Career
Kinnear's acting career began in 1955, playing Albert in The Young in Heart, at the repertory theatre, Newquay. In 1959 he joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, performing in both the 1960 play and 1963 film of Sparrows Can't Sing.
Kinnear's television debut was on the STV children's series Mr. Fixit in 1959, before gaining national attention as a participant in the television show That Was the Week That Was.
Kinnear later appeared in many films and television shows, including Till Death Us Do Part, Doctor at Large, Man About the House, George and Mildred, The Dick Emery Show (as Gaylord's long-suffering father) and four episodes of The Avengers. He starred in Cowboys, a sitcom about builders. His best-known films are those he made with director and close friend Richard Lester: Help!, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum, How I Won the War, The Bed Sitting Room, Juggernaut and the Musketeer series of the 1970s and 1980s.
He appeared with Christopher Lee in the Hammer horror film Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970). Also in 1970 he played Mr. Perkins, Melody's father in Waris Hussein's Melody (1971), a puppy love story. He played the father of spoiled rich girl Veruca Salt in the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), an adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
He guest-starred as the Roman Emperor in episode "Rome Antics", in The Goodies (1975), and as the fearsome German Sergeant Vogel in the BBC's Ripping Yarns episode "Escape From Stalag Luft 112B" (1977).
He narrated and provided voices for the stop-motion children's television show Bertha. He appeared in two music videos for Mike and the Mechanics ("All I Need Is a Miracle" and "Taken In") as the band's manager; in the former, he was reunited with his Help! co-star Victor Spinetti.
He narrated Towser (1990-1991), and voiced Pipkin in the animated film Watership Down (1978), and voiced Texas Pete's henchman Bulk in SuperTed (also with Victor Spinetti, who voiced the evil Texas Pete). Kinnear appeared regularly on the stage. In later life he appeared in productions such as The Travails of Sancho Panza (playing the title role), and in The Cherry Orchard, in 1985.
His final completed roles were in A Man for All Seasons (1988), a made-for-television film directed by and starring Charlton Heston, John Gielgud and Vanessa Redgrave, as a patient in the BBC One hospital drama Casualty, and a voice role as Mump in The Princess and the Goblin (1992), four years after his sudden death in September 1988. Following his death, the Casualty episode was postponed, and not aired until August 1989. In October 1988 Radio 4 first broadcast The T Machine, an episode of the comedy series The Fall of the Mausoleum Club in which he played the lead character, Mr Tilly.
