"As far as being idolized by teens, I don't know. It
must be some sort of father fixation. Or maybe
they think I'm just pretty."
must be some sort of father fixation. Or maybe
they think I'm just pretty."
"I am not one of those actors who believes he has to live the part he is playing. I can turn it on and off."
Donald Henry Pleasence OBE (5 October 1919 – 2 February 1995) was an English actor, credited with more than 200 movie and television appearances during a career which spanned over four decades. He is the all-time champion in the category Bald of Evil.
Pleasence was often typecast as villainous and/or psychopathic characters, and he played an iconic version of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film series. His portrayal of Dr. Sam Loomis in the Halloween series changed his on-screen image to a more heroic one, albeit still sometimes ruthless or creepy.
His filmography includes:
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Film roles
- A Tale of Two Cities (1958) as John Barsad
- Look Back in Anger (1959) as Hurst
- Circus of Horrors (1960) as Vanet
- The Flesh and the Fiends (1960) as William Hare
- Sons and Lovers (1960) as Pappleworth
- What a Carve Up! (1961) as Everett Sloane
- The Great Escape (1963) as Colin Blythe, "The Forger"
- Cul-de-sac (1966) as George
- Fantastic Voyage (1966) as Dr. Michaels
- The Hallelujah Trail (1965) as Oracle Jones
- The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) as Satan
- Eye of the Devil (1967) as Pere Dominic
- You Only Live Twice (1967) as Ernst Stavro Blofeld
- The Night of the Generals (1967) as General Klaus Kahlenberge
- The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) as The Prospector
- Soldier Blue (1970) as Isaac Q. Cumber
- Wake in Fright (1971) as Clarence "Doc" Tydon
- THX 1138 (1971) as SEN
- Death Line (1972) as Inspector Calhoun
- The scary PSA Lonely Waters
(1973), as the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water - The Freakmaker (1974) as Professor Noller
- From Beyond the Grave (1974) as Jim Underwood
- Watch Out, We're Mad! (1974) in a comedic role as The Doctor
- Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) as Lucas Deranian
- The Eagle Has Landed (1976) as Heinrich Himmler
- Oh, God! (1977) as Dr. Harmon
- Telefon (1977) as Nikolai Dalchimsky
- The Uncanny (1977) as Valentine De'ath
- The Halloween series (1978–95) as Dr. Sam Loomis
- Dracula (1979) as Dr. Seward
- The Pumaman (1980) as Kobras
- Escape from New York (1981) as the President
- Alone in the Dark (1982) as Dr. Bain
- Warrior of the Lost World (1983) as Prossor
- Phenomena (1985) as Prof. McGregor
- Prince of Darkness (1987) as a priest
- Shadows and Fog (1992) as the Doctor
- The Hour of the Pig (1993) as the public prosecutor Pincheon
- The Thief and the Cobbler (1995) as Phido the Vulture. (The version titled Arabian Knight replaced him with Eric Bogosian. His voice is still present as the few lines not done by Jonathan Winters as the Thief.)
Television roles
- The Adventures of Robin Hood (6 episodes, 1956–58) as Prince John
- Danger Man (2 episodes, 1960–61) as Capt. Aldrich / Nikolides
- One Step Beyond (1 episode, 1961) as Harvey Laurence
- Walt Disney Presents (2 episodes, 1961) as Capt. Pinski
- The Twilight Zone (1 episode, 1962) as Prof. Ellis Fowler
- The Outer Limits (1 episode, 1963) as Harold J. Finley
- The Fugitive (1 episode, 1966) as Max Pfeiffer
- Play for Today (3 episodes, 1971–83) as Tom / Gerry Muddiman / Samuel Johnson
- The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1 episode, 1971) as Thomas Carnacki
- Hawaii Five-O (1 episode, 1972) as Hans Vogler
- Columbo (1 episode, 1973) as Adrian Carsini
- Jesus of Nazareth (1 episode, 1977) as Melchior
- Centennial (1978–79) as Sam Purchas
- Mrs. Columbo (1 episode, 1979) as Ian A. Morly
- Saturday Night Live (1 episode, 1981) as Himself (host)
- Lovejoy (1 episode, 1992) as Karl Redl
- Screen Two (1 episode, 1993) as Victor Harty
Tropes about Donald Pleasence:
- Bald of Evil: The Trope Codifier.
- Career Resurrection: Halloween, to the point where he got a whole new career out of it. Before Halloween, he was typecast as creepy, sadistic villains, always wanting to play a good guy. After playing the heroic, Van Helsing like Dr. Loomis, his career shot back to the top and ironically he found that from then all heroic roles were ALL people wanted to see him in, though he admitted he preferred it that way.
- Creepy Blue Eyes/Icy Blue Eyes
- I Am Not Leonard Nimoy: Invoked in the MST3K treatment of The Pumaman; Mike and the Bots insist on referring to his character as "Donald Pleasence". This may have been partly to tease him for a role he openly admitted was an Old Shame.
- Missing Episode: The Halloween episode of Saturday Night Live which he hosted back in 1981 hasn't been seen on American TV since then, due to the musical guest's (a punk rock group named F.E.A.R.) raucous performance (which included guitar smashing and mosh pits) and the sketches containing humor that was considered dark and disgusting at the time. Netflix had the episode on its Saturday Night Live: The 1980s collection (which has all the episodes from seasons 6note to 15note ), albeit edited down to 27 minutes (meaning most of the sketches and the notorious musical performances by Fear have been cut). Sadly, it's not there anymore.
- Money, Dear Boy:"There was a sort of horror picture that I did called The Mutations.note I think I did that solely for the money. I have six daughters, and they can be quite expensive, so one has to keep working and be able to pay the bills."
- Old Shame: It shouldn't be surprising Donald once declared The Pumaman the worst movie he was ever part of.
- Shown Their Work: The makers went to great lengths to accurately build a German POW camp for The Great Escape. Of course, it did help that several of the actors had been prisoners of war during World War II. Pleasence, who had been in a German POW camp, made a few suggestions to John Sturges, who wasn't aware of that fact, and was told to keep his opinions to himself. However, when the director learned that Pleasence knew what he was talking about, he was asked for advice all the time.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Pleasence only played Ernst Stavro Blofeld once in the James Bond series (in You Only Live Twice, where he was a hurried replacement for the originally-cast actor and his face is only revealed in the last twenty minutes), which is surprising considering how definitive his take on the ultimate Big Bad of the film series became.
- Stock Shout-Out: Just about every James Bond parody in any medium will base the villain on his version of Blofeld (perhaps most famously with Dr. Evil).
