Versatile Actor Dies In France At Age Of 75

Donald Pleasence, who seemed equally adept at playing craven cowards, querulous tramps and steelyeyed villains in a steady stream of films, television and legitimate theater roles that ranged over five decades, died Thursday.

The actor, who had surgery to replace a heart valve shortly before Christmas, died at his home at St. Paul de Vence in the south of France. He was 75.

Although Pleasence began his career on the stage portraying classic characters, it was only after he began being seen as a series of psychos, madmen bent on destroying the world or piteous characters at the mercy of those villainous types, that he became world famous.

“I tossed away my toupee,” said the bald actor to an interviewer in 1987 and “entered the beady-eyed business.”

He won international kudos from his early portrayal of the wheedling tramp in Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” while sending serious critics into fits of despair as the doctor trying to treat the slasher in the “Halloween” movies.

His other film roles ranged from James Bond’s adversary Blofeld in “You Only Live Twice,” to the crazed preacher who burned down Charlton Heston’s Christmas tree in “Will Penny.”

Born in the central English town of Worksop, Pleasence made his stage debut at the Playhouse, Jersey, in May 1939, with a performance as Hareton in “Wuthering Heights.”

He served with the Royal Air Force during World War II and was shot down in 1944, spending the last year of the war in a German prison camp. He was to star 20 years later in the classic POW movie “The Great Escape.”