Introduction
Terence Beesley (7 September 1957 – 30 November 2017) was an English actor and writer.
Early life
He was born in London, to Irish parents, and trained at the City Lit in London in 1980 and then the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Career
Television
His television work included Cadfael, The Bill, Where the Heart Is, Heartbeat, Midsomer Murders, EastEnders (as Derek Branning in 1996), Casualty, Down to Earth, Plotlands, She's Out and What Remains. He starred in Peter Kosminsky's 15, The Life and Death of Phillip Knight, and played General Bennigsen in the BBC adaptation of War and Peace.
Theatre
His stage work included British theatre performances as the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III (1995) and as the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1994) for multi Barrymore award winner director Mark Clements and his own adaptation (with Colin Wakefield) of Nikolai Gogol's Diary of a Madman (as a one-man play) at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. Along with Jonathan Church and Jules Melvin, he was a founder of the Triptych Theatre Company. Their first production, Jack Shepherd's In Lambeth at the Lyric Studio, received much critical acclaim.
Personal life
He met Ashley Jensen in 1999 during a production at the Manchester Royal Exchange, and they married in California in 2007. He died at the family home in Somerset in November 2017; the news only became known in mid-December. Beesley was found unconscious in a car in his garage.An inquest in 2018 ruled that he took his own life.