Ronald Pickup

Ronald Alfred Pickup (7 June 1940 - 24 February 2021) was an English actor. He was active in television and film from 1964 to 2021.

In 1973, he appeared as a forger in The Day of the Jackal. The following year he was seen in Ken Russell's film Mahler, and also appeared in Joseph Andrews in 1977. Pickup played one of the Prussian agents conspiring to blow up the Houses of Parliament in The Thirty Nine Steps (1978).

Pickup played Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury in the BBC Television Shakespeare version of Henry VIII (1979). He played Lt. Harford in Zulu Dawn (1979), Igor Stravinsky in Nijinsky (1980), Prince John in Ivanhoe (1982), and a government official in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) opposite Sean Connery. He portrayed Portuguese governor Don Hontar in The Mission (1986). In 1989 he played Captain Lancaster, a very strict teacher in Danny, the Champion of the World, and also appeared as a state advocate in A Dry White Season the same year.

In 2004, he appeared in the film Secret Passage alongside John Turturro. In 2005, he had a supporting role in the family-based film, The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby and the science fiction TV movie Supernova.

In 2012, he played one of the main characters, bachelor Norman Cousins, in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

He reprised the role in the sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, released in 2015. In the 2017 film Darkest Hour, Pickup portrays Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, in his last days, as he cedes power to Winston Churchill in the early months of World War II.