Roy Holder
Roy Holder is an actor, born 1946.
Somebody has to open the door, take the coat and say the line that moves the scene along, and in British costume drama that somebody was often Roy Holder. Hodge in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Mr Hill in the 2005 film. Thomas in Sense and Sensibility. Gaffer Tom in Robin Hood. Enoch in Jesus of Nazareth. His credit list is a roll-call of servants and retainers, played across a career running from the 1960s into the 2010s without ever once looking like an extra.
Born in Birmingham in 1946, he first drew notice in the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind, then joined Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew as Biondello in 1967, along with Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush the same year. Romeo and Juliet followed in 1968, where he plays Peter. That is a substantial start for a young actor, and it makes the subsequent career shape all the more telling: he became a fixture of British television rather than a film name.
The television work runs through Z-Cars, Spearhead, Angels, Sorry and Keen Eddie, plus Chas Diamond in the children's fantasy series Ace of Wands. He also appeared in the Doctor Who serial The Caves of Androzani, which is not among the credits listed here. He died in 2021.
There is no headline in a career like this, which is exactly why it is worth reading. The productions people remember only work because these parts are cast properly.
Movies (6)
TV (8)
Where to start with Roy Holder
Romeo and Juliet is the best film he appears in and the right place to start: the 1968 version is still the most physical, sweaty and convincingly young take on the play, and Peter is a real comic part rather than furniture.
The Taming of the Shrew is the companion piece from a year earlier, louder and broader, with Biondello in the thick of the farce.
Then jump forward. Watch Pride and Prejudice and Pride & Prejudice back to back for the peculiar pleasure of seeing the same actor serving two different Bennet households a decade apart. Murder Ahoy is the early comic one, a Miss Marple romp with him as a petty officer.
For the odder corners of his career, The Land That Time Forgot is gloriously daft adventure cinema and Ace of Wands is the cult children's series that a certain generation of British viewers has never forgotten.