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Dirk Bogarde, born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde in 1921, became known as Dr. Simon Sparrow in the Doctor series before moving to art-house films. He won BAFTA awards for The Servant 1964 and Darling 1966, and starred in two films directed by Luchino Visconti, The Damned 1969 and Death in Venice 1971. A knighted actor and writer, he lived with his partner Anthony Forwood for decades and died of a heart attack in 1999.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Dirk Bogarde — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Dirk Bogarde by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Dirk Bogarde — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Art editor of the Times Ulric van den Bogaerde and actress Margaret Niven raised their son Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde in Hampstead, London, after his birth on March 28, 1921. The family, with his sister Elizabeth and nanny Lally Holt, lived in Sussex. He attended Allan Glen’s School in Glasgow and University College School in London, then studied commercial art at Chelsea Polytechnic under Henry Moore. He dropped out to pursue acting.
Bogarde made his uncredited film debut as an extra in the pre-war comedy Come on George 1939. After serving as a major in the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit during WWII and participating in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, he returned to acting. Signed by Rank, his first major role was as a cop killer in The Blue Lamp 1950, Britain’s most successful film that year. He achieved stardom with the comedy Doctor in the House 1954, playing Dr. Simon Sparrow alongside Kenneth More and Donald Sinden; the film drew 17 million admissions in its first year.
Risking his career, he played a blackmailed barrister in Victim 1961, the first British film to sympathetically address the persecution of homosexuals. He then collaborated with exiled American director Joseph Losey on five films, including The Servant 1963, scripted by Harold Pinter, for which Bogarde won his first BAFTA Best Actor Award. He won BAFTA for Darling 1965, starred in King & Country 1964 reflecting his anti-war views, and later starred in two Luchino Visconti films, The Damned 1969 and Death in Venice 1971, which he considered his finest performance. Later roles included The Night Porter 1974, A Bridge Too Far 1977, and Providence 1977.
Bogarde’s lifelong partner was actor-manager Anthony Forwood, whom he met in 1939. Forwood married and divorced Glynis Johns, but he and Bogarde remained companions for over 50 years. In 1968 they moved to a 15th-century farmhouse in Provence, returning to London in 1983 when Forwood was diagnosed with cancer. Bogarde nursed him until his death in 1988. Bogarde denied being gay in public but later said his autobiographies contained clues; a documentary confirmed the partnership. He never married and his only known serious relationship with a woman was French actress Capucine, his co-star in Song Without End 1960, whom he wanted to marry but she was not interested. He lived quietly in Chelsea after Forwood died, and suffered a stroke in 1996 that left him partially paralyzed.
His role in Victim helped shift public opinion on homosexuality and influenced the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. He won BAFTA Best Actor awards for The Servant 1964 and Darling 1966, with four additional nominations. In 1984 he became the first Briton to preside over the Cannes Film Festival jury. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1992. He also published seven volumes of autobiography and seven novels. His portrait by David Tindle hangs in the National Portrait Gallery and was displayed at 10 Downing Street in 1999. Critics consider him the actor who best captured the British screen persona of the postwar era.
The complete filmography of Dirk Bogarde — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by Dirk Bogarde — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Dirk Bogarde's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Dirk Bogarde — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
I’ll Only Work with New People. If You Stick with Your Contemporaries, You’re Dead.
I Was as Scrawny as a Plucked Hen. the Rank Organisation Did Supply Me with Dumbbells. All I Did Was Put on Two Sweaters and Then Put My Shirt On.
I Love the Camera and It Loves Me. Well, Not Very Much Sometimes. but We’re Good Friends.
First There Was the War and Then the Peace to Cope With, and Then Suddenly I Was a Film Star. It Happened All Too Soon.
Childhood for Me Was Basically a Backyard, a Spade and a Bucket of Mud with Someone to Look After You.
Geniuses Are Notoriously Loony, Because It’s a Very Fine Line Between Madness and Genius.
TV? Never! I Don’t Want My Audience Going for a Piss or Making Tea While I’m Hard at Work.
Cinema Is Just a Form of Masturbation. Sexual Relief for Disappointed People. Women Write and Say, I Let My Husband Do It Because I Think It’s You Lying on Top of Me.
There’s Something Wrong with Actors, We’ve Always Been a Suspect Breed. Socially, I Find Myself More Admissible Now in England Because I’ve Written Books.
I’ve Got a Good Left Profile and a Very Bad Right Profile. I Was the Loretta Young of My Day. I Was Only Ever Photographed on the Left-hand Profile.
I Simply Love the Camera and It Loves Me. but the Amount of Concentration You Have to Use to Feed the Camera Is so Enormous That You’re Absolutely Ragged at the End of a Day After Doing Something Simple – Like a Look.
‘…. the Only Way I Financed an Art Film Like ‘the Servant’was Out of of My Fame as a J. Arthur Rank Star. I Really Wanted Ralph Richardson to Play the Lead in That but When He Turned It Down I Did It Myself. for a Year After We Finished It We Couldn’t Find a Proper Distributor.
I Had to Go Along with It. I Was Selling the Product – and the Product Was Me.
By 1966, I Was Splendidly on the Skids.
A Dubbed Performance Is Not a Performance at All. an Actor’s Voice Is, in My Opinion, More Than Seventy per Cent of His Work.
Little-known facts about Dirk Bogarde — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
The day before he died was spent with his friend Lauren Bacall; they had a wonderful time together.
He was a close friend of Rex Harrison, whom he named as the actor who had influenced him most in a 1963 BBC interview. In 1958 Bogarde provided a video message praising Harrison when the musical My Fair Lady transferred from Broadway to London.
According to his biographer John Coldstream, four major reasons explain why Bogarde failed to become a Hollywood star in 1960: the flop of Song Without End, the abundance of similar actors like Montgomery Clift and Anthony Perkins, his determination to be a serious actor, and his refusal to enter an arranged marriage like Rock Hudson.
He was the only cast member of A Bridge Too Far 1977 to have actually served at the battles depicted in the film.
Suffered a stroke after undergoing heart surgery in September 1996 and spent the last three years of his life in a wheelchair.
Madonna approached him in 1990 to appear in her video for Justify My Love, citing The Night Porter as an inspiration; Bogarde turned the offer down.
Going to the wrong room for a BBC audition, the young Bogarde accidentally got a part in a stage play that proved so successful he was hailed as a star overnight.
Longtime companion of actor manager Anthony Forwood.
For a time in the 1950s, Bogarde was promoted as The British Rock Hudson.
His favourite of his films was King & Country 1964, which reflected his strong anti-war views; he was disappointed by its commercial failure.
He had a remarkably good singing voice.
Following the death of his partner Anthony Forwood in 1988, he moved into an apartment at 2 Cadogan Gardens in London, where he remained until his death.
Turned down Jeremy Irons’s role in The Mission 1986.
Was considered for Louis Jourdan’s role in Gigi 1958.
Considered retiring after The Night Porter 1974, which left him emotionally drained.
A private man, he seldom granted interviews and never courted publicity.
Beginning in 1977, Bogarde was also a prolific writer with seven volumes of autobiography and seven novels all becoming best-sellers.
When starring in Doctor in the House, he frequently sought the advice of camera operator H.A.R. Thomson regarding his performance rather than director Ralph Thomas; he said he learned more about acting for the camera from this than any other film.
Was considered for the role of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons 1966.
Befriended Rock Hudson while filming Campbell’s Kingdom 1957 while Hudson was working on A Farewell to Arms 1957.
He never learned to drive a car.
He claimed to have been present at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, though some doubt exists about his presence.
He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history number 78.
His stage debut was in 1939, but his acting career was interrupted for seven years by World War II until he was demobilized in September 1946.
Eventually grew tired of his matinee idol image and welcomed the chance to play a wider range of characters.
He made the decision to stop making films in Britain by the late 1960s, owing to the gradual decline of the British film industry.
Queen Elizabeth II created him a Knight Bachelor in the 1992 New Year Honours List, and he was officially knighted on February 13, 1992.
During the late 1940s he lived at 44 Chester Row, Belgravia, London with a rescued cat called Cliff, and there he received his first contract from J. Arthur Rank.
Director Joseph Losey originally offered Bogarde the part of Leon Trotsky in The Assassination of Trotsky 1972; Bogarde turned it down because of the poor script, embittering Losey. Richard Burton took the role and the film was a critical and box office failure.
When Losey was hospitalized for two weeks during the filming of The Servant, Bogarde continued filming under Losey’s daily phone instructions; when Losey returned, he did not re-shoot any of that footage.
Turned down an offer of $150,000 from MGM to star with Natalie Wood in Penelope 1966, in order to make Accident 1967 with friend and director Joseph Losey.
His paternal grandfather Aimé Van Den Bogaerde was from Izegem in West Flanders, Belgium, where the family owned the castle Wolvenhof and produced mayors. Aimé left Belgium for a Bohemian lifestyle and told Dirk he was Dutch.
He replaced Jack Hawkins as the original lead in Simba 1955.
He moved to Europe in the late 1960s, where he saw his career path lay in films produced in Italy, France, and Germany rather than England or America, fulfilling a childhood ambition to live in France.
The French Government awarded him a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1982.
Sir David Lean considered making Doctor Zhivago 1965 with Bogarde but decided on Omar Sharif instead.
Scottish director Bill Douglas approached Bogarde to play a small part in Comrades 1986 but Bogarde declined, sending a postcard saying, I don’t do small parts.
Turned down the role of the British padre in The Longest Day 1962.
He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Literature on July 4, 1985 by St. Andrews University in Scotland.
Resisted attempts to make him Hollywood’s new Spanish star and to be married off to a starlet; turned down The Egyptian 1954 after Marlon Brando decided not to appear.
President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984.
Won a British Academy Award BAFTA for his performance in The Servant 1963.
His height was measured at five feet eight and a half inches when drafted into the British army in September 1939.
Great uncle of singer Birdy.
Quit smoking following a minor stroke in November 1987.
Usually kept to himself during the making of a film, with only a few people for company on occasion.
Turned down a co-starring role for $150,000 alongside Rock Hudson and George Peppard in Tobruk 1967.
Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in an earlier year not specified.
He appeared in five films directed by Joseph Losey: The Sleeping Tiger 1954, The Servant 1963, King & Country 1964, Modesty Blaise 1966 and Accident 1967.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Dirk Bogarde.
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