{"id":577818,"date":"2026-05-11T09:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T09:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/577818\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T09:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T09:56:08","slug":"star-wars-and-shakespeare-actor-michael-pennington-dies-aged-82","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/577818\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Wars and Shakespeare actor Michael Pennington dies aged 82"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The English actor was also known for his collaboration with Dame Judi Dench and her husband, Michael Williams, and they starred in several stage productions together, including King Lear. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In an interview with the Independent in 2015, Pennington said watching Dench play Ophelia in a 1957 Hamlet production in London inspired him to go into the theatre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s no one quite like Judi. For her acting is playing: she&#8217;s a lass unparalleled,&#8221; he told the paper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pennington also had roles in several BBC productions, including The Witches of Pendle, Oedipus The King and an adaptation of Middlemarch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His last credited role was in 2022, when he voiced The Trust in five episodes of sci-fi series Raised by Wolves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The English actor was also known for his collaboration with Dame Judi Dench and her husband, Michael Williams,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-577818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}