I've heard that Leonard Rossiter was not generally liked by people ,exceptional actor that he was and that he was never featured on 'This is your Life'because they might not have found enough people for the show to speak well of him.Also that Pauline Yates was a bit scared of him!
shareIronically, he was never liked in the series 'Rising Damp'. All the tenants disliked him.
shareRossiter was given a surprise tribute on This Is Your Life in 1975
shareI've got no time for this kind of talk. Some geniuses are very affable, public, people , some are very private, reserved, aloof.
Rossiter's generation is very different from today's actors. Todays actors are more like advertising PR men, the kind of people that Reginald Perrin was mocking. He was a true actor and mind, one of the Hancock brilliant kind.
If he was unpleasant to others, it was probably a reaction to the acknowledgement that, one day, it would all end, that wars, famine and hut were still going on outside of the bubble of entertainment. Some actors come from comfortable families, upbringings, others don't.
I'm sure that if he'd been born in to a Los Angeles acting family and lead that life, there wouldn't be this talk because he wouldn't feel quite so different. Acting is a businesses where you can control a situation for a short time on stage or screen, within the rules of the director, but life's often not like that. He was very popular with me as a viewer- he was the Rik Mayall of the time in my view, a well spoken man who created an appearance of anarachy in some ways- but it was a social study in Rossiter's case more than anarchy. He was making important TV.
You heard this where?
shareI've heard/read that he could be difficult to get on with, but this was apparently largely due to his being such a perfectionist in his work - and expecting everybody else to be.
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