This MySpace page is in honour of the late actor Jeremy Brett, who in many's eyes earned the title as "The Quintessential Sherlock Holmes" for his outstanding performance in Granada Television's production of Sherlock Holmes which ran from 1984 thru 1994. This is the first MySpace profile created on behalf of Mr. Brett and it belongs to all of whom adore and honour his memory. (Biography Below)
Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes
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Another Jeremy Brett as Holmes
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Better known as Jeremy Brett, but Peter Jeremy William Higgens was born on the 3rd of November, 1933 in England. He was educated at Eton College. Brett trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He made his professional acting debut at the Library Theatre in Manchester in 1954, and made his London stage debut with the Old Vic company in 1956. He would go on to play many classical roles on stage, including numerous Shakespearean parts in his early career with the Old Vic and later with the Royal National Theatre. Brett made his first television appearance in 1954 and his first feature film appearance in 1955. Although Brett's feature film appearances were relatively few and far between, he did play Freddie Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 blockbuster film version of My Fair Lady. His singing voice was dubbed in the film, but Brett could still sing, as he later proved when he played Danilo in The Merry Widow on British television in 1968.
Notable in all of Jeremy Brett's roles is his precisely honed diction. Brett was born with a speech impediment that kept him from pronouncing the "R" sound correctly. Corrective surgery as a teenager, followed by years of practicing to pronounce sounds correctly, gave Brett an enviable, flawless pronunciation and enunciation. He later claimed he practiced all of his speech exercises daily, whether he was working or not, to keep his diction fit. Although he appeared in many films and television series during his 40-year career, Brett is now best remembered for portraying Sherlock Holmes in a decade-long (1984 to 1994) series of Granada Television films, adapted by John Hawkesworth and other writers from the original Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (see The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). After taking on the demanding role, Brett made few other acting appearances and he is now widely considered to be the definitive Holmes of his era, just as Basil Rathbone was during the 1940s — although Brett's fans consider his performance to be the best of all the many portrayals of the famous detective.
Brett suffered from bipolar disorder (commonly known as manic depression), which worsened after Joan Wilson's death. Joan died shortly after Brett finished filming Holmes’ "death" in "The Final Problem." He took a break from filming the series, but when he returned to filming in 1986 he suffered a nervous breakdown caused by his bipolar disorder aggravated by grief and the stressful shooting schedule. During the last decade of his life, Brett was hospitalized several times for treatment of his mental illness, and his health and appearance had visibly deteriorated by the time he made the later episodes of the Holmes TV series.There were plans to film all the Holmes stories, but Brett died of heart failure at his home in London before the project could be completed. Brett's heart had been damaged by a childhood case of rheumatic fever, and was apparently further weakened by the various drugs prescribed to control his manic depressive episodes, particularly lithium salt, and by his heavy cigarette smoking. In an interview, Edward Hardwicke (the second actor to play Dr. Watson in Brett's Holmes series) claimed that Brett would buy sixty cigarettes on his way to the set and smoke them all throughout the day. After his heart failure was diagnosed, Brett reportedly quit smoking, but the lure of nicotine proved too powerful, and he began smoking again shortly before his death at the age of 61 on September 12, 1995.br
