by Towards the end of his life, the actor Adrian Schiller, who died unexpectedly at the age of 60, found sudden success and fame in two huge television shows: The Last Kingdom (2018-22), on Netflix, in which he played the richest man in medieval Wessex, Aethelhelm; and the ITV drama Victoria (2016-19), as Cornelius Penge, a footman in the royal family.
In both, a cursory glance would suggest that here was a naturally authoritative actor, blessed with gravitas and style. This camouflaged the demonic comic spirit within, so familiar to his memorable stage performances since he first appeared in Carl Sternheim’s 1911 German Expressionist play The Knickers at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1991. In a comically comic performance, it was Wagner’s weak-loving Barber who was struck with a flash of worn lingerie as the Kaiser drove by, suggesting, said the Times critic, “a tousle-headed mixture of Charlie Chaplin, Egon Schiele and Gollum, who the idea of romanticism is reading passages from “the Flying Dutchman”.
Schiller went on to lead roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1990s – 1996’s disappointing Macbeth was the funniest I’ve ever seen, and his entertaining Touchstone success in the outrageous designer knitwear production of As You Like It in 2000 another dude.
He was less prominent in some strange productions at the National – Peter Handke’s wordless The Hour We Know Nothing of Each Other in 2008, as one of 27 actors playing 450 characters in the town square, coming and going without any interaction , and as revolutionaries. adapted to the poor 2013 rereading of Carl Zuckmayer’s Captain Kopenick in 1931, when Antony Sher did not erase Paul Scofield’s memories in the 1971 NT production.
On the other hand, he was excellent in Benedict Andrews’s superbly directed and modernized Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Young Vic in 2012, playing Kulygin, a leather-jacketed schoolteacher tragically smitten with his wife own unfaithful spouse; and he was a very strong, original, quiet and sympathetic Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at the Wanamaker, the candlelit indoor venue at Shakespeare’s Globe, in 2022. The Merchant recreated the current buzz around the play – is it antisemitic or about antisemitism?
In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Schiller leaned toward the second view. He said he was “a Jew but not a Jew”.
Schiller was born in Oxford, the second of four children of Judith (née Bennett), a teacher, and Klaus Schiller, a gastroenterologist whose family emigrated from Austria to Britain in 1938. When Klaus became a consultant at St Peter’s hospital , Chertsey , the Schillers moved to Surrey.
Adrian was educated at Kingston grammar school and Charterhouse, in Godalming, Surrey, where he continued a busy life in stage productions. Instead of drama school, he got a decent degree in philosophy (having switched from architecture) at University College London, although he always said dismissively that he was in charge of “plays and parties”.
His early television career included series such as Prime Suspect, A Touch of Frost, Judge John Deed and many more, until the first series of Endeavor in 2013. He also appeared in the Channel 4 series The Devil’s Whore (2008) which set in the English civil war, and the Doctor Who storyline The Doctor’s Wife in 2011.
One of his most effective on-screen cameos was as a barman in the government’s hit anti-drink-driving ad in 2007. He leaned deep into the camera with a series of nonsensical questions to an unsuspecting youngster. was very impressed. a customer holding a glass who may or may not have understood the seriousness of the questioning.
But he always returned to the theatre, looking for the most demanding roles with companies that would accommodate him. He gave an almost idealized portrayal of Cassius, truly intellectual as he shouts passionately below, said Michael Billington, for the RSC’s 2005 touring version of David Farr’s Julius Caesar. In the title role of Tartuffe at the Watermill, Newbury, in 2006, he was cool and venomous, as well as understated, and clearly the star of the show.
And for Stephen Unwin’s English Touring Theater in 2007, he reprized the relentless villain, De Flores, in Middleton and Rowley’s Jacobean horror, The Changeling. He was very impressive, too, opposite Sher’s Sigmund Freud, as a very funny Salvador Dalí, in his brilliant contact scene in Terry Johnson’s Hysteria at the Hampstead theatre, revived there in 2013, 20 years after his Court premiere Royal.
His feature film credits were not extensive, but in 2014 he was well cast as the sardonic high priest Caiaphas in Son of God, Christopher Spencer’s biblical epic. In Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette (2015), written by Abi Morgan, he was a brilliant Lloyd George, rallying around the suffragettes who sought votes led by Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst and Carey Mulligan as a fictional worker who inspired the excitement. of change and protest.
His last film, yet to be released, is Red Sonja, in which he plays the Turan king in a remake of the 1985 Marvel Comics sword and sorcery.
Back on stage in 2023, he returned to questions of Jewish identity and survival in three new short plays at the Soho theater and a more substantial Holocaust play, Dmitry Glukhovsky’s The White Factory, at Marylebone’s exciting new theater (the Steiner Hall previously). , in which he was a powerful, wise presence in the story of a survivor of the Łódź ghetto in Poland, played by Mark Quartley, adapting to American life in 60s Brooklyn.
At the time of his death, Schiller – who was also a trained sculptor and guitarist – had just returned from Sydney and the successful international tour of The Lehman Trilogy, directed by Sam Mendes, and was looking forward to the first stage. another part of the trip. in San Francisco.
He is survived by his partner, Milena Wlodkowska, a laboratory support technician, and their son, Gabriel, and his sister, Ginny, and his brothers, Nick and Ben.
• Adrian Townsend Schiller, actor, born 21 February 1964; died 3 April 2024
