Roy Marsden

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Roy Marsden (born on June 25 1941 in Stepney, London) is a British actor.

Marsden attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and spent four terms there. However, he attempted to unionize the students and was thwarted. After one argument he poured a bottle of ink down the front of the director's suit.

Marsden recalled, "Two weeks later, he phoned me up and asked if I'd got a job or an agent. I said no, so he arranged for me to start work at a theatre in Nottingham, and who should be the student assistant manager there but Anthony Hopkins. I persuaded him to go to RADA."

In the early 1960s, Marsden worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company then began to accumulate an extensive list of theatrical credits that includes everything from Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen to contemporary Soviet playwright Alexander Vampilov. His preference was for the alternative experimental theaters of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Birmingham over London's commercial theatre.

Appearances include Crispen in "The Friends", 1970; Casca and Lucilius in "Julius Caesar", 1972; Paul Schippel in "Schippel", 1974; Heinrich Krey in "The Plumber's Progress", 1975. He also played Long John Silver in "Treasure Island" at London's Mermaid Theatre around Christmas for two years and Henry Higgins in "Pygmalion".

Marsden is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Adam Dalgliesh in the television dramatisations of P.D. James's detective novels. These included:

• Death of an Expert Witness (1983);
• Cover Her Face (1985);
• The Black Tower (1985);
• A Taste of Death (1989);
• Devices and Desires (1991).

Marsden also starred in Yorkshire Television's 1978-1980 Cold War espionage series The Sandbaggers. He played Neil Burnside, the dour and fiercely protective head of the covert operations section of British Intelligence, whose character seemed to spend as much time on infighting within Whitehall and his own department as it did in battling the KGB. The show ran for three series and 20 episodes before the untimely disappearance of the show's creator and writer Ian Mackintosh in 1979.

In 1982, Yorkshire Television cast him in Airline, a series in which he played Jack Ruskin, a scrappy World War II pilot trying to start his own post-war airline against establishment opposition. It also starred his wife, Polly Hemingway, who was pregnant with their first child during most of the filming.

In an interview Marsden said "It was one of the most enjoyable programmes I ever made. Learning to fly those old DC-3s was terrific. And I enjoyed playing Ruskin enormously because he had hope. Of course, he was a pain up the tushie most of the time, but then you'd see that youthful desire to actually get out and triumph against enormous odds. I identified with that character the most."

Other prominent television roles include George Osborne in a 1972 adaptation of Vanity Fair and the title role of Arthur Chipping in 1987's Goodbye Mr. Chips. Marsden has also made guest appearances in The New Avengers, Space 1999, and Tales of the Unexpected. He is also scheduled to appear in the 2007 series of Doctor Who in an unspecified role.

He has appeared in: The Squeeze, Warner Brothers (1976), a walk-on part with one line (as a Nazi officer) in the classic The Eagle Has Landed (1976), and as Oberon in Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God (2005).

Marsden is married to actress Polly Hemingway and has two sons, one named Joseph. In his spare time, Marsden windsurfs, sails, and restores a 78-year old fishing ketch. Much of his free time is spent with his children and their friends.

• Roy Marsden at IMDb