The Browning Version (1951)
Room
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| Date of birth: |
1942-01-19 |
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Appearances
 As a boy Michael Crawford, loved workshop, French class, gymnastics, sports, music and drama class. He was also voted as the "class clown", a role he relished to escape being bullied at school.
Michael Crawford was a loner, due to girls rejecting him as he was not handsome and his schools chums often made fun of him. So his first real acting began when, as a child, he invented characters and performed all the parts, just to make up for being lonely.
He sang and performed dramatic opera as a young boy. He played Sammy the Sweepboy in "Let's Make an Opera" and then Benjamin Britten hired him to play Japeth in "Noye's Flood", based on the Biblical story of Noah's Flood in Genesis. When he returned to studying singing seriously, he took up singing operatic arias to get his voice in shape, especially for the role of the Phantom. Crawford credits Benjamin Britten as a great inspiration in his life.
In 1958 at the age of 15 Crawford participated in the Children's Film Foundation's Soapbox Derby (his first film). As in all he participated Crawford was a consummate perfectionist, and is well known as such in the theater where he made his greatest achievements.
Other childhood roles include Blow Your Own Trumpet (1958), TV series Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School (1959) and TV series Three Golden Nobles (1959)
Best known for his roles, Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (1973) and the Phantom in the stage production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera.
Americans may also remember him for the role of Cornelius Hackl in Hello, Dolly! (1969), directed by Gene Kelly... after auditioning in a 1960s outfit of striped blue pants and a checkered shirt with a bleeding face from shaving too many times... and trying to tap dance. Kelly said, "What we are looking for (for Cornelius Hackl) is an attractive idiot. My wife thinks you're attractive, and I think you're an idiot".
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