Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Lionel Jeffries

Actor-director

Born - 10 June 1926, London, England
Died - 19 February 2010

Moustachioed, bald from an early age, and with distinctive barking tones, Jeffries was a prime scene-stealer from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, when he became something of a character star. Initial ventures as a director, notably his first, The Railway Children (1970) were more successful than those that followed. Nosey parkers and blustering figures of authority were characters that made his name, although he had begun his film career almost straight from RADA with fleeting roles in Miranda (1948) and Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1949). He had a leading role in a B film called Windfall in 1955: at 29, he played an elderly gent; the actor playing his son, Jack Watling, was three years older. But it was comedies with Peter Sellers that made him a national figure, notably Up the Creek (1958), Two Way Stretch (1960) and The Wrong Arm of the Law (1962). Later films included Murder Ahoy (1964), Camelot (1967), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), The Prisoner of Zenda (1978) and A Chorus of Disapproval (1988), his last. He died in a Dorset nursing home after a long illness.