Background
His father, Clive Brook, had been a star of the silent movies and had moved to Hollywood to play quintessential Englishmen in a host of films.
His father, Clive Brook, had been a star of the silent movies and had moved to Hollywood to play quintessential Englishmen in a host of films.
University of Cambridge.
Born in York, Brook came from an established acting family. In 1949, he got a minor part in the film Train of Events, which starred Valerie Hobson (the future Mrs John Profumo) and John Clements. In 1951, Brook was asked by Laurence Olivier to join his company at the Street James’s Theatre in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.
The double production was set up to celebrate the Festival of Britain.
In 1954 Brook played an impressionable navigator opposite Gregory Peck in The Purple Plain. The film was set during the Burma campaign and involved a lengthy trek through the jungle.
lieutenant enjoyed a huge success at the box office. Two years later, Brook co-starred with Kenneth More in one of the most popular of all Second World War dramas, Reach for the Sky.
He appeared with Michael Hordern and Dirk Bogarde in, and as Richard Wagner opposite Bogarde’s Franz Liszt in.
Thereafter, Brook became a regular in many popular television dramas. He appeared in I, Claudius, and made three appearances in The Avengers and The New Avengers. He also played George VI alongside Timothy West’s Winston Churchill in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Churchill and the Generals (1979).
His later film roles included The Hireling, Plenty and Defence of the Realm in the 70s and 80s.
Brook was a much published author and scripted the 1957 television series Love Her to with Peter Wyngarde in the leading role. He died in London in 2004.