Philip Stone was an English character actor, born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in 1924. His first job was for an engineering company in Leeds and he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He was on stage at the West End in London from 1947. He also contracted tuberculosis that year and was forced to give up acting for several years to undergo treatment.
Stanley Kubrick noticed him during 1969 while acting in “The Contractor” at the Royal Court Theatre. Stone was the only actor to appear in three consecutive Kubrick films. He played the central character Alex’s “P” (as in “M” and “P” for “Ma” and “Pa”) in A Clockwork Orange (1971), and then subsequently played Graham, the Lyndon family lawyer, in Barry Lyndon (1975), and Delbert Grady, the original caretaker who murdered his family in The Shining (1980). The only other actor to be credited in three Kubrick films is Joe Turkel. Other film roles included Thunderball (1965), Where Eagles Dare (1968), Quest for Love (1971), Flash Gordon (1980) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). In the animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1978), he voiced the role of Theoden.
Stone was also a prolific stage and television actor, appearing in many popular TV series, including the very first episode of The Avengers (1961), as well as Dalziel and Pascoe (1996), A Touch of Frost (1992), Heartbeat (1992), Yes Minister (1980) and Coronation Street (1960). At one time he fronted his own production company, Philip Stone Productions. He died of a heart attack in London in 2003, aged 79.
