Robert Newton was born in Shaftesbury, Dorset, the son of painter Algernon Newton. He was educated at Newbury Grammar School and in Switzerland. He spent three years with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, where he first appeared on stage in Henry IV in 1920.
His career is dominated by two roles, Bill Sikes in David
Lean's Oliver
Twist (1948) and Long John Silver in the Disney version of Treasure
Island (1950). The wonderful hamming of the latter in particular became
part of the cultural luggage of schoolboys in the 1950s, and was perpetuated
in a sequel, Long John Silver (1955), and an Australian television series,
The Adventures of Long John Silver (1955). The image of the shameless
scene-stealer, however, belies the quiet control of his acting in other
films. In This
Happy Breed (1944), Newton's scrupulously economical performance
is invisibly woven into the fabric of lower middle-class respectability
between the wars.
