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Eric Richard Porter (8 April 192815 May 1995) was an English actor of stage, film and television.
Porter's 1981 portrayal of Neville Chamberlain in won critical praise. He played Count Bronowsky in The Jewel in the Crown; he was also seen as Fagin in the 1985 BBC version of Oliver Twist; as Thomas Danforth in the 1980 BBC production of The Crucible; and as Professor Moriarty opposite Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes in Granada Television's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes stories The Red-Headed League and The Final Problem (both 1984). He also played Polonius in a 1980 television production of Hamlet, made as part of the BBC Shakespeare series, and starring Derek Jacobi in the title role.
Porter continued to act on stage, again winning the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actor in 1988 for his role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His last on-screen role was as painter James Player in the remake of Message for Posterity (1994), a television play by Dennis Potter.
In The Telegraph, Ben Lawrence, in an article on The Forsyte Saga, observed that "the series made a star of Porter who, according to some sources, was secretly gay and deeply uncomfortable about the attention which The Forsyte Saga foisted on him." In 1956 and All that: The Making of Modern British Drama (1999), the dramatist and academic Dan Rebellato includes Porter in a list of "gay men... powerful in the British theatre of the forties and fifties".1956 and All that: The Making of Modern British Drama, Dan Rebellato, Routledge, 1999, p. 163
The 2017 biography Eric Porter: The Life of an Acting Giant, by Porter's "friend and chosen biographer" Helen Monk, indicates that he was "previously understood... to be secretly gay", and details his relationships with "a string of female lovers", including "the foremost woman in his life for 40 years until his death... glamorous Dutch widow, Therese Megaw", Australian artist Alexandra Alderson, and his live-in secretary, Kay, a "Judi Dench-lookalike", with Monk concluding Porter "probably was bisexual".
Personal life
As quoted in the 2016 biography Peter O'Toole: The Definitive Biography by Robert Sellers, Susan Engel told the biographer that Eric Porter was gay: "His memorable BAFTA Best Actor Award-winning performance as Soames in the BBC's 1967 television adaptation of The Forsyte Saga should have led to greater things, but it didn't. 'He couldn't cope with his own sexuality,' says Susan. 'It was so awful for gay men in those days. I don't know how some of them managed to survive; and many didn't. You went to prison if you were caught. I think he suffered terribly. He was tortured.'"
Filmography
Death
Porter died of colon cancer in London in 1995, aged 67.
Bibliography
External links
Categories: 1928 Births, 1995 Deaths, 20th-century English Male Actors, Actors From The London Borough Of Hammersmith And Fulham, American Book Award Winners, Best Actor Bafta Award Winners, Deaths From Colorectal Cancer In England, English Bisexual Male Actors, English Male Film Actors, English Male Stage Actors, English Male Television Actors, People From Shepherd's Bush, Royal Shakespeare Company Members
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