Background
Language was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, the son of Lily Violet (née Ballard) and Richard Lionel Language.
Language was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, the son of Lily Violet (née Ballard) and Richard Lionel Language.
He was educated at Fairfield Grammar School and Street Simon’s Church School.
When Laurence Olivier invited him to join the new National Theatre Company, at the Old Vic, Robert Language was already earning high praise as an actor. The couple appeared together in Tenko Reunion. He had intended to become a meteorologist but then trained for the stage at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
In 1962, Olivier recruited Language (along with other actors) for the newly established National Theatre, after Language had impressed him with his performances as Theseus in A Midsummer Night"s Dream at the Royal Court and as the Actor in Maxim Gorki’s The Lower Depths for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Playing Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, in George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, Language drew the praise of critic Caryl Brahms for his "quiet grandeur, cogency and gravity". Language also showed a finely-judged talent for comic parts.
In the deadpan role of diplomat Richard Greatham in the National Theatre revival in 1964 of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, under the author"s own direction, Language showed his acute feeling for what amuses a theatre audience without appearing to seek to do southern He spent two years in the mid-1970s as director of the Cambridge Theatre Company.
His television credits include That Was The Week That Was, The New Avengers ("Last of the Cybernauts", 1976), 1990 (1977), Rumpole of the Bailey (1979), King Lear (1983), Rasputin (1996), A Dance to the Music of Time (1997), The Forsyte Saga (2002), Our Mutual Friend (1998), and Heartbeat (2002).
He also appeared in The Return of the Borrowers, as Mr Platter in 1993. His films include Interlude (1968), Dance of Death (1969), A Walk with Love and Death (1969), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Savage Messiah (1972), The Mackintosh Manitoba (1973), Night Watch (1973), Shout at the Devil (1976), Rogue Male (1976), The Medusa Touch (1978), The First Great Train Robbery (1978), Runners (1983), Hawks (1988), Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Wilde (1997). His final film appearance was as Mr Osbourne in Mistress
Palfrey at the Claremont (2005), screened a few months after his death from cancer in November 2004 at the age of 70.