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Sir Felix Aylmer OBE (21 February 1889 – 2 September 1979) was a distinguished English stage actor who also appeared in the cinema and on television.

He was born in Corsham, Wiltshire, England^[1] as Felix Edward Aylmer Jones. He was educated at Almondbury Grammar School near Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, where he was a boarder from 1897 to 1900,^[2] Magdalen College School, and Exeter College, Oxford, where he was a member of Oxford University Dramatic Society.^[1] He trained under the Victorian-era actress and director Rosina Filippi before securing his first professional engagement at the London Coliseum in 1911.^[1]

He often worked with Sir Laurence Olivier in Shakepearean films, such as Polonius in Hamlet (1948), and often played old wise men, such as Merlin in Knights of the Round Table (1953). He also memorably played the Archbishop of Canterbury in the film adaptation of Becket (1964), with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole.

Aylmer was President of Equity from 1950 to 1969. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)^[3] in the 1950 King's Birthday Honours and knighted^[4][5] in the 1965 Queen's Birthday Honours. His last major screen role was as the Abbot in the 1960s sitcom Oh, Brother!, opposite Derek Nimmo. He died in a nursing home in Pyrford, Surrey in 1979.

One of his younger siblings was Air Chief Marshal Sir John Whitworth-Jones.^[6]

Partial filmography

Publications

• Dickens Incognito (1959)

• The Drood Case (1964)

References

External links

• Felix Aylmer at the Internet Movie Database
• Performances in the theatre archive, University of Bristol
• Felix Aylmer at the Internet Broadway Database
• Felix Aylmer at Find a Grave