Harrison, Rex (Reginald Carey) (1908-1990)

English film and theatre actor. He appeared in over 40 films and numerous plays, often portraying sophisticated and somewhat eccentric characters, such as the waspish Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady (1964; Academy Award), the musical version of Pygmalion. His other films include Blithe Spirit (1945), The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947), and Dr Doolittle (1967).

Harrison made his first stage appearance in London in 1927 at the Everyman Theatre in Getting George Married, and in New York as Tubs Barrow in Bitter Aloes (1939). His films in the 1930s and 1940s showed his ability to give his characters personality and the speed, ease, and elegance of his acting were equally impressive. After the end of the war, in which he had served in the RAF Volunteer Reserve, he became the quintessential English gentleman of Hollywood films, with a gift for understatement and precise timing. At the same time, he was given important and challenging roles on the New York stage, such as that of Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly in T S Eliot's The Cocktail Party. He won a Tony Award and an Academy Award for his performance in My Fair Lady and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (1963). He had been appearing in a Broadway production of Somerset Maugham's The Circle until a month before his death. He was knighted in 1989.