Rumpole of the Bailey star Leo McKern on his career and why he so rarely returned to Australia.

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Australian star Leo McKern rose from an engineering apprenticeship in Sydney to the heights of British theatre and TV and then into the ranks of Hollywood’s best character actors.
Leo left school at the age of 15 and lost an eye in a factory accident. He served in the Australian army during World War II, began acting after the war and followed his actress wife, Jane Holland, to London.
There, he went on to win roles at both The Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon Avon.
His feature film credits ran from The Beatles’ Help movie to some of the great films of the period - A Man for All Seasons, Ryans’ Daughter, The French Lieutenants’ Woman, two of the Omen films and Ladyhawke with Michelle Pfeiffer.
But Leo was best known, globally, for his commanding performance in the title role in the Thames TV production (which went out on the ITV 1 channel), Rumpole of the Bailey, as an eccentric London barrister.
He starred in more than 40 episodes of the series.
Leo rarely travelled back to Australia over the 50 years he resided, and worked, in the UK, as he explains in this rare interview I did with him by phone in 1985, shortly before he began shooting a film with British star, Sir Alec Guiness, better known to recent generations as Obe Wan Kenobe from Star Wars.:
Leo continued to work into his late 70’s, eventually moving to Bath in the West of England, where he died at the age of 82, in 2002.
He had two daughters, Harriet,… and Abigail who also became an actress and co-starred with her dad in a number of the Rumpole episodes.
And yes, after his terrible accident, he had a glass eye in serted.

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