Career
The young actor left his family's shopkeeping business in Hull to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and to sing in talent contests at the Hammersmith Palais de Danse.
He portrayed serious characters in Betrayed (1954), starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner, and in The Colditz Story (1955), but he made his name playing in a series of films for the Boulting brothers, including Private's Progress (1956), Brothers in Law (1957) and I'm All Right Jack (1959), as well as similar films for other producers, for example School for Scoundrels (1960). He also appeared in the "Pride" segment of The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971).
During the 1960s and 1970s, he was successful on television, including the sitcom, Bachelor Father, based on the story of a real-life bachelor who took on several foster children. On television he was Bertie Wooster, opposite Dennis Price as Jeeves, in several series of The World of Wooster, based on the works of P.G. Wodehouse. In later years, he was heard on BBC radio as Galahad Threepwood, another Wodehouse creation. In the 1970s, he played Lord Peter Wimsey in several drama series based on the mystery novels by Dorothy L. Sayers.
Carmichael continued to act until shortly before his death. In 1999, he appeared in the BBC serial Wives and Daughters. In the ITV series Heartbeat, and its spin-off The Royal, he played the Hospital Secretary T.J. Middleditch (2003–07, 2009 and 2011).
He was appointed an OBE in the 2003 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Read more about this topic: Ian Carmichael
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)