Shaw, Robert

Shaw, Robert (1927-1978), British actor and writer, born in Westhoughton, Lancashire. Initially known for his pugnacious and antagonistic roles in British films, he eventually became an international star. After a childhood in Cornwall and the Orkneys, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, began an acting career on stage and, after 1949, in films. Although he appeared at the Theatre Royal Stratford, the Old Vic, and in his own play Off the Mainland at the Arts Theatre, it was as the swashbuckling captain of the television series, The Buccaneers (1956-1957) that he first attracted attention. In the cinema, his threatening characterizations, often as a bully or sadist, made him well known.

Although he had been in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951, directed by Charles Crichton), The Dam Busters (1954), and A Hill in Korea (1956), and was impressive as Aston in the film version of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker (1963), his first notable film part was in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). Other major roles followed, as Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966, Fred Zinnemann), as the chilling gangster boss in The Sting (1973, George Roy Hill), as the Ahab-like Quint in Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg), as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin and Marian (1976), and as the leader of a commando group in Force 10 From Navarone (1978). He also wrote four novels, one of which, The Hiding Place, became the film Situation Hopeless - But not Serious (1965), while another, The Man in the Glass Booth (1967), which he adapted for the London and Broadway stages, was turned into a film of the same title by Arthur Hiller in 1975. He was married to the actress Mary Ure from 1963 until her death in 1975.