Wolfe Morris

British character actor of Ukrainian-Jewish ancestry. Prolific on stage and screen, he was especially adept at impersonating people from diverse ethnicities, including Indians, Arabs, Japanese, Mexicans and Boers. He was a graduate of RADA and winner of the Forbes-Robertson and Kendal prizes. Morris frequently appeared with the Royal Exchange, the Bristol Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His many successes on stage included Professor Godbole in "A Passage to India" (1960) and Pozzo in "Waiting for Godot" (1980.) On screen, he specialised -- true to form -- in exotic oriental characters. His gallery of personae included Padmasambhava in "The Abominable Snowman" chapter of Doctor Who (1963), Detective Bose in Nine Hours to Rama (1963), Beirut police chief Takla in Department S (1969) ("A Fish Out of Water"), assorted shady Eastern Europeans in The Avengers (1961), The Rat Catchers (1966), and so on. Morris is best remembered as the insidious Thomas Cromwell in the BBC's The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), a role he was said to have researched by visiting Tudor castles and studying contemporary portraits.