Russell Hunter

Russell Hunter (18 February 1925 – 26 February 2004) was a popular Scottish television, stage and film actor. He is perhaps best known as the character "Lonely" in the TV thriller series Callan, starring Edward Woodward; and that of Shop-Steward Harry in the Yorkshire Television sitcom The Gaffer. 2Life Born Adam Russell Hunter in Glasgow, Hunter's childhood was spent with his maternal grandparents in Lanarkshire, until returning to his unemployed father and cleaner mother when he was 12. He went from school to an apprenticeship in a Clydebank shipyard. During this time, he did some amateur acting for the Young Communist League before turning professional in 1946. 2Career 3Early work Under the stage name Russell Hunter, he acted at Perth Rep and at the Glasgow Unity Theatre also performing in the very first Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1947 in The Plough and the Stars by Seán O'Casey, was a comedian in summer variety shows and toured with a one-man show. Hunter worked in repertory theatre and Scottish variety before making his film debut in Lilli Marlene (1950). He appeared with Archie Duncan in the film The Gorbals Story, in London the same year, which also featured his first wife, Marjorie Thomson, and he followed these by playing a pilot in the Battle of Britain drama Angels One Five in 1951. As an actor, he joined Peter Hall's Royal Shakespeare Company, working with Peggy Ashcroft and Dame Edith Evans. 3Callan His most memorable role was the timid, smelly petty criminal, Lonely, unlikely accomplice to a clinical spy-cum-assassin, in the downbeat 1967 television spy series Calla