System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Donald Pleasance
1919 - 1995
Actor Donald Pleasance, best known for his role of the therapist of serial killer Michael Myers in the cult classic, Halloween, died February 2, 1995. He was 75.
Pleasance was born October 5, 1919 in Worksop, England. The son of a railway stationmaster, he quit school to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.
Lack of money kept him from attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but he did get a job as assistant stage manager at the Playhouse on Jersey.
His stage debut was Wuthering Heights in 1939. He continued to act on the stage until World War II interrupted his career. Initially a pacifist, he changed his mind about the war effort and enlisted in the Royal Air Force. Shot down over Germany, he spent the last year of the war in a German prison camp.
He resumed his acting career in 1946. Working steadily on the stage, Pleasance appeared in several productions, including Caesar and Cleopatra, Hobson's Choice, Ebb Tide and Misalliance.
In 1955, he appeared in the film The Beachcomber. But over the next five years, his movie career never got off track. It wasn't until he returned to the stage that he experienced his first big success.
In 1960, he starred as The Caretaker in Harold Pinter's production at the Arts Theater Club in England. A critical and popular success, the play ran for 14 weeks in London, and for another 165 performances on Broadway. Pleasance's performance won him the British Critics Award for Best Performance of the Year. He was also nominated for a Tony Award.
Pleasance's next major success was his role as the forger in the 1963 blockbuster film, The Great Escape. Pleasance played a British soldier taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II. Pleasance was part of a team of prisoners who escaped their captors via a tunnel.
And while many of the roles he played were in low budget movies, Pleasance did work steadily throughout the sixties and seventies.
His best-known role was yet to come. In 1978, director John Carpenter asked Pleasance to play the psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, in the movie Halloween. Loomis was the therapist of Michael Myers, who was in an insane asylum for murdering his parents. Myers escaped to hunt down his sister played by newcomer actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Myers' supernatural character could not be killed, despite Dr. Loomis firing a full clip of bullets into his body.
The low budget movie went on to gross $60 million, becoming the most successful independent film in Hollywood history. Pleasance went on to play Dr. Loomis in four of the five Halloween sequels.
Pleasance reprised his role as The Caretaker in 1991 in London. His last role was as Dr. Loomis in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995.
Pleasance died on February 2, 1995 in St. Paul de Vence, France, following heart valve surgery. His wife, Linda, and five daughters survived him.
