DAME Judi Dench led the tributes yesterday to the Oscar- winning actor Paul Scofield, who has died at the age of 86.
He had been diagnosed with leukaemia and died peacefully on Wednesday in a hospital near his Sussex home.
The actor, one of the greatest of his generation, made his name on the London stage, playing many of the biggest roles in theatre – the late
Richard Burton once said: "Of the ten greatest moments in the theatre, eight are Scofield's."
Scofield later moved into cinema, winning an Oscar in 1966 for his portrayal of the Tudor statesman Sir Thomas More in the film A Man For All Seasons.
Dame Judi, who starred with Scofield in the 1989 Oscar- winning film of Henry V, which was directed by Kenneth Branagh, said: "He was a great friend and a great man."
Simon Callow, who played alongside Scofield in the world premiere of the play Amadeus in 1979, described him as "one of the greatest actors in the world". He said: "He had a kind of extraordinary physical warmth, almost literally like being near a fire, in a way that I have almost never experienced with another actor. It was a sort of blaze.
"He had a charisma, a hypnotism, a kind of spell that he cast on an audience, which was an extraordinary thing to negotiate as a young actor. He was an absolutely towering actor."
The actress Felicity Kendal described Scofield as "a genius".
The pair worked together on three stage productions, Othello, and Amadeus at the National Theatre in London and in Heartbreak House. She said she first saw Scofield perform in the Shakespeare play Timon Of Athens in Stratford when she was only 17. She recalled: "This extraordinary giant came on to the stage. He was beautiful, sexy, mesmerising.
"I thought, 'This is the world I want to be in'. I went back two or three times."
Kendal said she would later make a point of seeing Scofield's work more than once to see how he performed slightly differently each night. She said: "He was my hero and he became my friend and teacher.
"He was one of the greats. He was a genius actor. There have been quite a few, but he was certainly one of the great ones.
"It isn't something you can learn. It's a gift combined with personality. He was also very, very funny. He was professional, and very giving. He was witty and had a naughty sense of humour."
Describing the way he lit up the stage, Kendal said: "The eye contact, the energy, the concentration. He was mesmerising, but he was not one of those actors who would only look after himself.
"He was incredibly friendly, but at the end of his work he would just disappear because he was not a party animal.
"It's just so sad that he's no longer there. It's a great loss."
Scofield was made a CBE in 1956 after an appearance in Peter Brook's Hamlet in Moscow. But he twice rejected a knighthood – because he wanted to remain "plain Mister".
However, in the 2001 New Year Honours he became a Companion of Honour, which ranks with a knighthood but is held by only 65 people at any one time.
A HIT ON STAGE AND SCREEN Paul Scofield's first break came when he joined Basil C Langton's touring company in Birmingham in 1942, playing Horatio in Hamlet.
He appeared in more than a dozen films, including Robert Redford's Quiz Show in 1995, while his TV work included the BBC's £4 million adaptation of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit the previous year. Other roles included Alexander in the Great in Adventure Story, written for him by Terence Rattigan and the whisky priest in The Power And The Glory.
