Friday, January 16, 2009

Patrick McGoohan

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”


there's not a great deal to prove by suggesting anything else - Patrick McGoohan, sadly deceased this week, will always be remembered as the iconic Number Six in the fantastic series The Prisoner. it's not like Mr McGoohan would have had all that much of an issue with this anyway, he knew that he had created something special and dazzling with the show, and was rightly proud of it.


he was of course never short of great in anything he did. outside of The Prisoner, i shall remember him fondly as the warden in the great Escape From Alcatraz, in which he went toe to toe with Clint Eastwood and pulled it off where so many others had failed. and, for what it's worth, Patrick McGoohan was the one redeeming feature of the otherwise awful, wildly inaccurate Mel Gibson offering Braveheart. watching him in that makes you just wish he would have played King Lear somewhere along the line.

there's not much more i can add, so i will leave it to the fine tribute from the BBC





Emmy-winning actor Patrick McGoohan, best known for starring in cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner, has died at the age of 80.

He died in Los Angeles after a short illness, his film producer son-in-law Cleve Landsberg told Associated Press.

McGoohan played the character Six in the surreal 1960s show, filmed in the north Wales village of Portmeirion.

He won two Emmy awards for his work on TV detective series Columbo, playing different characters.
The first came for an episode of the series in 1974, with another 16 years later.





The screen star also won a Bafta award for best television actor in 1959 for his role in The Greatest Man In The World, a one-off drama in ITV's Armchair Theatre series.

In more recent years, McGoohan played King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart

The actor, who was born in New York and raised in England and Ireland, came to screen prominence in TV series Danger Man, in which he played a secret service agent. The programme later aired as Secret Agent in the US.

He was later considered for the role of James Bond for the movie Dr No.
But McGoohan was chiefly associated with cult ITV drama The Prisoner, writing some of the episodes himself under a different name.

His character spent the entire time attempting to escape from The Village and finding out the identity of his captor, the elusive Number One.

He repeatedly declared: "I am not a number - I am a free man!"
In 2000, McGoohan reprised his most famous role in an episode of The Simpsons.



be seeing you................

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