Tim Seely


Timothy Ward Seely was an English film, radio, television and theatre actor.

Background

Seely was the son of the late Major Frank James Wriothesley Seely, and a great-grandson of Sir Charles Seely, 1st Baronet. His mother was Vera Lilian Birkin, daughter of British Colonel Charles Wilfred Birkin and his American wife, Claire Lloyd Birkin. His aunt was Freda Dudley Ward, a mistress of King Edward VIII and wife of William Dudley Ward.
Seely studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Seely died on 18 May 2024, at the age of 88.

Career

In 1957, he made his theatre debut in the play Tea and Sympathy at the London Comedy Theatre. Seely played the young Tom Lee, who fell in love with the senior Laura, played by Elizabeth Sellars. He played the same role in the adaptation at New Shakespeare Theatre, Liverpool. There he also played Rodolfo in Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge. In 1958, he acted alongside Maggie Smith at the London St Martin's Theatre in an adaptation of The Stepmother.
Seely was member of the BBC Radio Drama Company, with which he acted the title role in Pericles, Prince of Tyre. He also had roles in various Shakespeare plays, including as Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew, Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Polonius in Hamlet, Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing and the King of France in All's Well That Ends Well.
In the late 1950s, he also took roles in film and television productions. One of his more prominent roles was as Midshipmen Ned Young in the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty, where Seely appeared alongside Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard.

Filmography and television work