Christopher Hancock; actor (EastEnders)
Hyfler/Rosner
Dennis Barker
Tuesday November 2, 2004
The Guardian
Photo:
http://www.aveleyman.com/ActorsH/P00007365.HTML
The actor Christopher Hancock, who has died aged 76, played
the detestable heavy lorry driver Charlie Cotton in the
early years of BBC1's EastEnders. Hancock was one of the
first to join the EastEnders team, in 1985, but his part was
written out via a convenient road crash and his association
with the character made casting him in other roles more
difficult. His other appearances included The Bill,
Casualty, Miss Marple, Victoria Wood As Seen On TV and
Oedipus At Colonus.
Born in County Durham, he was a chorister and a pupil of
Durham cathedral school, and acquired a love of classical
music. In the early 1950s, he attended the Old Vic School,
and was a member of the Old Vic Company, where he
established himself as a character actor. Even then, his
dislike of projecting himself into the outside world, except
through a proscenium arch, was noticed by some of his
colleagues.
He made a firm impression at the new Nottingham Playhouse of
the 1960s when it was under the charismatic control of John
Neville. Hancock was in the first production in December
1963 at the new theatre. Directed by Tyrone Guthrie, he and
Leo McKern played the two Tribunes in Shakespeare's
Coriolanus.
At the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, he was in The
Tempest, The Government Inspector and Amongst Barbarians. At
the Royal Court Theatre, he was in London Cockolds, and in
Harrogate he appeared in The Three Sisters, She Stoops To
Conquer and School For Wives.
His work continued to be praised. In the Greenwich Theatre's
revival of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane in 1993, he
played the difficult role of the bizarrely weak and
self-deluded "Dada". Indeed colleagues felt it ironic that
Hancock, a liked and respected figure, as an actor tended to
be cast as slightly sly characters.
Hancock's marriage to Ann Walford ended in divorce. They had
two daughters.
· Christopher Hancock, actor, born June 5 1928; died
September 29 2004