John Stride


John Edward Stride was an English actor best known for his television work during the 1970s.
Stride was born in London, the son of Margaret and Alfred Teneriffe Stride. He attended Alleyn's School, Dulwich, and trained at RADA, where he met his first wife, Virginia Stride.
He made his first, uncredited, screen appearance in the film, Sink the Bismarck!. He also played the role of Bob, the barman, in the film Bitter Harvest, based on the trilogy 20,000 Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton. He made his West End debut in February 1959 in Five Finger Exercise. Directed by John Gielgud, the show featured another debutante, Juliet Mills, aged 17. It ran at the Comedy Theatre for 608 performances. He appeared at the Old Vic as Romeo in Franco Zeffirelli's long-running production of Romeo and Juliet, first staged in 1960, with Judi Dench, and also as Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1.
At the end of the 1960s, he played Rosencrantz at the Old Vic, in the National Theatre Company's production of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Stride appeared in two Shakespeare production during the 1970s made for the large and small screen respectively. In Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth he played the role of Ross. For the BBC Television Shakespeare production of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, he was cast in the title role.
Meanwhile, Stride had developed a career in popular television drama series. In the Yorkshire Television series The Main Chance, he played the solicitor, David Main. It is the television role with which he became most closely associated, and lasted four series. A later series made by the same ITV franchise holder with Stride in the lead, Wilde Alliance, lasted for only one series. He also played one of the main parts in the BBC's adaptation of Kingsley Amis's novel The Old Devils.
Stride died on 20 April 2018, aged 81.

Filmography