Alan Arthur Bates was a British actor. He was born in 1934 at Allestree and died in 2003. He decided to be an actor at the age of 11. After attending grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, his West End debut coming in 1956. In the same year Bates appeared in Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger', a play that gave a name to a generation of post-war 'angry young men'. The play made Bates a star, and launched a lifetime performing in works written by great modern playwrights - Pinter, Gray, Storey, Bennett, Shaffer, Stoppard (as well as Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, Shakespeare). Four years later, Alan Bates appeared in his first film, 'The Entertainer', in which he played one of Laurence Olivier's sons. More than fifty film roles followed, one of which, 'The Fixer' (from a novel by Bernard Malamud) earned him an Academy Award nomination. Research Alan Bates
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Research Alan Bates