Andrew Keir was a highly versatile character actor whose 50-year career spanned stage, screen and television. He was especially known for his appearances in a string of Hammer Horror productions in the 1960s and ‘70s.
The son of a coal miner, Keir was born Andrew Buggy in Shotts, Lanarkshire, in 1926. At the age of fourteen he left school to work alongside his father in the mines. He discovered acting by accident when he was persuaded to replace an absent cast member in a play at the Miners’ Welfare Hall.
Enjoying the experience, Keir became a regular in the group until he was spotted in Inverness and invited to join Unity Theatre in Glasgow, then the Citizens' Theatre, where he remained for nine years. In 1952, Keir performed his first major screen role in ‘The Brave Don't Cry’, a film about a group of miners trapped underground.
Through the 1950s and 60s, while continuing to act on stage, Keir won increasingly prominent film roles, such as Agrippa in the 1963 Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor epic ‘Cleopatra’. He also appeared in numerous television programmes, including ‘The Avengers’, ‘The Saint’, and ‘Z Cars’.
Keir’s best-known role for Hammer was as Professor Bernard Quatermass in the 1967 film ‘Quatermass and the Pit’. He continued to appear on screen throughout the 1970s and 80s, in television series and films such as ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’.
When Keir died 1997, his obituary in ‘The Times’ praised his “considerable range and undeniable distinction”.
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