Gordon Reid
- Publication: The Times
- Date: 2003-12-15
- Author:
- Page:
- Language: English
Stage centrepiece in Beckett, Shakespeare and Doctor Who
GORDON REID'S acting career ranged from Doctor Who and Doctor Finlay to Macbeth and King Lear. He died after collapsing in the middle of the second act of Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett's tragicomedy about the human condition.
The son of a doctor, he was born James Gordon Reid in Hamilton in 1939, and pursued an early interest in drama at Hamilton Academy. His original career choice, however, was accounting, before studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, graduating to the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow, and moving to London, where he was based for most of his career.
He had a spell with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late Sixties and early Seventies and played Sebastian in Twelfth Night with Judi Dench as Viola. Elsewhere, his Shakespearean roles included Macbeth, Lear and Falstaff.
But he seemed equally happy in contemporary dramas, West End musicals and Alan Ayckbourn farces. He also worked regularly on radio and television, turning up in the Doctor Who story "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" in 1974, and a wide variety of popular programmes, including All Creatures Great and Small, Juliet Bravo, Poirot, Lovejoy and Peak Practice. He was always the centre of attention, even in a theatrical crowd.
Reid is probably most familiar as the chemist Angus Livingstone in the Nineties TV incarnation of Doctor Finlay and he also appeared in the more recent radio version. There were small roles in several films, including Leon the Pig Farmer (1992), Mansfield Park (1999), as Dr Winthrop, and the Nicole Kidman horror movie The Others (2001).
Along with publisher John Calder and others, he was co-founder of the Godot Company, a co-operative dedicated to performing the work of Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot was its inaugural production and Reid was playing the tramp Vladimir the Finborough Theatre in London when he suffered a heart attack.
His partner, Michael Richmond, died in 1988.
Gordon Reid, actor, was born on September 6, 1939. He died on November 26, 2003, aged 64.
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- Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Gordon Reid | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Gordon_Reid | work=The Times | pages= | date=2003-12-15 | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=10 May 2025 }}</ref>
- Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Gordon Reid | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Gordon_Reid | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=10 May 2025}}</ref>
