Remembering Donald Pleasence

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 24 years since the passing of actor Donald Pleasence. Of course everyone knows Pleasence best for his iconic portrayal of Dr. Sam Loomis in the Halloween series, but his acting career spanned more than five decades and included over 200 roles in film, theatre, and television.

Donald Henry Pleasence was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England on October 5, 1919. He began acting on stage near the onset of World War II, but his career was put on hold when he joined the Royal Air Force in 1940. During one of his missions, Pleasence’s plane was shot down over France and he was subsequently held captive at a German prisoner-of-war camp.

In 1946, Donald Pleasence returned to the UK and continued to work in the theatre. He would soon begin to land television roles which included a 1956 BBC adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopic novel 1984. In 1962, Pleasence made his debut appearance on American television in an episode of The Twilight Zone entitled “The Changing of the Guard” and would later go on to appear in other TV series such as The Outer Limits and Columbo.    

Donald Pleasence’s first movie role for the big screen was 1954’s The Beachcomber in which he plays a character named “Tromp”. In 1967 he appeared in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, in which he played bad guy “Ernst Stavro Blofeld”, the character on which Austin Powers‘ “Dr. Evil” is based. Pleasence would work steadily in film and TV throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but it was John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher Halloween that would grant him the role that made him most famous. In Carpenter’s film, Pleasence plays Dr. Sam Loomis, a psychiatrist obsessed with stopping escaped mental patient and killer Michael Myers whom he had treated as a child. While Donald Pleasence may have been perfect as Dr. Loomis, it is a role which was ironically turned down by both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

Donald Pleasence would go on to work with John Carpenter again in Escape From New York (1981) and Prince of Darkness (1987), and would reprise his role as Loomis in four Halloween sequels. Horror fans will also remember Pleasence as Inspector Calhoun in Gary Sherman’s Raw Meat (1972) and Professor John McGregor in Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1984). His final role was in Al Festa’s 1996 thriller Fatal Frames which also featured several other horror veterans including David Warbeck, Linnea Quigley, and Angus Scrimm.

Donald Pleasence died on February 2, 1995 as a result of complications from heart surgery. Although he will be best remembered as Dr. Loomis in the Halloween films, he was a very diverse actor with an extensive career spread across almost every genre of stage and screen.