Andrew Sachs, the much loved Fawlty Towers actor famed for his role as Manuel, has died at the age of 86, his wife has announced.
The actor had been battling dementia for the past four years and died in a care home last week, Melody Sachs said. He was buried on Thursday.
"My heart has been broken every day for a long time," she said, adding that the actor had remained positive to the end: "I never once heard him grumble."
"It wasn’t all doom and gloom, he still worked for two years.
"We were happy, we were always laughing, we never had a dull moment. He had dementia for four years and we didn’t really notice it at first until the memory started going.
Manuel.....he is ....dead....
Manuel.....he is ....dead....
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
-
MajGenl.Meade
- Posts: 21228
- Joined: Sun Apr 25, 2010 8:51 am
- Location: Groot Brakrivier
- Contact:
Re: Manuel.....he is ....dead....
He's not from Barcelona any more. Well, he wasn't anyway. Another piece of our lives flakes away.
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts
Re: Manuel.....he is ....dead....
I ll never look at another paella without crying......
may you never get beat about the ears again.
may you never get beat about the ears again.
Re: Manuel.....he is ....dead....
John Cleese: ‘He left me weak with laughter’
The first time I set eyes on Andy Sachs was at the Lyric Theatre, London, in the autumn of 1973. Andy was appearing with Alec Guinness in Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus, an exquisitely crafted sex-farce about a respectable family in Brighton in the 1960s. Andy was playing a piano tuner, but the magnificent Margaret Courtenay mistook him for the man who was coming to measure her for a custom-made bra. When Andy started on the standard pianist’s hand-and-finger stretching routine, she began to register anticipation of nameless carnal delights, producing one of the funniest farcical moments I have ever seen. Weak with laughter, I managed to open my programme and underline his name.
A few weeks later, I was casting a short film called Romance with a Double Bass, and I asked Andy to join us for a few days’ shooting. It turned out to be a very happy collaboration, and I observed what a wonderfully inventive comic actor I was working with. Luckily, Connie Booth and I were already writing the pilot episode of Fawlty Towers, so I had the inspired idea of casting Andy as Manuel.
Inspired? Let me explain something. If you met Andy socially it would never have occurred to you for one moment that he was an actor. You would have guessed a senior civil servant, or a physician, or an academic, or perhaps a research scientist. He was quiet, thoughtful, beautifully mannered, well informed, observant and extremely kind. But once you put that moustache on him … Ole! Manuel appeared, as if from nowhere.
I salute you, Andy. You created one of the great comic characters.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
