Education
In his 16th year he made his first stage appearance at the Gate Theatre Studio.
In his 16th year he made his first stage appearance at the Gate Theatre Studio.
In 1941, he co-wrote the screenplay for the film Temptation Harbour starring Robert Newton and Simone Simon. He also wrote and directed The Dark River at the Whitehall Theatre in 1943, starring Peggy Ashcroft. In 1991 it was adapted and directed for BBC Television by Anthony Page, starring Dame Judi Dench, and the play was revived by Page at the Royal National Theatre in 1995, again with Dench in the leading role. Rodney Ackland's first contact with Alfred Hitchcock was as a supporting actor in the 1931 screen version of John Galsworthy's play The Skin Game. But a year later Hitchcock recognised his potential as a screenwriter, collaborating with him on the second film adaptation of J Jefferson Farjeon's London fog-bound thriller Number Seventeen starring Leon M Lion. His final work for the cinema was on the screenplay of an adaptation of Alexander Pushkin's The Queen of Spades.