Ian Bannen Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family
Scottish character actor and occasional leading man who enlivened scores of fine films in Britain and America. His father was a lawyer in a small town in Lanarkshire. Bannen served in the army and attended Ratcliffe College, Leicestershire. His first acting role came in a 1947 Dublin production of "Armlet of Jade". He became a successful figure on ...
Net Worth
$500,000
Date Of Birth
June 29, 1928
Died
1999-11-03
Place Of Birth
Airdrie, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK
Height
6' 1" (1.85 m)
Occupation
Actor
Profession
Actor
Spouse
Marilyn Salisbury
Nicknames
Ian Bannen, Bannen, Ian
Star Sign
Cancer
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Fact
1
Made his stage in 1947.
2
Was offered the role of Dr Finlay in the original BBC series but turned it down. He did appear in a 1963 episode playing the part of a miner.
3
In the 1950s, he proposed marriage to Maggie Smith, but insisted that she would have to convert to Roman Catholicism before the wedding. She declined both suggestions.
4
He lived with his mother in her later years and did not marry until after she had died.
5
He appeared in two Best Picture Academy Award winners: Gandhi (1982) and Braveheart (1995). Bernard Horsfall also appeared in both films.
He died in a car accident in 1999 while a passenger in a car driven by his wife, Marilyn. Coincidentally, Bannen originally met his wife back in 1976 when she parked her old van in his reserved parking space and was unable to get it started.
10
Director John Schlesinger cast him as a replacement for Alan Bates in the part of well-off homosexual doctor Daniel Hirsh in his controversial film Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), after Bates was deemed unavailable to shoot. According to screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt, Bannen never felt comfortable with the part; she speculated that he was flustered by the fact that he would have to kiss male actor Murray Head, who played his lover whom also carried on an affair with Glenda Jackson. The anxiety adversely affected his performance during the early filming. Schlesinger had to fire him and replace him with Peter Finch, who won an Oscar nomination for the role. Many observers believe that Finch lost the Oscar to Gene Hackman because of the gay kiss. Bannen said near the end of his life, after being hailed for his comeback in Waking Ned Devine (1998), that this was his one big regret, for throwing away the plum role seriously set back his career and it never recovered.
