The child star of Lassie grew up to be Planet of the Apes' Cornelius
Roddy McDowall did what few child actors manage: he kept working as an adult, for more than 60 years and over 270 roles. The London boy from How Green Was My Valley later won a Tony, played Cornelius under heavy ape makeup, photographed Hollywood's biggest names and helped found the National Film Preservation Board.
McDowall was born in Herne Hill, London, in 1928, the son of a merchant seaman and his Irish wife, both keen theatregoers. After modelling as a baby and winning a school acting prize at nine, he appeared in British comedies with George Formby and Will Hay. When the Second World War broke out, his mother took him and his sister to America, where he became a citizen in 1949.
Hollywood fame came quickly. Fritz Lang's Man Hunt in 1941 was followed by How Green Was My Valley, the Best Picture winner that made him a household name as Huw Morgan and gave him a lifelong friend in Maureen O'Hara. MGM borrowed him for Lassie Come Home opposite Elizabeth Taylor, another friend for life. He then pivoted to the stage, playing Malcolm in Orson Welles's Macbeth, and later found success on Broadway, winning a Tony for The Fighting Cock and playing Mordred in Camelot alongside Richard Burton.
His best-known adult role was the chimpanzee scientist Cornelius in Planet of the Apes; he later played Cornelius's son Caesar and appeared in the TV spin-off. Other credits include Cleopatra, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, and The Poseidon Adventure. He directed a single film, Tam Lin, in 1970. In 1989 he explained that, like Henry Fonda, he treated each job as possibly his last.
Behind the camera he was a serious photographer for Life, Vogue and Look, shooting the cover of Barbra Streisand's The Third Album and publishing five books of portraits. In 1974 the FBI seized his private archive of 160 prints and over 1,000 video cassettes during a piracy inquiry, though no charges followed. He chaired the Academy's actors' branch for five terms and died of cancer in 1998, the year he became president of the Academy Foundation.
Source: Roddy McDowall
