Nicholas Clay

Born in Streatham, London, Nicholas Clay trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and became an English stage and screen actor. He began on television in the early 1960s and made his film debut in These Are the Damned (1962). During the 1970s he worked with Laurence Olivier's Old Vic productions and at the National Theatre, where he played Aumerle in Richard II and Nugget in Equus, and took the part of Giovanni in Tis Pity She's a Whore; he later played Acaste in The Misanthrope on Broadway in 1975. His most widely seen screen part was Lancelot in Excalibur (1981). He also appeared in Zulu Dawn (1979), Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981), Evil Under the Sun (1982), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983). Later television work included The Last Days of Pompeii (1984) and Merlin (1998), and he taught drama at acting schools.