George Coulouris

George Coulouris (born George Alexander Coulouris, 1 October 1903 in Manchester, Lancashire, England) was a distinguished English film, stage and radio actor whose career spanned nearly six decades. He is perhaps best remembered for his collaboration with Orson Welles, most famously portraying the powerful financier Walter Parks Thatcher in the classic 1941 film Citizen Kane. Raised in Manchester and Urmston within an Anglo‑Greek family, Coulouris attended Manchester Grammar School before training at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. He made his professional stage debut in 1926 as Henry V at the Old Vic, quickly establishing a reputation for strong classical performances. By the late 1920s he was appearing in productions at the Cambridge Festival Theatre and made his Broadway debut in 1929, leading to his first Hollywood role in 1933. A pivotal moment came in 1936 when he met Orson Welles during the Broadway run of Ten Million Ghosts; Welles invited him to join the Mercury Theatre, where Coulouris played Mark Antony in the innovative modern‑dress production of Julius Caesar and participated in the acclaimed radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The Campbell Playhouse. Throughout the 1940s he balanced stage work with an impressive filmography that included For Whom the Bell Tolls, Watch on the Rhine, and Joan of Arc. After returning to Britain in 1950 he joined the Bristol Old Vic and continued to perform in major roles such as King Lear, Dr Stockmann in An Enemy of the People, and Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. His later screen work featured parts in Papillon, Mahler, and Murder on the Orient Express, while his television appearances included The Prisoner and Doctor Who. Married first to actress Louise Franklin (1930‑1976) and later to Elizabeth Donaldson, he fathered two children, the computer scientist George Coulouris and artist Mary Louise Coulouris. He remained active until 1985, leaving a legacy of over eighty films and countless stage and radio performances, and was portrayed by Ben Chaplin in the 2008 film Me and Orson Welles.