Malcolm Tierney obit

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Actor Malcolm Tierney dies aged 75

Screen and stage actor Malcolm Tierney, who played roles in Braveheart and Lovejoy and who portrayed Shann Childsen in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, has died at the age of 75.


Tierney, who performed a range of character roles on TV and film from the 1960s, played Tommy McArdle in soap opera Brookside from 1983-87.


He was also noted for his theatre work with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s.


In 2012, Tierney appeared as Sorin in Chekhov's The Seagull at London's Southwark Playhouse.


Writing on Twitter, the theatre praised him as "a magnificent actor" who was "so brilliant" in the production.


Tierney took a significant role in BBC show Lovejoy, playing the rogueish antique dealer's rival in three series of the light-hearted programme.


The Manchester-born actor also appeared in Doctor Who strand The Trial of a Time Lord in 1986, and had a role in the original Star Wars movie in 1977.


Cinema audiences will also recognise him from the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart, in which he played the villainous magistrate who executes William Wallace's wife before meeting a similar end at the hands of the Scottish rebel.


Other notable roles on the small screen included in A Bit of a Do, a serial based on books by Reggie Perrin creator David Nobbs, and the 1990 series of political thriller House of Cards.


Actors who worked with Tierney during his extensive career also paid tribute to him via social media.


Samuel West, who appeared in a radio dramatisation of Life and Fate with Tierney, called him "a wickedly good actor in every medium, and such a clever and funny man".


Only Fools and Horses actor John Challis - Boycie in the popular sitcom - remembered working with him on a TV play for Granada in Manchester called The John Hilarion Salt Exhibition.


Brookside actor Peter Doran said he "always had a wicked sense of humour in the green room".