Stage and Screen Actor and Director Paxton Whitehead Dies at 85

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that stage and screen actor and director Paxton Whitehead has died at age 85.

Whitehead's many Broadway credits include Absurd Person Singular, My Fair Lady, Lettice and Lovage, A Little Hotel on the Side, Artist Descending a Staircase, Run For Your Wife, Noises Off, Camelot, Crucifer of Blood, Habeas Corpus, Beyond the Fringe 1964, Beyond the Fringe, Candida, and The Affair.

Off Broadway, he appeared in The Heir Apparent, The Harlequin Studies, London Suite, Suite in Two Keys, One Way Pendulum, Gallows Humour.  He also appeared in London's West End in Heartbreak House.

Whitehead served as Associate Artist of The Old Globe in San Diego, and played roles that include The Miser, Sir Anthony Absolute. Richard III, Sir Peter Teazle, Benedict, and Malvolio.

While serving as Artistic Director of The Shaw Festival, Canada from 1967- 1977, he played Sergius, Lord Summerhays, King Magnus, Adolphus Cousins, Hector Hushabye, The Philanderer, General Burgoyne, Charley's Aunt and Ronnie Gamble in Thark.

Whitehead's directorial credits include The Circle, Misalliance, Getting Married, Forty Years On, and many more. Regionally, he has done many Ayckbourn plays in Westport, as well as shows in Los Angeles including How the Other Half Loves, What the Bulter Saw, Woman in Mind, Pirates of Penzance.

In addition to his stage credits, Whitehead appeared on film in Kate and Leopold, Back to School, Boris and Natasha, and Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and on television in "West Wing," "Friends," "Frasier," "Mad About You," "Ellen," "Dinosaurs," the series "Marblehead Manor" and the films Tales from the Hollywood Hills, An Inconvenient Woman, Hale the Hero, Trick of the Eye.