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Biography
A blond British actor whose handsome features were marred by his broken nose (a result of a childhood attempt to fly by leaping off the roof of a building), Michael York has seen his career span some five decades, but he is perhaps best recalled for a string of films in the late 1960s and 70s and his TV appearances from the mid-1970s on.

Born Michael Johnson to an army officer turned businessman and his musician wife, he began his acting career as a teenager in a 1956 production of "The Yellow Jacket". Three years later, he made his West End debut with a one-line role in a production of "Hamlet". Unlike many a struggling actor, York opted to attend Oxford but spent his summers working with Michael Croft's Youth Theatre, even touring Italy in "Julius Caesar". After graduating from Oxford, the actor joined Scotland's Dundee Repertory Theatre where he debuted as Sergius in Shaw's "Arms and the Man". His career gained a boost when he was invited to join The National Theatre in January 1965. York was immediately cast by Franco Zeffirelli in "Much Ado About Nothing" which led to roles in "Hay Fever" and "The Royal Hunt of the Sun". Following his BBC debut as Young Jolyon in the acclaimed and fondly recalled drama series "The Forsyte Saga" (1966), he made his screen debut in Zeffirelli's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967).

In 1968, York garnered a great deal of attention for his vibrant portrayal of Tybalt in Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet". He went on to portray a variety of well-bred, seductively charming men like the manipulative bisexual of "Something for Everyone" (1970) and, more memorably, the adventurous expatriate writer Brian Roberts in "Cabaret" (1972) opposite Liza Minnelli. York was impressive as another expatriate writer in Nazi Germany in "England Made Me" and cut a dashing D'Artagnan in Richard Lester's romping version of "The Three Musketeers" (both 1973). Although he was overshadowed by his flashy co-stars in the Agatha Christie adaptation "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974), he proved effective in the leading role of the sci-fi thriller "Logan's Run" (1976).

York offered a fine performance as the Dickens' hero Pip in a 1974 NBC adaptation of "Great Expectations" and reunited with his mentor Franco Zeffirelli to play John the Baptist in the acclaimed miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth" (NBC, 1977). He returned to his theatrical roots succeeding Richard Gere in the leading role of Max, a homosexual concentration camp inmate who pretends to be Jewish, in the Broadway production of "Bent" in 1979. That same year, he made his debut as a motion picture producer with "The Riddle of the Sands", a slow-moving adaptation of Erskine Childers' prototypical spy novel.

As the 80s progressed, York attempted his first stage musical (the ill-fated "The Little Prince" which closed on Broadway during previews) before settling in as a fairly regular presence on the small screen. He pursued a soprano who also caught the eye of "The Phantom of the Opera" (CBS, 1983), proved he could still be a dashing swashbuckler in "The Master of Ballantrae" (CBS, 1984) and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination as a music video producer who discovers his wife may not be dead but still alive and living on the streets in "Are You My Mother?", a 1986 "ABC Afterschool Special". He joined the cast of the popular long-running primetime CBS serial "Falcon Crest" during the 1987-88 season as a love interest for Donna Mills.

York, now more mature, returned to Broadway as the crusading clergyman in a 1992 revival of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" and was seen briefly as Rachel Ward's husband in "Wide Sargasso Sea" (1993). He began to essay authority figures or other characters who carried the weight of experience and age, such as his Merlin in the feature "A Young Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1995) and his King Arthur in the TV-movie "A Knight in Camelot" (ABC, 1998). A new generation of fans came to know York as Basil Exposition, the head of British intelligence, in the Mike Myers hit spoof "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" (1997) and its sequel "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" (1999). He enjoyed an unlikely success playing a venal media mogul in the Christian-themed drama "The Omega Man" (also 1999) as well as in its 2001 sequel "Meggido: The Omega Code 2". He essayed an exacting headmaster of a boys' reform school in "Borstal Boy" (2000), based on the life of Irish writer Brendan Behan and earned an Emmy nomination for his turn as an aging Errol Flynn-like actor in the AMC original series "The Lot" in 2001.

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