TRIBUTES were paid to the “shining light and life” of Simon MacCorkindale yesterday as 200 friends attended a memorial service in London.
The actor’s widow, actress Susan George, 63, said of her husband of 28 years: “He was the love of my life. He was my rock.”
Daily Mail article on Simon MacCorkindale’s memorial
He made thousands of fans over an acting career which spanned three decades, and it seemed his closest friends were keen to show the actor was still not far from their minds on Wednesday.
Friends and family of the late actor Simon MacCorkindale gathered at a remembrance service at the Actors Church, otherwise known as St Paul’s in Covent Garden to pay their respects to the talented actor.
Susan George Chats with the Café about “Straw Dogs,” Her Arabians, and the Love of Her Life
Recent interview with Susan
I met my Simon for the very first time at a charity benefit and we became the best of friends for years after. So I married my soul mate and hand through life. He was a stunning-looking man, but the true essence of Simon was his heart, acres wide and full of jewels.
A small ‘Remembering Simon MacCorkindale’ article, reminiscing about Jaws 3
Well one of the film’s leading actors, among a somewhat pretty impressive cast was Mr. Simon MacCorkindale who played the ever so handsome and dashing Philip FitzRoyce
Susan speaks again about loosing Simon and how she is coping with the loss
Everywhere around the house there are framed photos of her and Simon entwined in each other’s arms.
‘I feel as if it were only yesterday that he and I were sitting here together,’ she says. She stops and turns her head to gaze out of the window as her large blue eyes start to fill with tears.
Then, recovering her composure, she continues to talk about the loss of the love of her life. ‘I know Simon lives on with me in everything I do. I also know he’d never want it to be too much for me, because he had so much belief in me. Now my whole purpose in life is to follow the dream we both had. A lot of people expected I wouldn’t carry on with the horses after what happened. But I couldn’t stop.’
Simon and wife Susan both made BBC America’s list of 20 Sexiest British Celebs of Yesteryear
BBC America look at the sexiest Brits of days gone by, the stars with posh accents who have tempted us through the ages
Male No 9. Simon MacCorkindale
Talk about your evenly matched celebrity couples – MacCorkindale married Susan George, who made our sexy females list, back in 1984. The actor scored a cult following from the cancelled early ’80s series Manimal, which had the rather ridiculous conceit of a protagonist who could shape-shift into animals. MacCorkindale sold it with panache. He left us far too soon due to cancer back in 2010.
Female No 5. Susan George
One of the rambunctious beauties of the swinging ’60s. Her sex appeal was used against her to disturbing effect in a controversial rape scene in Sam Peckinpah‘s Straw Dogs.
THE owners of a Malvern restaurant have remembered with affection actor Simon MacCorkindale, who died last Thursday after a four year battle with cancer .
This is a lovely article about Simon from someone who recorded some of his voice over work
He had a rich, warm voice, full of authority, but had the rare ability to make it flick from friendly to menacing within the same sentence. His range was truly excellent.
This is an interesting article on Simon’s small role in the film Wing Commander. This has info about cut lines and a good discussion between a few fans of the film
The man only had a bit part with three lines in the whole film, and it still manages to be one of the most memorable performances.
A small tribute to Simon from someone who worked with him
Yet Simon, with his genial demeanour and infectious boyish enthusiasm, was utterly behind it. A thoroughly likeable man, possessed of great generosity of spirit, he was a source of constant of encouragement at the time
Well it is very difficult to know where to start with this review… how to tread lightly enough not to give away what is most spectacular and clever about Anthony Shaffer’s complex thriller.
Bring on local hero Michael Praed and Casualty’s Simon MacCorkindale as Milo Tindle and Andrew Wyke respectively to act out this enthralling verbal tennis match, and savour an exhibition of champions.
MacCorkindale (known for his recent role in Casualty and former star of Manimal) delivers a commanding performance as Andrew Wyke who is complex and teasing.
Simon MacCorkindale, back on television as Casualty’s new consultant, has been delivering foals rather than lines of late…
This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.
I was never too comfortable as a young actor and always felt that my best time in the business would be around now – I’m 50 – through to the age of 65 I’ve been doing a lot of production work in the past ten years, as well as writing and directing, so the opportunity to do something very visible – in a great part – was much too good to miss My character in Casualty [new consultant Harry Harper] is a disciplinarian, slightly old-fashioned, but pretty cool I’ve been filming since February and it’s a really nice show to be in – egos are at a minimum.
Simon MacCorkindale:
Why I need time away from Susan
This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.
Simon MacCorkindale is convinced he would have become the Army’s youngest general. He feels his dogged determination, dashing looks and slavish adherence to discipline would have sent him hurtling up the ranks. Indeed, thanks to his father’s contacts, a glittering military career was once guaranteed; instead, he chose to become the nearly man of British cinema, a decision he puts down to an in-built self-destruct button which he presses whenever his life is running smoothly.
To the horror of his family, Simon put showbusiness before the Army, and his role opposite Mia Farrow in Agatha Christie’s Death On The Nile in 1978 won him the Most Promising Film Actor award when he was 26. From there, anything seemed possible. Only now, years later, after disappearing from the movie actor radar, is he acting again, this time as Harry Harper, a dashing doctor in the BBC’s hospital drama, Casualty. He is expected to cause a stir with his character, who is married but has a penchant for sexy girls; a natural extension to the love-rat image from his TV heyday in the 1980s, when he played Greg Reardon in Falcon Crest.
In the short-lived 1983 series Manimal, college professor Jonathan Chase used his ability to transform into animals to assist law enforcement.
This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.
SIMON MACCORKINDALE was the perfect choice to play the wealthy, cultured Chase. “I thought the concept for Manimal was excellent,” says MacCorkindale. “I also appreciated the fact Chase was a very cerebral individual and that Glen Larson [series creator and producer] had decided to make the show very stylish by having my character be an Englishman who wore expensive suits and drove around in a Rolls Royce. All this was quite unusual for television at that time, so we really were exploring new ground.
“Back in the early Eighties the only other English actor on American television was Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele. Then I got Manimal and a year or two later there was a massive influx of English actors hired for night-time Soap Operas, but Pierce and I started that whole trend. So that, of course, was very much an exciting part of getting the job on Manimal because I knew I had found a foothold in an area that was pretty much virgin territory for Englishmen.
This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.
For an instant, the Range Rover was travelling on two wheels. Then, with a terrifying inevitability, it rolled over on to its side and skidded across three lanes of heavy traffic before coming to a stop on the hard shoulder of the motorway.
Inside the car, Susan George was stunned, battered and bruised. Her head was gushing blood. But when she heard her husband’s voice say: ‘It’s all right darling, we’re alive,’ she knew she was going to survive. It was, without a doubt, nothing short of a miracle that the couple escaped such a crash with their lives. Their Range Rover, on the other hand, was a complete write-off.
This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.
Picture this: a glossy American series where a hunky British actor fights crime, the twist being that he has a unique way of getting out of trouble – he can turn into any animal he chooses (usually a black panther) by looking constipated. Sound like a winner, doesn’t it? Yes, if you thought we were scraping the barrel with our retrospective on Blue Thunder: The Series in SFX, has Jon Abbott got a treat for you…
Created by Glen A Larson, master of gimmick TV, Manimal was a short- lived blend of fantasy series and crime show – just one of a large number of such shows that came and went in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It starred British actor Simon MacCorkindale, reasonably well known in the UK for assorted TV series (most interestingly as scientist Joe Kapp in the 1979 Quatermass serial), films (such as Death on the Nile and the 1978 adaptation of Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands), and being married to actress Susan George. MacCorkindale’s career, though promising at one point, never really took off, and choices like Manimal ought begin to explain why…
The acting couple shows us the dream farm that’s allowed them to put down their roots and provides a break from their hectic film careers
This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.
Susan George and Simon MacCorkindale have been cruising along the movie world’s jet-set super-highway for over 20 years. They have probably spent more time in exotic film locations than in their native Britain. Even on their wedding day they were to be found exchanging sacred vows on the paradise isle of Fiji.
But now Susan, at 44, and Simon, at 43, have finally stopped roaming – and it is largely due to the farm they have just moved to on the edge of an old-world village.
The idyllic 17th-century property with its 12 lush acres on the Oxfordshire-Northamptonshire border has given them a clearer perspective, a degree of tranquillity – and forced them to re-evaluate their lives.
This site looks like it’s no longer online, so here is the full article.
Counterstrike, a hit series about billionaire industrialist Alexander Addington (Christopher Plummer) whose passion for justice is implemented by a three-member strike team.
Plummer is a film and theatre legend. He has starred and costarred in over 40 feature films, including The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King, The Return of The Pink Panther and Star Trek VI.
As Addington on Counterstrike, he formed his strike team after his wife was kidnapped by an international terrorist organization.
The search for her proved unsuccessful. Nevertheless, he vowed that behind the cover of his financial empire, he would help eliminate criminals who currently find sanctuary in the cracks between existing law enforcement organizations.
Leading the strike team is Peter Sinclair (Simon MacCorkindale) – featured on this week’s cover.
Sinclair, a former Scotland Yard inspector – the youngest in the history of the Yard – is also a legendary hostage negotiator.
MacCorkindale made his stage debut at age eight. From this humble beginning, his love for theatre was born. During the next nine years he wrote, produced, directed and/or acted in some 25 productions at school and with local groups.
Upon leaving high school he was accepted as a drama student at Studio 68 of Theatre Arts in London, England. And, as luck would have it, by the end of his first year he was signed to play a leading role in George Bernard Shaw’s The Dark Lady of the Sonnets.
After a number of appearances in the regional theatres in England, he made his West End debut in the highly-acclaimed 1974 production of Pygmalion.
