Harry Baird

Harry Baird was a Guyanese-British actor who ranked among the few Black performers to reach prominence in British film during the 1950s and early 1960s, and who also worked steadily in French and Italian productions. Baird, born in Georgetown, was educated in Guiana, Canada and Britain before settling in London as a teenager. He made his screen debut in 1955, as a boxer called Jamaica in Carol Reed's A Kid for Two Farthings, and soon took stage parts in Kismet and Jean Genet's The Blacks. Television gave him his first lead, Atimbu in White Hunter in 1958, and his most high-profile film role came in the racial drama Sapphire (1959). Supporting work followed in Danger Man, The Whisperers (1967), The Oblong Box (1969) and The Italian Job (1969), while Italy and France cast him as an action hero. He played Lieutenant Mark Bradley in UFO and his final screen appearance was in Lucio Fulci's Four of the Apocalypse (1975).