Vivian MacKerrell

[Red Leary]

Not very well known as an actor,as he really didnt do anything memorable.He is however the man who the cult film Withnail & I is based on.


Vivian Alan James MacKerrell (23 May 1944 - 2 March 1995) was a British actor of the 1960s, who shared a house in Camden, London with film director Bruce Robinson, director of Withnail & I. He was the major basis for Withnail, a memorable character of British cinema. MacKerrell's only notable acting part came in 1971's Edna, the Inebriate Woman, since his career was curtailed by a premature death from throat cancer. Robinson once attributed this to his imbibing of lighter fluid . This is portrayed in a notorious scene from Withnail & I; MacKerrell was reputedly unable to see for days after the incident.

â??Everyone keeps saying they were Withnail, and they werenâ??t,â?� claims writer/director Bruce Robinson,â??If there is a person Withnail is based on, itâ??s Vivian MacKerrell.â?�
Described by Robinson as â??wild, aristocratic and highly educatedâ?�, MacKerrell was one of the many people â?? along with Robinson and Feast â?? who lived in the Camden house bought by their wealthy drama school friend, composer David Dundas.
According to Robinson, â??We had lot of expectations that we would all become film stars, which of course never happened. People were getting married or getting jobs until there was just me and Vivian living in the house. I literally had one light bulb. I guarded it like a Russian prisoner of war.
At night Iâ??d take the light bulb up and put it in the bedroom, and in the day Iâ??d go down and put it in the kitchen and get the oven open, sit there in an overcoat and get warm.â?�
Robinsonâ??s companion through the worst of it was MacKerrell. The scene where they drink lighter fuel in the film comes from something MacKerrell actually did: he couldnâ??t see for days afterwards and Robinson suspects it might have caused the throat cancer that eventually killed his friend.
Robinson knew it had to end when MacKerrell returned from a trip home to Scotland armed with bottles of a drink â?? 200 per cent proof, Robinson claims â?? that distillery workers made by sticking used whisky filters into spin driers.
Deranged by the drink, Robinson and MacKerrell, armed with a hammer and an artificial leg, smashed one of the walls of their house down. It still took another six months for Robinson and MacKerrell to work up the will go their separate ways.
Although his friends were fascinated by him, MacKerrellâ??s career â?? like Withnailâ??s â?? was one of overwhelming obscurity, best summed up by the fact that the IMDB spells his name wrong and lists him as an actress.

â??Give me a fucking pre-med you fuckers, Iâ??m a personal friend of Sir Lancelot Spratt.â?? These words of frustration were the last to issue from Vivianâ??s wonderful classically-trained voice. Forcing himself upright on the hospital trolley, he saluted his friends before being wheeled into the operating theatre for the removal of his voice-box; a procedure he later dismissed flippantly as â??getting a Jack Hawkinsâ??. His final months would reveal a man of extreme courage, and a refusal to curb his excesses for anyone. Unable to swallow, he was forced to pump alcohol via a syringe directly into his stomach and spent his last few weeks propped up on Moroccan cushions listening to his beloved Elvis, refusing any nourishment other than dry sherry.
He died in 1995 from throat cancer.