Michael Gover
Michael Gover is an actor, born 1913.
He came to acting late, after an ambition to become an astronaut went nowhere, which is not a sentence you get to write about many English character actors. His first screen job was an episode of The Avengers in 1963, playing a figure called One Six, and the series brought him back two episodes later in the same part.
The role he is remembered for is Arthur Russell in the BBC's post-catastrophe series Survivors, which began in 1975. Everything else on his record is small and institutional. He is the prison governor in A Clockwork Orange, an elder in the 1978 Superman, a hotel manager in The Assassination Bureau, a newspaper reader in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Reuben Bigland in The Edwardians, Philip in Justice.
That is a short filmography, and it is worth being honest about what it contains: authority in a suit, delivered quickly and without fuss, in exactly the kinds of parts a late-starting actor gets. He died in 1987.
Movies (4)
TV (3)
Where to start with Michael Gover
There is really one performance to seek out, and it is Survivors. Arthur Russell is the part with room in it, and the series itself, a British network drama about rebuilding society after a plague, is far bleaker and better than its reputation.
After that you are collecting appearances rather than performances, which is a perfectly good reason to watch. A Clockwork Orange gives him the prison governor, a small but sharply written slot in one of the most argued-about British films ever made. Superman puts him on Krypton in the opening act among the elders. The Edwardians is the other television credit worth a look, a BBC period series, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is a walk-on in a Hammer picture, no more than that.