William Russell (English actor)

William Russell Enoch was born on 19 November 1924 in Sunderland, County Durham,^[1] to Eva Compston (née Pile) and Alfred James Enoch. He was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School and Oxford University and became interested in acting at an early age.^[2] He was involved in organising entertainment during his national service in the Royal Air Force and then, after university, went into repertory theatre.

In 1963, Russell was cast in Doctor Who as science teacher Ian Chesterton, the Doctor's first male companion, appearing in all episodes of the first two seasons of the programme except the last four.

Russell was one of the four original cast members of Doctor Who, starring opposite William Hartnell as the First Doctor, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright, Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman and later Maureen O'Brien as Vicki. His first involvement in the series took form in the pilot episode (not transmitted until 1991), which was later reshot and broadcast as the first episode of An Unearthly Child, the programme's first serial. He eventually departed, alongside Hill, in "The Planet of Decision", the final episode of The Chase, which served as the penultimate story of the second season.

It was intended that Russell would reprise the role of Ian in the 1983 story Mawdryn Undead alongside Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor for the twentieth season. Scheduling conflicts left him unavailable.^[3]

After leaving Coronation Street in 1992, Russell had maintained his association with Doctor Who, having lent his voice as a narrator to several of the audiobook releases of the lost 1960s episodes. He appeared in The Game, one of the continuing Doctor Who audio stories produced by Big Finish Productions. He also recorded readings for some of the CD audio adaptations of Doctor Who story novelisations originally published by Target Books.

In 1999, Russell returned to the role of Ian for the VHS release of The Crusade, of which "The Knight of Jaffa" and "The Warlords", the second and fourth episodes, respectively, are lost. He recorded several in-character scenes to camera, which helped to bridge the gaps between the existing episodes.

Russell also contributed to the Doctor Who DVD range, having participated in several audio commentaries and on-screen interviews since 2002.

In 2013, the BBC produced An Adventure in Space and Time, a docudrama depicting the creation and early days of Doctor Who, as part of the programme's fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Russell was a character in the drama and was portrayed by actor Jamie Glover.^[4] Russell himself had a cameo role, playing a BBC Commissionaire named Harry.^[5]

The same year, Russell portrayed both Ian and the First Doctor in the Big Finish audio play The Light at the End, produced to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary; aged 88, he became the oldest person to portray the Doctor,^[6] a record he held until March 2023, when Tom Baker portrayed the Fourth Doctor in the Big Finish audio series The Fourth Doctor Adventures at the age of 89.

Russell made a cameo appearance as Ian in the 2022 special "The Power of the Doctor".^[7] With this, his final role, he won a Guinness World Record for the longest gap between TV appearances.^[8]

In 1953, Russell married Balbina Gutierrez. They had three children, Robert, Laetitia and Vanessa, and later divorced.^[9]

In 1984, he married his second wife, Etheline Margareth Lewis,^[10] a Barbadian Brazilian doctor.^[11] Their son, Alfred was born in 1988. Alfred is now an actor too, best known for playing Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter film series and Wes Gibbins in the television series How to Get Away with Murder. They performed together in the movie, Executive Order. (2020)

Russell died on 3 June 2024, at the age of 99.^[12]

Russell appeared in British films from 1950 onward, appearing in well-known productions such as They Who Dare (1954), One Good Turn (1955), The Man Who Never Was (1956) and The Great Escape (1963). He later played minor roles in Terror (1978), Superman (1978) and Death Watch (1979).

Russell's big break was the title role in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot on ITV in 1956, which for sale to the American NBC network became the first UK television series to be shot in colour. He acted in many plays and TV series including Disraeli, Testament of Youth and Coronation Street (as Ted Sullivan, the short-lived second husband of Rita Sullivan). He had a small part in an episode of The Black Adder, as a late replacement for Wilfrid Brambell, who became impatient with delays to his scene and left the set before shooting it. He was the Duke of Gloucester in the Robin of Sherwood episode, "The Pretender", and Lanscombe in a 2005 Agatha Christie's Poirot episode, "After the Funeral".

• William Russell at IMDb
• William Russell discography at Discogs