John Hallam

John Hallam was a Northern Irish character actor who often played hard men and military figures. Born in Lisburn in 1941, he trained at RADA from 1962 to 1964 and joined Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company, where his early stage work included Trelawny of the Wells at the Old Vic in 1965. His first television appearance came in 1967 when the BBC broadcast Franco Zeffirelli's National Theatre staging of Much Ado About Nothing, and he played a watchman. He appeared in films such as Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Murphy's War (1971), Antony and Cleopatra (1972), and The Offence (1973), and later in Love and Bullets (1979), Flash Gordon (1980), Dragonslayer (1981), Lifeforce (1985), Santa Claus (1985), and Kull the Conqueror (1997). On television, he had roles in Moonbase 3, Wings, The Mallens, and the BBC soap opera EastEnders, where he played prison inmate Barnsey Barnes from 1988 to 1990. He died in 2006.