Biography for
David Warner (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

29 July 1941, Manchester, England, UK

Height

6' 2" (1.88 m)

Mini Biography

David Warner was born in Manchester, England and once described his childhood as "messy". His father changed jobs often and moved from town to town. David attended eight schools and "failed his exams at all of them". His parents separated when he was a teenager and he only saw his mother again seven years later - on her deathbed. After a series of odd jobs, he was accepted at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) where he was very unhappy. After RADA, he became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and got the part of Blifil in Tom Jones (1963). With the title role in Morgan! (1966) and a two-year stint as Hamlet with the RSC, Warner became a star at age 24. He has often played villains in such films as The Thirty Nine Steps (1978), Time After Time (1979), Time Bandits (1981), TRON (1982) and Titanic (1997). He also appeared in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), two sequels to the popular Star Trek films.

IMDb Mini Biography By: baddi_101

Spouse

Sheilah Kent	(1979 - 2005) (divorced) 1 child
Harriet Lidgren	(1969 - 1972) (divorced)

Trade Mark

Deep smooth voice

Often plays sinister villains

Trivia

Has vertigo. Was doubled in Time Bandits (1981) in the scene where the Evil Genius walks up the steps after caging the bandits, because he could not handle the drop below him.

David Warner's limp in Straw Dogs (1971) was real. He had smashed both his heels in a fall sometime before filming began and it was a long time before he could walk normally again. Warner's name is not in the credits because, for his career's sake, he didn't want people to know about his problem. It was not for insurance reasons as it has been often written.

Has appeared in three films about the Titanic: S.O.S. Titanic (1979) (TV); Time Bandits (1981) and Titanic (1997).

Has played at least three different species in the Star Trek universe: a human in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989); a Klingon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and a Cardassian in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987).

Is one of only 32 actors or actresses to have starred in both the original Star Trek (up to and including Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)) and then in one of the spin-offs.

Became an Associate Member of RADA.

Played an ape in Planet of the Apes (2001), a character obsessed with gorillas in Morgan! (1966) and did a gorilla impression in The Man with Two Brains (1983).

Has appeared in three different films involving time travel: Time After Time (1979); Time Bandits (1981) and Planet of the Apes (2001).

In Time After Time (1979), he played John Leslie Stevenson (Jack the Ripper). In "The Outer Limits" (1995) episode "Ripper", he played Inspector Langford who was investigating Dr. Jack York (Cary Elwes) who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper.

Chosen by Tony Richardson for his role in Tom Jones (1963) after the director enjoyed his performance in the play "Afore the Night" (1962).

Although he played Reinhard Heydrich, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, in both "Holocaust" (1978) and Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil (1985) (TV), he is Jewish in real life.

By appearing in Batman: The Animated Series ("Batman" (1992)), he became the first actor to play the villain Ra's-Al-Ghul. To date, he has been succeeded only by Ken Watanabe and Liam Neeson.

He has two roles in common with both David Collings and Richard E. Grant. All three have played Bob Cratchit - Warner in A Christmas Carol (1984) (TV), Collings in Scrooge (1970) and Grant in A Christmas Carol (1999) (TV) - and the Doctor from "Doctor Who" (1963) - Warner in the Big Finish audio dramas "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Masters of War", Collings in the Big Finish audio drama "Full Fathom Five" and Grant in Comic Relief: Doctor Who - The Curse of Fatal Death (1999) (TV) and "Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka" (2003).

Was originally slated to play Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Make-up tests were done, but Warner had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Robert Englund was cast instead.

He has made guest appearances on two different series about Superman. He played Superman's biological father Jor-El in "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" (1993) and Ra's-Al-Ghul in "Superman" (1996).

Both he and his The Company of Wolves (1984) co-star Terence Stamp have played Jor-El, the biological Kryptonian father of Superman. He played the role in "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" (1993) whereas Stamp provided the character's voice in "Smallville" (2001).

David Warner played the same role twice, King Henry VI, in two different productions of the same name, for two different directors, over two decades apart. First came "The Wars of the Roses" (1965) for director John Barton, and second came "The Wars of the Roses" (1989) for director Michael Bogdanov. Coincidentally, the later production was released in the same year as The War of the Roses (1989) which was unrelated in every way, but had a similar title, and which did not star Warner.

Has a daughter named Melissa who was born in 1982.

Personal Quotes

[on The Omen (1976)]: I never saw it as a horror movie.

It's all out of one's hands. One goes and does one's best. That's what Albert Finney says -- one main hit, that's all you can hope for.

[on The Omen (1976)] What was so good about that picture was that there was no blood in it, really. It's not a gorefest. Strange things happen, but it's got the mood and the music and everything. So, of its type, of its kind, I think it's quite a superior film. But, either way, you don't say no if you're asked to work with Gregory Peck. And he was wonderful, by the way.

[on Time Bandits (1981)] Time Bandits is one of Terry Gilliam's brilliant visual feasts, of bringing to the screen what you could only dream about. When they talk about "vision" and all that, he's the only person I know of who could put his crazy dreams onto the screen. He's truly a conjurer. Just an extraordinary mind.