Acting Career
Shaw began his acting career in theatre, appearing in regional theatre throughout England. In 1952 he made his London debut on the West End at the Embassy Theatre in Caro William.
During the 1950s, Shaw starred in a British TV series which also appeared on American television as The Buccaneers. Shaw's best-known film performances include the assassin, Donald Grant, in the second James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963); the relentless panzer officer Colonel Hessler in Battle of the Bulge (1965); a young Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966); Lord Randolph Churchill, in Young Winston (1972); the ruthless mobster Doyle Lonnegan in The Sting (1973), the equally-ruthless subway-hijacker and hostage-taker "Mr. Blue" in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974); the shark-obsessed fisherman Quint in Jaws (1975); and lighthouse keeper and treasure hunter Romer Treece in The Deep (1977), and the Israeli Mossad agent David Kabakov in Black Sunday (1977), which was the most successful of his appearances in films as the principal good-guy.
Shaw was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Man for All Seasons.
He performed on stage as well, across Britain and on Broadway in the US, where his notable performances include Harold Pinter's Old Times and The Caretaker, Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Physicists directed by Peter Brook, and The Man in the Glass Booth, inspired by the kidnapping and trial of Adolf Eichmann, written by Shaw himself, and directed by Pinter.
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