Sir Donald Alfred Sinden CBE FRSA (9 October 1923 – 12 September 2014) was an English actor in theatre, film, television and radio as well as an author.

Achieving early fame as a Rank Organisation film star in the 1950s, Sinden then became highly regarded as an award-winning Shakespearean and West End theatre actor and television sit-com star.

Biography

Sinden was born in St Budeaux, Plymouth, Devon on 9 October 1923. The middle child of Alfred Edward Sinden and his wife Mabel Agnes (née Fuller), he had an elder sister (Joy) and a younger brother Leon (born 1927, also an actor). They grew up in Ditchling, where their home, "The Limes", doubled as the local chemist shop.

According to his second autobiography, while investigating his family genealogy he discovered that the only previous relatives who were also members of the theatrical profession were the Victorian brother and sister act of Bert and Topsy Sinden, who were distant cousins. Topsy achieved "some fame as a 'skirt dancer' and première danseuse at the Empire Theatre of Varieties in Leicester Square."

He was colour blind and suffered from asthma, which prevented him from joining the armed forces during the Second World War and suffered from negative buoyancy, meaning that he was unable to float or swim in water, which was discovered while filming The Cruel Sea when the ship was sinking. Co-star Jack Hawkins saved him from drowning in the open air water-tank at Denham Studios.

He died at his home in Wittersham on the Isle of Oxney, Kent, on 12 September 2014, aged 90, from prostate cancer which had been diagnosed several years earlier. The participants at his funeral on the 19 September in St John the Baptist Church, Wittersham were Dame Judi Dench, his grandson Hal Sinden and Sir Patrick Stewart. The eulogy was read by Lord Archer. An Honorary Life Member and Trustee of the Garrick Club in London, which he joined in 1960, he was buried in a coffin painted in the Club's 'salmon and cucumber' colours.

It was announced that his estate on his death was valued at £2.3 million.

A Blue Plaque in his memory was attached to his former family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb in 2015.

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