Michael Goodliffe
English actor (1914-1976)
Lawrence Michael Andrew Goodliffe (1 October 1914 – 20 March 1976) was an English actor known for playing suave roles such as doctors, lawyers and army officers. He was also sometimes cast in working-class parts.
Early life
Goodliffe was born in Bebington, Wirral, the son of a vicar, and educated at St Edmund's School, Canterbury, and Keble College, Oxford.
Career
Goodliffe began his career in repertory theatre in Liverpool before joining the company of the Stratford Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon. He joined the British Army at the beginning of the Second World War, and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in February 1940. He was wounded in the leg and captured at the Battle of Dunkirk. Goodliffe was incorrectly listed as killed in action, and even had his obituary published in a newspaper. He was to spend the rest of the war a prisoner in Germany.
Whilst in captivity he produced and acted in (and in some cases wrote) many plays and sketches to entertain fellow prisoners. These included two productions of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, one in Tittmoning and the other in Eichstätt, in which he played the title role.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1600882. VIAF identifies the subject as 76516372. The Library of Congress control number is nr98017171. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1976 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Goodliffe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.