Keith Michell

Keith Michell was an Australian performer best known for his starring role in the 1972 television miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII, for which he won an Emmy Award in the category of outstanding single performance by an actor in a leading role, for the episode “Catherine Howard.” The part also garnered him an Emmy nomination for outstanding continued performance and a BAFTA win.

Michell went on to play the 16th-century English monarch several more times, including in the 1971 miniseries Elizabeth R, which won five Emmy Awards; in the 1972 feature film Henry VIII and His Six Wives and the 1996 miniseries The Prince and the Pauper.

His other work in television included a semi-recurring role on the crime series Murder, She Wrote. He played Dennis Stanton, a former jewel thief turned insurance claims investigator, who supplies the main character, Jessica Fletcher, with stories.

Michell also appeared in films, including roles in Dangerous Exile; All Night Long; Seven Seas to Calais; Prudence and the Pill, with Deborah Kerr and David Niven; House of Cards, with George Peppard and Orson Welles; The Executioner, with Peppard and Joan Collins and The Deceivers, starring Pierce Brosnan. He earned his first credit for the 1957 film True as a Turtle, for which he won a BAFTA for most promising newcomer to film. 

Michell was also a veteran of the stage. He became a member of the Young Vic Theatre Company soon after moving to Britain in 1949, and in 1963 he made his Broadway debut in a production of the musical comedy Irma La Douce. From 1974 to 1977, he served as artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, where he had once been amongst the first company of actors to perform during the theater’s inaugural season.

He died November 20, 2015, in Hampstead, London, England. He was 86.