Roy Dotrice

Hunger in the Stalag and the refuge of the stage

Roy Dotrice spent three years locked in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. That captivity forged a resilience he would later bring to the most demanding British stages. He was not a typical method actor.

His discipline came from hunger and cold.

In 1945, he returned to England and decided that acting was the only way to purge the ghosts of war. He worked in regional companies until the Royal Shakespeare Company came knocking. There he shared the stage with the most powerful names of his generation.

But theater doesn't always pay the bills for a large family. So Dotrice began looking for openings on British television. His angular face and deep voice fit perfectly into period dramas and BBC productions.

In 1969, he set a world record with the monologue Brief Lives. He played John Aubrey more than 1,700 times over the course of his life. It was the stage work that defined his physical endurance on stage.

The man of a thousand voices in Westeros

His move into international film came with Amadeus in 1984. He played Leopold Mozart, the genius's severe and suffocating father. His performance was as dry as it was brilliant.

In the late 1980s, he moved to the United States to bring Father to life in the series Beauty and the Beast. That role brought him late but solid fame among American audiences. His greatest feat, however, would not be seen on screen.

George R.R. Martin chose him personally.

In 2004, Dotrice stepped into a recording booth to narrate A Game of Thrones. The result was an unprecedented technical feat. He managed to distinguish 224 different characters using only nuances of his own voice.

He won a Guinness record for that monumental work. And although his health kept him from narrating the fourth book of the saga, he returned for the fifth volume in 2011. His recordings add up to hundreds of hours of audio that still sell thousands of copies every year.

A Retreat Among Dragons and Valyrian Fire

The HBO television series wanted to pay tribute to him. In 2012, he appeared in the second season of Game of Thrones playing Hallyne, the pyromancer tasked with making Valyrian fire. It was a direct nod to the readers who had listened to his voice for years.

He received the Order of the British Empire in 2008 for his services to dramatic arts. He never really stopped working. His last on-screen appearance was a brief role in 2014 in the series The Professor and the Madman.

He died at his London home in October 2017 at age 94. He was surrounded by his family, including his three daughters, who also followed him into acting.

The funeral was held privately, and his remains were cremated. His professional legacy is recorded in 33,000 pages of scripts and scripts accumulated over seven decades.