Sir Tom Courtenay receives Joseph Plateau Award at Film Fest Gent

When Tom Courtenay, born on 25 February 1937, in Kingston upon Hull, failed his first year at University College London, he decided to try his luck just a few doors down at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He had not even graduated when film directors came calling. He hit the mark immediately when Tony Richardson cast him in the lead role of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), a film about a young delinquent named Colin Smith whose running talent is exploited by a headmaster. Tom Courtenay became an overnight sensation and, as an "angry young man," even the face of the British New Wave, a series of innovative, socially conscious films. Courtenay’s next film, Billy Liar, directed by John Schlesinger, was also part of that movement. He had already played the role of the fantasist Billy Liar on stage, and it was on the film set that he met Julie Christie. They reunited in 1965 for David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago. After winning two BAFTAs, he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. His career continued to gain momentum; he was directed by the likes of Joseph Losey, Anatole Litvak, and Bryan Forbes, while Dirk Bogarde, Sophia Loren, Omar Sharif, Kirk Douglas, Peter O’Toole, and James Fox were just a few of his co-stars.

Despite all the acclaim and glory, Tom Courtenay remained slightly frustrated. He felt more at home on stage than on a film set and was convinced that the stage offered greater scope for personal and artistic growth. He preferred being an actor to a movie star. It was not until 1983 that he was persuaded to step in front of the camera again for Peter Yates’s The Dresser. Just as with Billy Liar, he had previously performed the role of the dresser on stage in London, Manchester, and on Broadway. He received Tony Award nominations for the stage role, and the film earned him a Golden Globe as well as his second Oscar nomination. Courtenay’s body of work during the final two decades of the 20th century comprises a mix of theatre, film, and television movies. George Lucas’s Young Indiana Jones and the Treasure of the Peacock’s Eye falls into this latter category. Additionally, in the BBC drama A Rather English Marriage, he once again appeared alongside Albert Finney, the very man whose footsteps he had followed in the stage production of Billy Liar.

Over the past quarter-century, Tom Courtenay’s theatre work largely gave way to television series; his credits include episodes of Little Dorrit, The Royle Family, Unforgotten, Mandy, and Maya. His film career saw a revival in 2012 with Quartet, Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, in which he starred alongside Dame Maggie Smith. This paved the way for his finest work to come: Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years (2015) and Lance Hammer’s Queen at Sea (2026). Both films premiered at the Berlinale and earned acting awards for Courtenay and his co-stars, Charlotte Rampling and Anna Calder-Marshall, respectively. In 45 Years, Courtenay plays a man thrown off balance after the body of a long-lost former lover is discovered, a revelation that impacts his relationship of 45 years. In Queen at Sea, now screening at Film Fest Gent, the Joseph Plateau Honorary Award recipient delivers a magnificent performance as the husband and primary caregiver of his wife, who is suffering from dementia.

Tom Courtenay belongs in the ranks of great British actors such as Dame Maggie Smith, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine, Alec Guinness, Albert Finney, and others. He was mistaken, however, when he temporarily turned his back on the film world because he believed a stage career had more longevity than a film career. Naturally, he could not have predicted then that, at the age of 89, he would declare Queen at Sea to be his best film. Has the long-distance runner, who single-handedly embodies over sixty years of British film and theatre cultural history, reached the end of his race?