Noel Bath Willman (4 August 1918 – 24 December 1988) was an Irish actor and theatre director, who worked principally in Great Britain and later in the United States. He won a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for his work on Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons on Broadway, with a second nomination for The Lion in Winter.
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Early life and education
Willman was born in Derry in 1918, to a French father, Romain Willman, and an English mother, Charlotte Ellis. He was raised in Ireland and in France, and studied for the stage at the London Theatre Studio, which had been set up by Michel Saint-Denis and George Devine in 1936.
Career
Theatre
He made his professional stage debut with a walk-on role in Hamlet, directed by John Gielgud, at the Lyceum Theatre in 1939.
Working as stage manager for Gielgud's touring production of The Beggar's Opera, he took over the role of Macheath at short notice from Michael Redgrave, who had fallen ill and whose usual understudy had suffered a bout of laryngitis.
During World War II, Willman toured with the The Old Vic Company, then directed by Tyrone Guthrie, playing in The Merchant of Venice in 1941, and taking part in several productions at the Vic's Liverpool Playhouse base, including Shaw's Androcles and the Lion. Prompted by Guthrie, he became a director. In 1942, he presented his debut production Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill.
Willman won a Tony Award in 1962 for his direction of the original Broadway production of Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons. According to Bolt, he was instrumental in many aspects of the play's development, including the casting of Paul Scofield as Thomas More. In 1966 he was nominated in the same category for James Goldman's The Lion in Winter. He later directed Katharine Hepburn and Christopher Reeve in A Matter of Gravity in 1976.
He frequently collaborated with Bolt, directing The Tiger and the Horse and Gentle Jack (and appearing in Zhivago, which Bolt scripted). One of his most famous theatrical roles was opposite Alec Guinness in the stage production of Bridget Boland's The Prisoner, for which he won the Clarence Derwent Award, and which was later made into a film, starring Guinness and Jack Hawkins.
Film and television
Willman's films included The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Across the Bridge (1957), Carve Her Name with Pride (1958), Kiss of the Vampire (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Reptile (1966), and The Odessa File (1974).
Personal life
Willman was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, and spent it as a beekeeper on a government-run farm outside London.
Death
Willman died aged 70 in New York City, of a heart attack.