradicting, always inviting the spectator to shake any passivity and judge for themselves. In The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls spent four and a half hours of screen time – and many more hours of shooting – staking out the city of Clermont-Ferrand 'to analyse four years of collective destiny'. Patiently hearing from residents of all walks of life, the film picked insistently away at the Gaullist myth of a country united against an occupier, instead revealing two Frances at odds with one another – one resisting, the other collaborating. In France, Sorrow was denounced by conservative politicians as 'a prosecutorial film' and initially rejected for both theatrical and television distribution. After much legal wrangling, it finally opened in 1971, earning an Oscar nomination the following year, but it did not air on French television until 1981; a station director said the film had 'destroyed myths the French people still needed'. Ophuls subsequently made films on Vietnam (The Harvest of My Lai, 1970) and the Irish Troubles (A Sense of Loss, 1972), though the latter was rejected by the BBC. His personal favourite, The Memory of Justice, revisited the Nuremberg trials in the context of more recent conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, though the project was again beset by lengthy and expensive legal challenges; Ophuls filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter and spent a decade on the lecture circuit. He made a triumphant return, however, with the Oscar-winning Hôtel Terminus, on the life of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. As free-roaming as its subject, unearthing material both disturbing and absurd, the film ends in one of documentary cinema's most extraordinary sequences, as Ophuls witnesses a chance encounter between a woman who as a child had seen her father carted away by the Gestapo and an elderly neighbour who had turned a blind eye to the same events. Though Hôtel Terminus sparked violent arguments at Cannes, the critic Roger Ebert admired its tenacity, calling it 'the film of a man who continues the conversation after others would like to move on to more polite subjects'. Yet as a characteristically combative Ophuls countered in 2004: 'I'm not obsessed. I just happen to think that the Holocaust was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Think I'm wrong?' He was born Hans Marcel Oppenheimer in Frankfurt on November 1 1927, the son of Max Oppenheimer and his actress wife Hildegard Wall. The family fled Germany for France in 1933, taking French citizenship in 1938, whereupon Max dropped the umlaut from his stage name, Ophüls; after the occupation they fled anew to Los Angeles, where Max began an unhappy spell as a studio filmmaker and Marcel attended Hollywood High and Occidental College. Marcel Ophuls completed military service in Japan before studying at UC Berkeley, taking US citizenship in 1950. Upon graduation he moved to Paris, briefly studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, before dropping out and working as an assistant director (initially under the pseudonym Marcel Wall, to dodge nepotism accusations) on John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) and his father's sweeping Lola Montès (1955). He made his directorial debut with a German television adaptation of John Mortimer's The Dock Brief (Das Pflichtmandat, 1958), before being tapped by François Truffaut to contribute to the portmanteau film Love at Twenty (L'amour à vingt ans, 1962). By now he was part of the New Wave set: Jeanne Moreau funded his detective comedy Banana Skin (Peau de Banane, 1963), but his fiction career came to a halt after the flop thriller Place Your Bets, Ladies (Faites vos jeux, mesdames, 1965). Ophuls moved into documentary, taking a job with the French broadcaster ORTF, where he railed against the prevailing state censorship; he was eventually fired in May 1968 after making a film deemed sympathetic to the student rioters, though by then he was well into post-production on The Sorrow and the Pity. After Hôtel Terminus, Ophuls suffered mixed fortunes. November Days (1990), on the subject of German reunification, played as part of the BBC's Inside Story strand, but The Troubles We've Seen (Veillées d'armes, 1994), on wartime journalism and the Bosnian conflict, failed to reach an audience, despite a César nomination in France. He worked more sparingly in the new millennium, completing Max par Marcel (2009), on his father's legacy, and the career overview Ain't Misbehavin' (Un voyageur, 2013), his final completed film; a later project on anti-Semitism and the Middle East, Des vérités désagréables (Unpleasant Truths), ran into financial and legal troubles and remained unfinished at the time of his death. During a visit to Israel in 2007, Ophuls attempted to define his life's work: 'I'm not a preacher, a judge or an adviser. I'm just a filmmaker trying now and then to make sense of crises... Life made me, unwillingly, an expert on 20th-century crises. I would've preferred to direct musicals.' He is survived by his wife Regine, née Ackermann, and three daughters. Marcel Ophuls, born November 1 1927, died May 24 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Sam Gardiner's family 'overwhelmed' by support
The family of Race Across The World contestant Sam Gardiner have said they are "overwhelmed" by the love and support they have received following his death. Mr Gardiner, 24, who took part in the BBC show alongside his mother Jo, died in hospital following a crash on the A34 near Manchester on 26 May. His family set up a fundraiser in his memory for the National Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) charity which has raised more than £10,000. Ms Gardiner said her son had been diagnosed with the condition, which can develop when someone has been exposed to alcohol in the womb, and added: "If some good comes of this tragedy, it will be that FASD is better understood". "We have been overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of messages of love and support on social media and in comments to press reporting," she said. "We would like to thank the BBC, Studio Lambert and everyone at Race Across The World production, fellow contestants and fans of the show for all their support at this terrible time. "It has been very comforting to know that Sam touched so many people." Ms Gardiner said she had been "particularly moved by all the messages that Sam was an inspiration to many who have been impacted by FASD". "We adopted Sam and he was diagnosed with FASD. As viewers of season two will recall, this was a big challenge both for Sam and for us as his parents," she said. But she added that the National FASD charity "helped us on that journey". The landscape gardener died when his car left the road and rolled before landing on its side on the A34 in Gatley, Cheadle, Greater Manchester Police said. He was the only person in the white Volkswagen Golf R estate and was taken to hospital, where he died from his injuries on 29 May. Mr Gardiner and his mother travelled across Mexico and Argentina in the BBC show, broadcast in March 2020. His father Andrew said: "When the news broke last week, friends asked how they could help. "After some thought, I decided to set up a JustGiving page to raise money for National FASD in memory of Sam. "The page is called Sam Gardiner; Super Human." He said it was "very humbling to see the Race Around The World family rally to this worthy cause". A message on its official Instagram account said: "Sam lived his life full of love, exuberance and adventure as seen on BBC's Race Across the World. "National FASD is both humbled and honoured to help carry on his legacy via donations coming from hundreds." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230. Former Race Across the World contestant dies in crash National FASD
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Festival brings 'big names in intimate spaces'
In 2022, comedians Charlotte Evans and Will Adamsdale began what was then Exeter's only regular new material comedy gig. Held in a tiny cafe, they said often the only noise in crowd was from a loud refrigerated meat counter. Three years later, Locally Sourced comedy has evolved into a four-day festival with more than 60 acts performing across 15 venues. Ms Evans said: "We never set out to make a festival, we just wanted a regular night to perform comedy. "It makes me so proud to see acts who started in front of the meat counter selling out their solo shows." Tim Key, Bridget Christie and Mark Watson were some of the big names performing alongside strong local acts at the festival which began on Thursday. JoJo Maberly performed her first-ever stand-up gig in Exeter three years ago and returned to the festival with her musical-comedy show Angst & Angstability. "It's so great to see the comedy world come alive in Exeter," she said. The success of the festival was depended on by comedians who said they were becoming increasingly priced out of the well-trodden routes to success. The cost of attending the Edinburgh Fringe, which served as a cheap breakthrough for so many top British comedians, has soared in recent years. In 2024 comics spoke out against "soaring costs" and "pure greed" which had prevented them from performing or making money at the festival. Comedian Greg Winfield, from Barnstaple, decided to go on a solo tour with his show Whatever You Say, attending the Exeter Comedy Festival but not Edinburgh. The comic of eight years said: "I think the old school way of doing comedy, of either moving to London or being on a relentless Edinburgh churn, is probably less important these days. "[Exeter Comedy Festival] the finest comedy festival in the South West - I challenge others to raise themselves to this level." All 15 venues at the Exeter Comedy Festival were independent businesses. They ranged from a cocktail bar, a vegan cafe to a barber shop, which was converted into a performance space. Alongside their shows, a number of comedians submitted pieces of art for a festival exhibition. Curated by Karen Lockhart, it features pieces by Spencer Jones, Emma Hughes, Olaf Falafel and others. Ms Lockhart said: "I wanted to give an outlet for all these comedians who also have something else going on." Festival organiser Georgia Thomas predicted the festival would continue to grow but it would stay true to having "big names in intimate spaces". "We wanted to create a festival similar to the shows you can see in Edinburgh and London without having to travel so far," she said. "Having big names in intimate spaces helps reduce the hierarchy which is good for them, good for local acts and good for us. "We'll keep the intimate vibe but grow the festival to benefit comedians, audiences and local businesses." Exeter Comedy Festival
