A blond British actor whose handsome features were marred by his broken nose (a result of a childhood attempt to fly by leaping off the roof of a building), Michael York saw his career span some five decades, but he was most fondly remembered for a string of films in the late 1960s and 70s and his TV appearances in the mid-1970s.
Born Michael Hugh Johnson on March 27, 1942, in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, England, his father was an ex-army officer turned businessman and his mother was a musician. York began his acting career as a teenager in a 1956 production of "The Yellow Jacket." Three years later, he made his West End debut with a one-line role in a production of "Hamlet." He attended Oxford University and spent his summers working with Michael Croft's Youth Theatre, where he toured Italy in a production of "Julius Caesar." After graduation, his career got a shot in the arm when he was invited to join England's National Theatre in January of 1965. He was immediately cast by esteemed Italian director Franco Zeffirelli in "Much Ado About Nothing," which led to his BBC TV debut as Young Jolyon in the acclaimed and fondly remembered drama series "The Forsyte Saga" (BBC, 1966).
A year later, York made his silver screen debut in Zeffirelli's film, "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967), starring the voluptuous and tumultuous Elizabeth Taylor and her smoldering on-again/off-again husband Richard Burton. York was now a bona fide movie actor, and scored again as Tybalt in Zeffirelli's next Shakespearean screen adaptation "Romeo and Juliet" (1968). Later that same year, York married his sweetheart, Patricia, an American photographer, whom he met while filming "Smashing Time" (1969) when she was assigned to photograph the star; they have been together ever since.
He went on to effectively portray a variety of well-bred, seductively charming men like the manipulative bisexual of "Something for Everyone" (1970) and the adventurous expatriate in Bob Fosse's Academy Award-winning "Cabaret" (1972), opposite a then-hot Liza Minnelli. His role as D'Artagnan in Richard Lester's romping version of "The Three Musketeers" (1973) and as Logan in the cult sci-fi classic "Logan's Run" (1976), cemented York's cinematic stardom on both sides of the pond. He played opposite Burt Lancaster in "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (197) and he even played himself in Billy Wilder's second attack on Hollywood, "Fedora" (1977).
A series of well-received and landmark TV miniseries followed - the Dickens' hero Pip in "Great Expectations" (NBC, 1974) and a re-teaming with his illustrious mentor Zeffirelli in "Jesus of Nazareth" (NBC, 1977) as John the Baptist. York returned to his theatrical roots in the 1979 Broadway production of "Bent," where he succeeded Richard Gere in the lead role of Max, a homosexual concentration camp inmate who pretends to be Jewish. That same year he produced his first movie, a slow-moving adaptation of Erskine Childer's prototypical spy novel, "The Riddle of the Sands."
As the 1980s came around, York attempted his first stage musical, "The Little Prince;" it failed miserably during its Broadway previews and he decided to return to the comfort of the small screen, where he proved he could still be a dashing and stalwart swashbuckler in "The Master of Ballantrae" (CBS, 1984) and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for the ABC Afterschool Special, "Are You My Mother?" He joined the cast of the popular and long-running primetime CBS serial "Knot's Landing" (1979- 1993) for the 1987-88 season, as a love interest for the blonde beauty Donna Mills.
In the '90s, York continued to work on the small screen, but he made a few appearances in big screen productions of note - namely as Basil Exposition, the head of British Intelligence in "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" (1997); he reprised the role in "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" (1999) and "Austin Powers: Goldmember" (2002) - which showcased him to an entirely new audience. He also played media mogul Stone Alexander in the religious-themed "The Omega Code" (1999) and its sequel "Megiddo: Omega Code 2" (2001) - two films that were not actual blockbusters, but nevertheless performed extremely well in their niche theatrical market and did gangbusters on home video.
York's highly distinctive voice made him perfect for recording audio books, in which he was credited with over 70 productions, such as The Book of Psalms, Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, and his own children's book, The Magic Paw Paw. He was nominated for a Grammy in 1996 for Treasure Island and won an Audie Award for The Fencing Master and a 2000 Listen Up Award for The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
York also enjoyed writing his own works. In 1991 he published his autobiography, Accidentally on Purpose, which he followed up in 2001 with A Shakespearean Actor Prepares; it was a finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards of that same year. His book Dispatches from Armageddon: Making the movie Megiddo was published in January 2002 and Professor Richard Brown of NYU hailed it as "one of the most readable, literate, and insightful works ever written on the process of making movies." His latest book was Are My Blinkers Showing? about filmmaking in the new Russia.
Ever the Renaissance man, York also found time to lecture internationally on Shakespeare, the poetry of Rudyard Kipling and the history and art of acting. Due to his contributions to his profession, he was awarded Britain's Order of the British Empire, France's Arts et Lettres and a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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