Oscar James
Oscar James is an actor, born 1942.
Oscar James was born in Trinidad in 1942 and came to Britain as a boy in the fifties. Before acting he drove a taxi, washed dishes and worked as a gymnast, and he has been based in the United Kingdom ever since.
His place in British television history was fixed by one job. When EastEnders launched, James was one of the original twenty three cast members, playing Tony Carpenter for more than two years, which put a Caribbean family in a British soap at a point when that was still unusual. That series is not among the credits listed here.
What is here is the surrounding career, and it is a good deal odder than the soap would suggest: the Chief in a British cyberpunk horror, Miguel in a Caribbean set comedy, a football coach in an American slasher spoof, a supporting turn in an adaptation of a Booker winning novel, and the shopkeeper in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is the part most children of the 2000s have seen him in without ever learning his name.
Movies (5)
TV (4)
Where to start with Oscar James
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is where most people will recognise him, as the shopkeeper behind the counter Charlie keeps returning to, so start there and then go somewhere less charming.
Hardware is the real find, a grimy British science fiction horror with a scrap dealer's aesthetic, and James plays the Chief in it. The Line of Beauty is the class act, an adaptation of a Booker winning novel about eighties London money. Water is the loose Caribbean comedy, Student Bodies a 1981 slasher spoof exactly as silly as it sounds, and Afterlife the one for anyone who likes their ghost stories miserable and British.