Charles William “Bud” Tingwell, AM (3 January 1923 – 15 May 2009) was an Australian film, television, theatre and radio actor. Tingwell was one of the veterans of Australian film. He acted in his first motion picture in 1946 and appeared in over 100 films and numerous television programs in both the United Kingdom and Australia.
In 1946, Tingwell won his first film role, as a control tower officer in the film Smithy. He took on several roles over the next few years, increasing in stature, until he caught the attention of Hollywood in 1952, and won the part of Lt. Harry Carstairs in The Desert Rats, alongside Chips Rafferty, James Mason and Richard Burton.
After filming The Desert Rats, Tingwell stayed in Australia for three years, making three films, including King of the Coral Sea, which also featured Rafferty. In 1954 he co-starred with Gordon Chater in Top of the Bill, the first of the famous satirical revues staged at Sydney’s Phillip Street Theatre. In 1956, Tingwell… read more
Charles William “Bud” Tingwell, AM (3 January 1923 – 15 May 2009) was an Australian film, television, theatre and radio actor. Tingwell was one of the veterans of Australian film. He acted in his first motion picture in 1946 and appeared in over 100 films and numerous television programs in both the United Kingdom and Australia.
In 1946, Tingwell won his first film role, as a control tower officer in the film Smithy. He took on several roles over the next few years, increasing in stature, until he caught the attention of Hollywood in 1952, and won the part of Lt. Harry Carstairs in The Desert Rats, alongside Chips Rafferty, James Mason and Richard Burton.
After filming The Desert Rats, Tingwell stayed in Australia for three years, making three films, including King of the Coral Sea, which also featured Rafferty. In 1954 he co-starred with Gordon Chater in Top of the Bill, the first of the famous satirical revues staged at Sydney’s Phillip Street Theatre. In 1956, Tingwell moved to England. The following year, he took on his first recurring television role, playing Australian surgeon Alan Dawson in the live television serial Emergency – Ward 10 and its film spin-off Life in Emergency Ward 10 (1959). He also played the role of Inspector Craddock in all four of the Miss Marple series of films starring Margaret Rutherford, between 1961 and 1964.
In the later 1960s, he performed various minor voice roles for the Gerry Anderson television shows Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons as well as appearing in the first series of Catweazle.
Tingwell made numerous other films while in England, spending a total of 16 years as a ‘London Aussie’, but in 1973, returned to Australia with his wife and children, and soon after, won the role of Inspector Reg Lawson on the long-running series Homicide. This was followed by small roles in a number of major Australian films, such as Breaker Morant (1980), Puberty Blues (1981) and All the Rivers Run (1983).
His career went through a quiet period throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, until he took on the role of ‘Gramps’ in recurring segment Charlie the Wonderdog, in the satirical series The Late Show in 1993. He was inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame in 1994. His role in The Late Show was later to win him a major role as lawyer Lawrence Hammill in the major 1997 film The Castle. He later said that this role helped him recover from the death of his wife not long before.
After the success of The Castle, Tingwell’s career underwent a revival during the late 1990s and early 2000s. This saw him take on small roles in commercial films The Craic (1999) and The Dish (2000), the mini-series Changi, as well as the lead in the romance Innocence.
Tingwell had a recurring guest role in the soap opera Neighbours in 2000 and 2003, playing Henry O’Rourke. He appeared as John Conroy in the musical theatre production The Man from Snowy River: Arena Spectacular, which toured Australian capital cities twice during 2002. —Wikipedia
