
Gordon Sterne
Acting
Biography
Gordon Sterne was a German-born English actor with a prolific career spanning over five decades in film, television, and theater. He is perhaps most widely recognized for his role as Mr. Kessler in the horror-comedy classic An American Werewolf in London (1981), where his character famously meets a gruesome end while watching The Muppet Show in a dream sequence. He left his native Nazi-dominated birth country in 1941 and became a native of Windsor, Ontario with a father who worked in the tobacco business and mother, who was supportive of his theatre aspirations. Sterne studied economics at the University of Western Ontario before volunteering for the Canadian Army in 1944, serving in the infantry as a sergeant. Heading to New York in 1945, he trained and graduated from the Dramatic Workshop under the tutelage of its founder Erwin Piscator, at the same time as Rod Steiger, Bea Arthur, Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis and Harry Belafonte. Sterne then began his acting career in America, working on radio and TV, in summer stock and off-Broadway. After a career on stage, playing the leading man in various plays in New Jersey during the 1940s, as well as Benvenuto Cellini in The Firebrand at Washington's Arena Stage and Joseph K in The Trial at New York's Provincetown Playhouse during the early 1950s, Sterne moved to Britain in 1956 where he had over 50 years working in theatre, TV and film. Being able to speak German (and French) enabled Sterne to perform in Drop Dead Darling on tour in Germany as well as a spell with the English Theatre in Vienna.
Known For

The adventures of The Doctor, a time-traveling humanoid alien known as a Time Lord. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-traveling spaceship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, The Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilizations, help ordinary people, and right many wrongs.
Doctor Who

Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need.
The Saint

The Tudors is a history-based drama series following the young, vibrant King Henry VIII, a competitive and lustful monarch who navigates the intrigues of the English court and the human heart with equal vigor and justifiable suspicion.
The Tudors

Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy-drama series adapted by Clive Exton from P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves" stories. It aired on the ITV network from 1990 to 1993, starring Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, a young gentleman with a "distinctive blend of airy nonchalance and refined gormlessness", and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his improbably well-informed and talented valet. Wooster is a bachelor, a minor aristocrat and member of the idle rich. He and his friends, who are mainly members of The Drones Club, are extricated from all manner of societal misadventures by the indispensable valet, Jeeves. The stories are set in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1930s.
Jeeves and Wooster

After resigning, a secret agent is abducted and taken to what looks like an idyllic village, but is really a bizarre Kafkaesque prison. His warders demand information. He gives them nothing, but only tries to escape.
The Prisoner

A secret, high-technology international agency called SHADO defends Earth from alien invaders.
UFO

The Protectors is a British television series, an action thriller created by Gerry Anderson. It was Anderson's second TV series using live actors as opposed to electronic marionettes, and also his second to be firmly set in contemporary times. It was also the only Gerry Anderson produced television series that was not of the fantasy or science fiction genres. It was produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company. Despite not featuring marionettes or any real science fiction elements, The Protectors became one of Anderson's most popular productions, easily winning a renewal for a second season. A third season was in the planning stages when the show's major sponsor pulled out, forcing its cancellation. The Protectors first aired in 1972 and 1973, and ran to 52 episodes over two series, each 25 minutes long - making it one of the last series of this type to be produced in a half-hour format. It starred Robert Vaughn as Harry Rule, Nyree Dawn Porter as the Contessa Caroline di Contini, and Tony Anholt as Paul Buchet. Episodes often featured prominent guest actors.
The Protectors

The New Avengers is a British secret agent fantasy adventure television series broadcast during 1976 and 1977. It is a sequel to the 1960s series The Avengers and was developed by Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. A joint United Kingdom-France-Canada production, the show picks up the adventures of John Steed and his team of Avengers fighting evil plots and world domination. Whereas in the original series Steed had almost always been partnered with a woman, in the new series he had two partners: Mike Gambit, a top agent, crack marksman and trained martial artist, and Purdey, a former trainee with The Royal Ballet who was an amalgam of many of the best talents from Steed's previous female partners.
The New Avengers

He fought his first battle on the Scottish Highlands in 1536. He will fight his greatest battle on the streets of New York City in 1986. His name is Connor MacLeod. He is immortal.
Highlander

Hancock's Half Hour is a BBC television comedy series of the 1950s and 60s written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock with Sid James. The final series, renamed simply Hancock, starred Hancock alone. Comedian Tony Hancock starred in the show, playing an exaggerated and much poorer version of his own character and lifestyle, Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, a down-at-heel comedian living at the dilapidated 23 Railway Cuttings in East Cheam. The series was influential in the development of the situation comedy, with its move away from radio variety towards a focus on character development.
Hancock's Half Hour

Pulled from actual case histories and utilizing newsreel and documented narratives, the activities of spies from various countries are depicted as far back as the American Revolution and as recent as the Cold War.
Espionage

American tourists David and Jack are savagely attacked by an unidentified animal while hiking on the Yorkshire Moors. After retiring to the home of a beautiful nurse to recuperate, David soon begins experiencing disturbing changes to his body and mind.
An American Werewolf in London

Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatising the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th-century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.
Reilly: Ace of Spies

Out of This World is a British science fiction anthology television series made by ABC Television and broadcast in 1962. A spin-off from the popular anthology series Armchair Theatre, each episode is introduced by actor Boris Karloff. Many episodes are adaptations of stories by sci-fi writers including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak. The series is generally seen as a precursor to the BBC science fiction anthology Out of the Unknown.
Out of This World

Acclaimed war journalist Guy Foster finds himself in the company of odd and sinister people after getting engaged to the mysterious Melissa McKensie. Soon, he'll become a suspect in a series of grisly murders and will have to solve them to clear his name.
Melissa

Amidst a sea of litigation, two New York City divorce lawyers find love.
Laws of Attraction

Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by Associated British Corporation, and later by Thames Television from mid-1968.
Armchair Theatre

In 1908 London, a women's rights campaigner discovers the Assassination Bureau Limited, an organization that kills for justice. When its motives are called into question, she commissions the assassination of its chairman. Knowing that his colleagues have recently become more motivated by greed than morality, he turns the situation into a challenge for his board members: kill him or be killed.
The Assassination Bureau

An American WWI veteran undertakes a spiritual quest that takes him from Paris to Nepal to the Himalayas and back to his hometown. Upon his return, he discovers he is not the only one who has changed.
The Razor's Edge

A wheelchair-bound young girl returns to her father's estate after ten years, and although she's told he's away, she keeps seeing his dead body on the estate.