Geoffrey Keen was a hardworking character actor specialising in impatient
military commanders and other authority figures. The son of Malcolm
Keen, a distinguished Shakespearean stage actor, Keen's parent’s
marriage collapsed before his birth and from an early age he grew up
with his mother in Bristol, where he made his professional stage debut
in School for Scandal at the Little Repertory Theatre. After being accepted
as a student at the London School of Economics he won a scholarship
to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and joined the Royal Shakespeare
Company, but his acting career was disrupted by WWII during which Keen
was a corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps.
During the war, he appeared on screen in Carol Reed’s military
short The New
Lot (1943). When hostilities ended Reed helped Keen get his film
career under way with small roles in Odd
Man Out (1947), The
Fallen Idol (1948) and The
Third Man (1949). After appearing in The Third Man (1949), he secured
his biggest role to date, as the agitator Harry Bolger in Bernard Miles’
Chance of a Lifetime
(1951). Keen went on to appear as priest in Cry, the Beloved Country
(1951), the motorcycle policeman in Genevieve
(1953), the shipping agent The
Maggie (1954), Killearn in Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue (1954) and
the dean in Doctor
in the House (1954), the first of three films he made in the popular
comedy series.
The Spy Who Loved
Me (1977) was the first of six Bond films in the 1970s and 1980s
in which he played the acerbic Minister of Defence Frederick Gray, who
strongly disapproved of Bond's seemingly cavalier approach to the job.
The Living Daylights
(1987) signalled his retirement at the age of 71.
