Rudolph Walker
Rudolph Walker is an actor, born 1939.
Rudolph Walker arrived from Trinidad into a British television industry with very little idea what to do with him, which is how he ended up in Love Thy Neighbour in the 1970s, a sitcom constructed almost entirely out of racial insult and enormously popular for it. He played Bill Reynolds, the neighbour on the receiving end, and built a career out of a job that would have finished a less careful actor.
The early film credits show the size of the problem plainly. 10 Rillington Place lists him as West Indian. Let Him Have It lists him as West Indian Driver. Parts with no names attached.
What followed is a long correction. He was Constable Frank Gladstone in Ben Elton's police sitcom The Thin Blue Line, an exam invigilator opposite Rowan Atkinson in Mr. Bean, and a king and then a president in the broad comedies King Ralph and Ali G Indahouse. Since 2001 he has played Patrick Trueman in EastEnders, more than two decades in a role that made him a fixture of British television rather than a footnote in its history, and which brought him the British Soap Award for outstanding achievement in 2018.
He also runs a foundation in his own name, aimed at giving young people role models and something to do.
Movies (4)
TV (7)
Where to start with Rudolph Walker
For a first sample of the timing, go to The Thin Blue Line: a studio sitcom where he plays the sensible constable against Rowan Atkinson's inspector, and where the timing he spent decades sharpening is on open display.
EastEnders is the real body of the work, but nobody can binge a soap that size, so treat it as something to drop into rather than something to start.
For film, 10 Rillington Place is by a distance the best thing on the list, a bleak true crime drama in which he appears in an unnamed role and which is worth your time regardless. King Ralph and Ali G Indahouse are the broad comedies, Let Him Have It the serious counterpart, and Mr. Bean the credit most people have already seen without noticing whose face it was.