David Warner, a British acting icon who’s genre roles are almost innumerable to count, has passed away at the age of 80. He passed from a cancer-related illness, according to the BBC.
As a young man, David Warner enrolled at the Royal Academy for Dramatic Arts in London, getting his start on the stage before shifting gears to film. He quickly became an in-demand character actor and starred in numerous genre films. At the time of his passing he has over 200 credited acting roles.
He is best remembered as playing villains, as he stood at an imposing six-foot two. Genre fans would recognise Warner’s roles from the Star Trek films The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country, where he played St. John Talbot and Chancellor Gorkon, respectively. Furthermore, Warner became a Trek guest star icon when he appeared in the legendary TNG two-parter “Chain of Command,” playing the Cardassian interrogator Gul Madred in a tense standoff with Jean-Luc Picard.
Other memorable Warner roles across genre include Professor Perry in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secrets of the Ooze, Jack the Ripper in Time After Time, Evil in Time Bandits, and Senator Sandar in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. He also starred in numerous horror roles, including the cult classic Waxwork, From Beyond the Grave, and most memorably, as the photojournalist Keith Jennings in The Omen (1978) ,which has gained retrospective critical respect.
More recently, Warner made memorable steps into the world of voice-over work, voicing characters in Teen Titans Go! and The Amazing World of Gumball, as well as Doctor Who: Unbound for Big Finish, where he played an alternate incarnation of the Doctor across several series of audio dramas.
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