Nicol Williamson
Highest Rated: 85% The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)
Lowest Rated: 18% Spawn (1997)
Birthday: Sep 14, 1936
Birthplace: Not Available
Trained at the RSC, Scottish actor Nicol Williamson made his professional bow with the Dundee rep in 1960. The following year, he performed with the Arts Theatre at Cambridge, and also made his London debut. His first major success came in 1964 with John Obsorne's Inadmissible Evidence. He won a Tony award for his performance in the Osborne play when it transferred to Broadway in 1965, and three years later repeated his characterization for the film version. Williamson's 1968 staging of Hamlet, which like Evidence played in both London and New York, was immensely popular and enormously controversial; some recall the night when, halfway through a soliloquy, Williamson brusquely apologized for his "bad" performance and stormed offstage. In films from 1964, Williamson played a cocaine-benumbed Sherlock Holmes in The 7 Percent Solution (1977), an introspective Little John in Robin and Marian (1978) and an eccentric Merlin in Excalibur (1981). His TV credits on both sides of the Atlantic included such roles as Lennie in Of Mice and Men, Lord Mountbatten in The Last Viceroy, King Ferdinand in the 1995 TV movie Christopher Columbus, and Richard Nixon in a 1974 dramatization of the White House Tapes. Williamson also appeared in a number of one-man shows, including the off-Broadway Nicol Williamson's Late Show and a 1994 play based on the life of John Barrymore. Nicol Williamson was married to actress Jill Townsend.
Highest Rated Movies
Filmography
Movies
| Credit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Score Yet | The Gangster Show: The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui | Actor | — | 2013 |
| No Score Yet | Tony Palmer's Classic Film of John Osborne and the Gift of Friendship | Actor | — | 2006 |
| 18% | Spawn | Cogliostro | — | 1997 |
| 75% | The Wind in the Willows | Badger | — | 1996 |
| 75% | The Advocate (The Hour of the Pig) | The Seigneur | — | 1994 |
| 59% | The Exorcist III | Fr. Morning | — | 1990 |
| 48% | Black Widow | William Macauley | — | 1987 |
| No Score Yet | Passion Flower | Albert Coskin | — | 1986 |
| 52% | Return to Oz | Dr. Worley / The Nome King | — | 1985 |
| No Score Yet | Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy | Lord Mountbatten | — | 1985 |
| No Score Yet | Sakharov | Malyarov | — | 1984 |
| 20% | I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can | Derek Bauer | — | 1982 |
| 79% | Excalibur | Merlin | — | 1981 |
| 43% | Venom | Cmdr. William Bulloch | — | 1981 |
| 47% | The Cheap Detective | Col. Schissel | — | 1978 |
| No Score Yet | The Word | Actor | — | 1978 |
| 83% | The Goodbye Girl | Oliver Frye | — | 1977 |
| 85% | The Seven-Per-Cent Solution | Sherlock Holmes | — | 1976 |
| 75% | Robin and Marian | Little John | — | 1976 |
| 60% | The Wilby Conspiracy | Major Horn | — | 1975 |
| No Score Yet | The Monk (Le moine) | Duke | — | 1972 |
| No Score Yet | Hamlet | Hamlet | — | 1969 |
| No Score Yet | The Reckoning | Actor | — | 1969 |
| No Score Yet | The Bofors Gun | O'Rourke | — | 1968 |
TV
| Credit | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No Score Yet |
Columbo 1968-2003 |
1978 |
QUOTES FROM Nicol Williamson CHARACTERS
William Macauley says: I put on a bristle here and a bristle there, and turned myself into a porcupine.
Catharine says: Well, you know, it's such an old joke... how do two porcupines make love?...Very carefully.
Merlin says: Look into the eyes of the Dragon and despair! I destroy you, I consign you to oblivion!
Merlin says: Behold Excalibur! The sword of power! Forged when birds and beasts and flower were One with Man, and death was but a dream!
King Arthur says: What is the greatest quality of knighthood? No poetry, just a simple answer.
Merlin says: Alright then. Truth! That's it, truth. When a man lies he murders some part of world. You should know that.
Merlin says: You betrayed the duke. You stole his wife. You took hist castle; now no one trusts you. It's not for you, Uther-- hearth and home, wife and child.
Uther says: To kill, and be king? Is that all?
Merlin says: Perhaps not even that. Give me the child.
Merlin says: Ride! Your lust will hold you up!
Merlin says: A dream to some.......a nightmare to others!!!
Merlin says: A dream to some.......a nightmare to others!