John Nolan, who never went into acting to become “a star,” has died at the age of 87. His career ran from the early days of the Drama Centre in London to the Royal Shakespeare Company, television, radio and film.
Nolan was one of the first students at the pioneering Drama Centre, and after leaving he was cast as Romeo opposite Francesca Annis at the Richmond Theatre. That early break led to a run of major parts with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where his Claudio in Measure for Measure at the Barbican and his Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar were especially memorable. In 1980, he played Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regents Park.
Born in Kent to professional Irish parents, Nolan built a reputation that moved easily between classical theatre and television. He appeared as a regular in Doomwatch, played Nick Flaunt in the Granada series Shabby Tiger, and made guest appearances in The Sweeney, The Saint, Enemy at the Door and others. He also played Hamlet and Richard II for RTE television, and won Best Actor at the Dublin Festival for his turn as the eponymous hero in The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.
His stage work continued at the National Theatre, where notable performances included Troilus and Cressida, The Merchant of Venice and The Coast of Utopia. He also appeared at the Lyttleton in David Edgar’s Albert Speer and at the Cottesloe in Rita Dove’s verse play The Darker Face of the Earth. Nancy Banks-Smith once captured the effect he had on an audience, describing him as “an elderly Irishman” whose simple entrance prompted the kind of theatrical excitement that sends people searching for a name in the programme.
Nolan’s later work included voice performances in television and radio adverts and documentary narration, and a second Romeo at the Bristol Old Vic, where he met and married Kim Hartman. She survives him, along with their children, Tom and Miranda, both of whom followed their parents into the profession. He also found late-career television success when producers of Person of Interest expanded his one-episode role into the regular character Greer, a fitting end to a career that kept widening rather than fading.
