Background

Ethnicity: Shaw's mother came from Eswatini, and his father was of Scottish origin.

Robert Archibald Shaw was born on August 9, 1927, in Westhoughton, Lancashire, United Kingdom. He was a son of Thomas Archibald Shaw, a doctor, and Doreen Nora Shaw (maiden name Avery), a former nurse. Robert had three sisters, Elisabeth, Joanna and Wendy, and a brother Alexander.

Education

Robert Shaw was raised in Westhoughton till 1934 when his family relocated to Stromness town in Scotland. Five years later, Shaw's father who suffered from alcoholism and manic depression, died by suicide.

The family then moved to Cornwall where Robert went to Truro School. Powerfully built boy, he was active in rugby, squash and track events. In 1944, Shaw received the scholarship with the opportunity to pursue education in medicine at Cambridge. Impressed by the Hamlet play with Sir John Gielgud that he saw in London that same year, he turned attention to acting instead.

After some years as a teacher at Glenhow Preparatory School in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Shaw entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts following his passion for performing art. While there, he was fascinated by acting and writing to the same extent.

Career

Early in his career, Robert Shaw served as a teacher at Glenhow Preparatory School in Saltburn-by-the-Sea. He also did his military service in the Royal Air Force.

Shaw began his acting career at the end of the 1940s. In 1946, he appeared as Angus in Macbeth produced by the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (the Royal Shakespeare Company since 1961). Staying with the theatre for the next several seasons, till 1949, he also performed in many other Shakespeare plays, including Cymbeline and Henry VIII, and took part in the company's tour to Australia.

In 1951, Shaw debuted in the West End, playing in the Embassy Theatre production of Caro William. That same year, the actor joined the Old Vic company at the invitation of Tyrone Guthrie and toured in Europe and South Africa. He also received a small part in his first movie that year, The Lavender Hill Mob. He then appeared in bit roles in a number of TV productions throughout the decade, including the Buccaneers of 1956 that made him popular in the United Kingdom.

In 1961, Robert Shaw debuted on Broadway playing in The Caretaker alongside Donald Pleasence and Alan Bates. Two years later, he reprised the same part in the screen version of the play. The first substantial role in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love of that same year boosted Shaw's popularity in the cinema. It was followed by The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Battle of the Bulge, and A Man for All Seasons, including such hit movies as The Sting and Jaws.

Robert Shaw unleashed his potential of an author as well through his novels and screenplays. His literary debut, The Hiding Place, issued in 1960 was warmly met by critics as was the next one, The Sun Doctor. One of his most notable writings, The Man in the Glass Booth was later adapted to the stage by himself, and then screened.

Achievements

• Although the true acclaim came to Robert Shaw at the last decades of his life, he is widely recognized as an authority in playing character roles and military-like personages.
  
  Shaw had one Academy Award nomination and one Golden Globe Award nomination for his incarnation of as Henry VIII in the 1966 drama A Man for All Seasons. His novel, The Sun Doctor, was marked by the Hawthornden Prize in 1962.
  
  A stone memorial was unveiled in Tourmackeady, County Mayo, Ireland near the place of his death.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Man in the Glass Booth

    (An absorbing and compelling play by Robert Shaw.)

    1967
  • The Sun Doctor 1961
  • The Flag
  • A Card from Morocco 1969

• movie

  • Young Winston

    (Richard Attenborough's examination of the early life of W...)

    1972
  • The Buccaneers

    (All thirty-nine episodes from the action-packed 1950s tel...)

    1956
  • Black Sunday

    (Black Sunday is the powerful story of a Black September t...)

    1977
  • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

    (Walter Matthau stars as a New York transit cop who must k...)

    1974
  • Custer of the West

    (George Armstrong Custer's love of the heroic traditions o...)

    1967
  • Jaws

    (Academy Award-winner Steven Spielberg directs one of the ...)

    1975
  • The Battle of Britain

    (In the greatest air battle of WWII, Harry Andrews, Michae...)

    1969
  • Swashbuckler

    (After rescuing his friend Nick Debrett from execution, sw...)

    1976
  • Battle of the Bulge

    (An all-star cast led by Henry Fonda is featured in the ep...)

    1965
  • Robin and Marian

    (This swashbuckling, high-spirited romantic sequel to the ...)

    1976
  • From Russia with Love

    (Enticing James Bond into a trap involving a beautiful gir...)

    1963
  • Watch Force 10 from Navarone

    (A group of allied commandos, led by Robert Shaw, infiltra...)

    1978
  • The Deep

    (Deep-sea divers vie with a Haitian drug dealer to recover...)

    1977
  • A Man for All Seasons

    (Dramatic depiction of the conflict between Henry VIII and...)

    1966
  • The Sting

    (Johnny Hooker is a young con-man who is being taught by L...)

    1973
  • Time after Time

    (H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper through 19th-century L...)

    1979
  • Avalanche Express

    (U.S. undercover agent Harry Wargrave has an assignment: e...)

    1978

Views

Quotations: "Success lasts only three seconds. After that, you're the same as you were before you had it."

"I was never really a character actor – I was a leading man who was always cast as a character. I wanted to be Jack Nicholson or Jean Gabin."

"The arts are not simply skills: their concern is the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual maturity of human life. And in a time when religious and political institutions are so busy engraving images of marketable gods and candidates that they lose their vision of human dignity, the arts have become the custodians of those values which most worthily difine humanity, which most sensitively define Divinity."

"When we all sing with one voice, the world will stop and listen."

"You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to perceive it."

"There's no future in being poor."

Personality

Robert Shaw was described by a movie critic Bill Wine as "an extremely competitive, quick-tempered, greedy man."

Shaw, like his father, was addicted to alcohol most of his life.

Physical Characteristics: Robert Shaw died from a heart attack.

Connections

Robert Shaw was married three times. Jennifer Bourke became his first wife in 1952. She gave birth to four daughters. Shaw and Bourke divorced in 1963.

That same year, he married an actress Mary Ure with whom he had two daughters, Elizabeth and Hannah, and two sons, Ian and Colin (from Ure's previous marriage to John Osborne). Mary Ure died in 1975 of overdose.

A year later, the actor formed a family with Virginia Jansen. The family produced one son, Thomas. Shaw adopted Jansen's child, Charles, from her previous marriage.

Shaw's son Ian followed his father's steps and became an actor. Shaw's grandson, Rob Kolar, is a musician and composer.

ex-wife:

Jennifer Bourke

late wife:

Mary Ure

Wife:

Virginia Jansen

Daughter:

Elizabeth Shaw

She was born in 1963.

Daughter:

Hannah Shaw

She was born in 1965.

Son:

Ian Shaw

He was born in 1969.

Son:

Thomas Shaw

Grandson:

Rob Kolar

colleague:

Paul Newman

colleague:

Robert Redford

colleague:

Sean Connery

colleague:

Orson Welles

References

• Robert Shaw: The Price of Success The Price of Success is a perceptive, sympathetic, but unsparing portrait of the blessings and curses endowing mercurial, enigmatic and deeply engaging Robert Shaw.
  1993
• Dear People ... Robert Shaw The book examines Shaw's life, character, and career against the backdrop of developments in American musical history, highlighting the conductor's beliefs about the spiritual values of great music and his achievements as the director of numerous ensembles.
  1979
• Robert Shaw A gripping biography of the actor best known for his role in Jaws.
  1994