Douglas Campbell

Douglas Campbell, CM (11 June 1922 – 6 October 2009) was a Canadian-based stage actor. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland.

Campbell's interest in the theatre began at London's Old Vic Theatre at age 17, where working as a stage hand he saw Tyrone Guthrie's production of King John. He first performed in the 1941 Old Vic touring productions of Medea and Jacob's Ladder.

He was invited to Canada in 1953 by Guthrie, who had just been appointed the first artistic director of the fledgling Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario. Campbell played Hastings in the opening production of Richard III in 1953, and King Oedipus in the stage and screen production of Oedipus Rex in 1954. He appeared many times at Stratford in the fifty years that followed, drawing great acclaim in the role of Othello in 1959, and in many appearances as Falstaff.

Campbell acted and directed on other stages. Campbell founded the Canadian Players in 1954. He acted and directed several plays at the Crest Theatre in Toronto in 1955. He was artistic director at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis from 1966 to 1967.

He was awarded the Order of Canada on 17 April 1997. Campbell received a Governor General's Performing Arts Award, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts, in 2003.

In 1947, Campbell married Ann Casson, actress and daughter of Sir Lewis Casson and Dame Sybil Thorndike. His children from that marriage are Dirk Campbell, television director; Teresa Padden who played Cordelia to his first King Lear, Tom Campbell, painter; Benedict Campbell, actor. In the late 1960s, Campbell developed a relationship with Moira Wylie, an actress and director, with whom his children Beatrice and Torquil Campbell were born. Beatrice Campbell is a stage manager at the Shaw Festival while Torquil Campbell is an actor and lead singer/songwriter of the indie rock band Stars. Casson, whom Campbell never divorced, died in 1990. He and Wylie married in 1993. Campbell was a pacificist and vegetarian.

Campbell died at Hôtel Dieu hospital in Montreal, Quebec, from complications of diabetes and congestive heart disease on 6 October 2009.