Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE (31 May 1922 – 6 October 1992) was an English film, television and theatre actor with more than 120 film and television credits. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. In the 1980s, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in three consecutive years (his first for Coleman in Trading Places), the only actor ever to have achieved this. He is perhaps best known for portraying Dr Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and as "Coleman" in Trading Places (1983).

Biography

Privately bisexual, Elliott was married twice; first to actress Virginia McKenna for a few months in 1954, and later, in an open marriage, to American actress Susan Robinson (7 March 1942–12 April 2007), with whom he had two children, Mark and Jennifer. Jennifer committed suicide by hanging in 2003.


Death
Elliott was diagnosed with HIV in 1987 and died of AIDS-related tuberculosis at his home in Santa Eulària des Riu on Ibiza, Spain, on 6 October 1992 at the age of 70. Tributes were paid by actors Sir Donald Sinden and Sir Peter Ustinov, playwright Dennis Potter and former wife Virginia McKenna. Sinden said: "He was one of the finest screen actors and a very special actor at that. He was one of the last stars who was a real gentleman. It is a very sad loss." Ustinov said: "He was a wonderful actor and a very good friend on the occasions that life brought us together." Potter commented: "He was a complicated, sensitive and slightly disturbing actor. Not only was he a very accomplished actor, he was a dry, witty and slightly menacing individual. As a man, I always found him very open, very straightforward and very much to the point." McKenna added: "It is absolutely dreadful, but the person I am thinking of at the moment more than anybody is his wife. It must be terrible for her." Ismail Merchant described Elliott as "an all-giving person, full of life ... He had an affection and feeling for other actors, which is very unusual in our business."

His widow set up a charity, The Denholm Elliott Project, and collaborated on his biography. She worked closely with the UK Coalition of People Living with HIV and AIDS. Susan Robinson Elliott died on 12 April 2007, aged 65, following a fire in her flat in London.

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