There was something grand, large, embracing about the actor Joss Ackland, who has died aged 95. He was a fixture in British films for several decades and a stalwart of the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company – he played Falstaff in the opening RSC production of Henry IV, Parts One and Two, in the new Barbican Centre in 1982 – and the West End stage.
He appeared in more than 100 films, and countless TV plays and series, usually, in later years, white-haired and bearded, but always with energy and force, whether as the cuckolded husband, Jock Delves Broughton, in Michael Radford’s White Mischief (1987) with Greta Scacchi and Charles Dance, or as the drug-running heavy in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover.
