Obituary: Sam Dastor, actor with the RSC and National Theatre

Indian-born actor Sam Dastor, who has died aged 84, had an extraordinarily varied career on stage, TV, radio and film, dating back to the late 1960s.

Having been born in Mumbai, Dastor came with his family to England as a young boy, boarding at the Downs Malvern school, before transferring to Bryanston School in Dorset. He went on to read English at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, later winning a scholarship to RADA. After cutting his teeth at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, he joined Laurence Olivier’s company at the Old Vic, appearing in a small role in Volpone, directed by Tyrone Guthrie.

His breakthrough role was playing Ariel to Paul Scofield’s Prospero in The Tempest in 1974, first at Leeds Playhouse, and then for a record-breaking run at Wyndham’s Theatre, London. The Daily Telegraph critic said his “elegant Ariel” was “quite magical as a light and delicate spirit”. He continued to hone his Shakespearean skills with three consecutive productions – Julius Caesar, Richard II and As You Like It (all 1979) - with the St George’s Theatre Company in Tufnell Park, north London.
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In the 1980s and 1990s, he appeared in three West End plays by Simon Gray – Melon (1987), with Alan Bates; Hidden Laughter (1990), with Felicity Kendal and Peter Barkworth; and Cell Mates (1995), with Rik Mayall, a production best remembered for the dramatic and unexpected departure of their co-star, Stephen Fry.

He played multiple roles in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1998) at the National Theatre and from, 1999 to 2001, appeared in a succession of roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company, including King John in Edward III and Dr Lombardi in a world tour of The Servant of Two Masters. More recently, he appeared in Trevor Nunn’s colonial India-set A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, playing Egeus as an intransigent civil servant; toured in Yes, Prime Minister, with Simon Williams; and played Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing at the Rose Theatre, Kingston.

For a number of years he toured his one-man show based on Shakespeare’s Sonnets all over the world, as well as performing it in Westminster Abbey and at Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon.

In the 1970s, Dastor was a member of the BBC repertory company for two years, and continued to make regular appearances in radio drama as well as narrating many novels and audiobooks, including two books by VS Naipaul.

His films included Jinnah (1998), about the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in which he played Mahatma Gandhi, a performance the actor Christopher Lee (who played the title role) described in his autobiography as “the definitive Gandhi”. Hey also appeared in the award-winning The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), starring Geoffrey Rush, in which Dastor played the film director, Hal Ashby.

In 2022, Dastor was featured in the book British Black and Asian Shakespeareans: Integrating Shakespeare, 1966-2018 by Jami Rogers, published by Bloomsbury.

Sam Dastor was born on 2nd October, 1941, and died on 5th June. He is survived by his wife Angela, son Nicholas and stepdaughters Emma and Alice.