Tony Beckley

But Mr Bridger, what if the Professor's not bent? asked Tony Beckley's character in Peter Collinson's classic 1969 caper "The Italian Job," to which Noël Coward's master criminal replies: "Camp Freddie, everyone in the 'world' is bent!" This exchange guaranteed the RADA-trained Beckley his place in cult folklore, which he reinforced as eccentric botanist Harrison Chase, who unleashes a Krynoid mutant in the 1976 "Doctor Who" six-parter "The Seeds of Doom." Having become a stage stalwart, Beckley began appearing in TV series like "The Saint" and "Z Cars" in the early 1960s before Orson Welles cast him as Ned Poins in the 1966 Shakespearean saga "Chimes at Midnight." However, it was his trio of films with Collinson (which was completed by "The Penthouse" and "The Long Day's Dying") that established Beckley as a big screen presence. Having played an alcoholic conman in Michael Carreras's adventure "The Lost Continent" and a sleazy suspect in Sidney Hayers's thriller "Assault," Beckley reunited with "Italian Job" co-star Michael Caine in the 1971 gangster gem "Get Carter" and delivered a memorable turn as murderous religious fanatic Kenny Wemys in Robert Hartford-Davis's 1972 shocker, "The Fiend." Despite teaming again with Hayers to play a police sergeant in "Diagnosis: Murder," Beckley found roles in 1970s movies like "Sitting Target" and "Gold" harder to come by. However, he remained in demand on stage and television and returned to features as Robert Webber's sidekick in "Revenge of the Pink Panther" and another psychopath in "When a Stranger Calls" before succumbing to cancer.