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'Steven Berkoff' (born August 3, 1937) is an English actor, writer and director.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Career

References

External links

Biography

Early life

Berkoff was born 'Leslie Steven Berks' in Stepney, in the East End of London, to Pauline Hyman and Alfred Berks, a tailor.^[1][2] His family is Jewish,^[3] originating from Russia,^[4] with their original surname, "Berkovitch", having been shortened by Berkoff's father.^[5] Berkoff was educated at Hackney Downs School^[6] and trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in 1958, and in 1965, at the Ecole Jacques Le Coq in Paris^[7].

Career

In Hollywood he took villainous roles such as the corrupt art dealer Victor Maitland in ''Beverly Hills Cop''; a gangster in ''The Krays''; and the sadistic Soviet officer Col. Podovsky in ''. He appeared in the James Bond film ''Octopussy'' as General Orlov. He was cast by Stanley Kubrick as a police officer in ''A Clockwork Orange'' and a gambler nobleman (Lord Ludd) in ''Barry Lyndon''. He appears in the independent feature ''Naked in London'' (2006).
In 1990 Berkoff appeared in the Frank Howson written and directed biopic on the early life of Errol Flynn entitled ''Flynn'' (also known in some territories as ''My Forgotten Man''. Howson and Berkoff established a great working relationship and in 2001 Howson directed a TV version of Berkoff's hit play ''Shakespeare's Villains''.
As a television actor, an early TV role was in an episode of ''The Avengers''. An early regular role was as a Moonbase Interceptor pilot in the Gerry Anderson TV series ''UFO''. He has also appeared in '' as Hagath in the episode ''Business as Usual''; in the miniseries ''Children of Dune'' as Stilgar; as a gangster (Mr Wiltshire) in episode 8 of the BBC's ''Hotel Babylon'' series; as a lawyer (Freddie Eccles) in an episode of ITV's ''Marple'' entitled ''By the Pricking of My Thumbs'' and as Adolf Hitler in the mini-series ''War and Remembrance''.
Berkoff is a playwright, actor and theatre director. In the 1970s and 1980s he wrote a series of verse plays including: ''East'' (1975), ''Greek'' (1980), ''Decadence'' (1981) and ''West'' (1983). Other plays in verse are: ''Sink the Belgrano!'' (1986)^[8], a critical take on the Falklands War; ''Massage'' (1997); ''Sturm und Drang'' and ''The Secret Love Life of Ophelia'' (2001). He has made several adaptations of Kafka's work: ''The Metamorphosis'' (1969), ''In the Penal Colony'' (1969) and ''The Trial'' (1971). In the late 1980s he directed an interpretation of ''Salome'' by Oscar Wilde in the Gate Theatre, Dublin and later in the UK. He trained in mime and physical theatre alongside Jacques Lecoq in Paris and also at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. His key theatrical influences are Jerzy Grotowski, Antonin Artaud and Jacques Lecoq.
He is an exponent of the style of heightened physical theatre for which the term 'total theatre' has been coined. Along with this highly physical style of theatre he also created complex psychological plays such as "The Trial"; these works were nightmarish and created a sense of alienation. These took everyday feelings (such as the feeling that no one is listening to you) and exaggerated them, adding to the disturbing nature of the plays.
Berkoff is patron at the Nightingale Theatre,^[9] home of the Prodigal Theatre Company in Brighton. He had a top 20 hit in the U.K. with dance band N-Trance called "The Mind Of The Machine" and was mentioned in the lyrics of the Brian May track "I'm Scared" from the album "Back to the Light".

References

★ Robert Cross, ''Steven Berkoff and the Theatre of Self-Performance'' (Manchester University Press, 2004)
1. filmreference.com
2. movies.yahoo.com
3. contemporarywriters.com
4. iainfisher.com
5. davidaspencer.com
6. ''Steven Berkoff: The real East Enders'' The Independent 04 Jan 2007 accessed 10 May 2007
7. Bio at Hollywood celebrity accessed 27 Jun 2007
8. ''Sink the Belgrano!'' premièred at the Half Moon Theatre, in Stepney on 2 Sept 1986. It was described by critic Ned Chaillett, as ''a diatribe in punk-Shakespearean verse'', and by Berkoff himself, as ''even by my modest standards [it] was one of the best things I have done'' (Free Association 373)
9. nightingaletheatre.co.uk/

External links

★ Official site

★

★ List of plays with synopses: http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsB/berkoff-steven.html

★ A fansite