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The British film industry never quite knew how to handle Trevor Howard. Sure, they knew he was a star, and that he had been since David Lean plucked him from obscurity to play the dashing romantic lead in the eternally beloved Brief Encounter. And you only need to watch one of his early films (Green For Danger, perhaps, or maybe Golden Salamander) to know how well he c... [+]

The British film industry never quite knew how to handle Trevor Howard. Sure, they knew he was a star, and that he had been since David Lean plucked him from obscurity to play the dashing romantic lead in the eternally beloved Brief Encounter. And you only need to watch one of his early films (Green For Danger, perhaps, or maybe Golden Salamander) to know how well he could act.

But British film liked its chaps to be stolid and affable (think Jack Hawkins, think Kenny More) and that didn't suit Howard. His forte was playing cynics and the self-destructive. Howard excelled at undermining the image of the English gentleman, revealing brittle characters hiding behind Stiff Upper Lips. One of his defining early roles was as an RAF hero turned underworld stooge in the classic noir They Made Me A Fugitive.

He would have been perfectly cast as the 'hero' in any adaptation of Graham Greene's work; as it was, he appeared only in two – The Third Man and Heart of the Matter, two of his best performances. Perhaps his finest moment came in Carol Reed's adaptation of Outcast of the Islands, where Howard brings an implacable intensity to the role of the misanthropic Willems.

The parts shrank as Howard aged but he remained magnetic: he walked away with Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade as the demented Lord Cardigan. The humane parish priest he plays in David Lean's epic melodrama Ryan's Daughter is maybe the best thing about that much-misunderstood film, better even than the performance of Howard's long-term drinking buddy Robert Mitchum.

His finest late-period role was his least characteristic. Howard cast dignity to the wind to play the drunken aristocrat in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, a role that he numbered amongst his favourites. Howard was a keen practical joker but rarely got the chance to assay comedy; he relished his turn as the bibulous Sir Henry.

Howard died in 1988, aged 74. He left a legacy of magnificent performances, not always in films worthy of his talent. He was one of our very best. [-]