Actor Nicol Williamson has died from oesophageal cancer at the age of 75.
Born in Hamilton in South Lanarkshire, after working in his father's factory he went to the Birmingham School of Speech and Drama, which he described as a "disaster". After National Service he made his professional debut at Dundee Rep in 1960 and his London debut was at the Royal Court when he played Flute in Tony Richardson's 1962 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Other plays at the Royal Court that year included Twelfth Night, where he played Malvolio, and Spring Awakening. He also appeared with the RSC but his breakthrough performance, also at the Court, was as Bill Maitland in John Osborne's Inadmissible Evidence in 1964, and in the same year also played Peter Wykeham in A Cuckoo in the Nest and Vladimir in Waiting for Godot.
Inadmissible Evidence transferred to Wyndham's in 1965 and then went to the Belasco Theatre on Broadway. He was to revive the role at the Royal Court in 1978 and at the Roundabout Theatre, New York, in 1981, as well as in the 1968 movie.
His Hamlet (Round House Theatre and the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, New York, both 1969) has been described as the best modern since John Gielgud - and the angriest.
In 1974 and 1975 he worked with the RSC, playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night, the title role in Macbeth and in Uncle Vanya (which he directed).
His last stage appearance was as Lear in King Lear at Clwyd Theatr Cymru in 2001, about which Michael Coveney, writing in The Guardian, said "many of the speeches were misplaced. Like Eric Morecambe playing the piano, he knew all the notes, but not necessarily in the right order."
He made 22 film appearances, including the parts for which he is probably best known to the cinema-going public, Sherlock Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1977) and Merlin in Excalibur (1981).
He was nominated for three BAFTAs and two Tonys.
He died on 16th December, 2011.