Edward Woodward

Edward Woodward

1930–2009

A veteran of stage, film, and at least 3,000 TV episodes, English actor Edward Woodward was probably best known as the disillusioned yet elegant ex–secret agent Robert McCall in the CBS vigilante series The Equalizer. At one point in the late 1980s, when network detective shows were ubiquitous, TV viewers voted the graying, slightly paunchy Woodward the “Sexiest Man in America”—ahead of Don Johnson of Miami Vice, Tom Selleck of Magnum P.I., and Ken Wahl of Wiseguy.

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“Presentable but somber in appearance, Woodward played loners on the edge of society, and even sanity,” said the London Guardian. “He attributed his ability to radiate personal danger to the danger in which he lived” during World War II. Growing up as the son of a metal worker, he was “bombed out of his home three times.” At 16, Woodward became the youngest student at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art by lying about his age. “He spent several years in provincial repertory, where he was not quite a glamorous juvenile lead but too interesting to play heroes’ best friend parts.” Woodward excelled in Shakespearean roles during the 1950s; Laurence Olivier called him “one of the best actors in England.” But he wasn’t well known until 1967, when he played “a seedy, disillusioned spy and hit man” in the British TV series Callan, a realistic alternative to such slick espionage outings as The Avengers and the James Bond series.

“Woodward had leading roles in several exceptional films, including the eerie thriller The Wicker Man (1973) as a Calvinistic policeman who investigates the disappearance of a young girl and becomes ensnared in a pagan cult,” said The Washington Post. He was also memorable as the scapegoated Australian army officer Harry Morant in Breaker Morant (1980), who is court-martialed for murdering prisoners during the Boer War. Then, in 1985, “The Equalizer made Woodward a household name in the United States.” As the urbane title character, he “put himself at the service of clients who have ‘exhausted all conventional means of law enforcement,’” offering his services with classified ads that read, “Got a problem? Odds against you? Call the Equalizer.” Equipped with Savile Row suits, “a sleek Jaguar,” and his signature machine pistol, Woodward’s Robert McCall elegantly dispensed street justice and such memorable one-liners as, “Please do not do anything you will never live to regret.”

The Equalizer brought Woodward five Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe Award. His other honors included an Emmy as host and narrator of the 1989 documentary Remembering World War II, as well as being appointed to the Order of the British Empire in 1978.