Actor

Born: May 14, 1941;

Died: March 10, 2017

JOHN Forgeham, who has died at the age of 75, was an actor and director who often specialised in tough-talking, womanising roles in crime dramas. He played Frank, the radio operator, in The Italian Job but most of his work was on television. He appeared in Z Cars and The Professionals and also had a recurring role in the police soap opera The Bill.

In later years Forgeham was probably best known for playing the fictional football team Earls Park FC's chairman Frank Laslett in the ITV drama Footballers' Wives, which ran from 2002 until 2006, although in the 1970s he was also known to fans of the soap opera Crossroads. He appeared in the programme at the height of its popularity from 1974 to 1978 as the mechanic Jim Baines.

Born John Forgham (he added the e later) in Kidderminster, he grew up in Birmingham where his father was a factory worker. He later worked in a factory himself but was interested in amateur dramatics and won a scholarship in 1962 to study for two years at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

After appearing in repertory theatre across the UK, Forgeham joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the mid 1960s and toured with them in Australia in 1969. He decided to stay on for a while, becoming the artistic director of St Martins Theatre in Melbourne, Australia for one year in 1970 (he was later nominated Artistic Director of the Year there). He also founded his own Shakespeare company in Sydney called The Globe Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Back in Britain, he started to find success on television, appearing in many of the biggest shows of the 1960s and 1970s. As well as Z Cars, The Avengers and The Professionals, Forgeham appeared in the cult BBC drama The Stone Tape, a television play starring Jane Asher and Iain Cuthbertson about a group of scientists who investigate reports of hauntings in a Victorian mansion.

Crossroads was probably his big break though and he became a recognisable television star before being written out in 1978. He then went on to become a reliable supporting actor in many series of the 1980s and 90s including Prime Suspect, in which he played the detective whose death lead to Jane Tennison, played by Helen Mirren, taking over a critical investigation.

Work began to slow down after Footballers' Wives and Forgeham suffered from mental health problems in his later years. He was taken to hospital after falling from his bed and breaking his collarbone and later died in hospital.

His daughter Jonesta Forgeham said her father had fallen into a depression after Footballers' Wives and had not been working much.

"He got very depressed. He stared at a wall for four years," she said. "He had psychotic tendencies and was put under section. He spent a year in a mental institution.

"When he came out, social services dumped him back in his house and they left him there to rot. He wasn't paying his mortgage because he was ill and they were going to repossess his house.

"They sold his house and put the money in the bank because he wasn't mentally fit and he moved to an old people's home. Then all of a sudden, he snapped out of it about a year ago and he was moved into a flat.

"Not being able to act contributed to his depression. He was troubled most of his life and he struggled with going up and down, but he lived and breathed acting."

Forgeham is survived by his daughter and son Jason and five grandchildren.