Trevor Howard worked in the theatre for ten years before making his
film debut in 1944 in Carol
Reed's The
Way Ahead. This was followed in 1945 with a role in Anthony
Asquith's The
Way to the Stars, and with the part for which he is perhaps best
remembered, that of the doctor in David
Lean's Brief
Encounter. British cinema after the war generated a club of typical
English men, of which Howard was one, his particular strength being
to make English dullness interesting.
His characters were typically restrained, but the restraint covered
complex emotions and the typicality was finely nuanced. His success
in films like Alberto Cavalcanti's
They Made Me a
Fugitive (1947), David Lean's The
Passionate Friends (1949) and Reed's The
Third Man (1949) made him one of the key actors of the post-war
period, and he continued to deliver well-judged character parts for
the next three decades.
