My friend the actor John Forrest, who has died aged 80, combined a distinguished film career with work as a stage magician. He had his first success as a child actor, in David Lean's classic movie Great Expectations (1946), as the "pale young gentleman" – the young Herbert Pocket.
Known later for his many supporting roles playing very "British" characters such as Grassy Green in Very Important Person (1961), he was in fact born in the US, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His English mother, an artist, had married an American lawyer, and when the marriage broke up after a few years, she brought John and his sister to England where they lived in the village of Cookham, Berkshire. Their neighbours were the painter Stanley Spencer and his equally eccentric brother, Horace, who taught John magic.
Following his early film success, John acted alongside such distinguished actors as David Niven, in Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948), Richard Attenborough, in The Guinea Pig (1948), and Jean Simmons, in Adam & Evelyne (1949).
In 1949, Laurence Olivier directed A Streetcar Named Desire for the West End stage, and cast John as the Young Collector, opposite his wife Vivien Leigh. She and Olivier encouraged John in his career. John then appeared in the long-running play The Remarkable Mr Pennypacker (1955). It was a hit at the New theatre in London and then toured around Britain.
His films included Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951, in which he played the sadistic Flashman), The Franchise Affair (1951) and Gift Horse (1952); and he appeared on TV in Thunder in the West (1957), Good Wives (1958), Emergency Ward 10 (1959), Armchair Theatre (1959), Doctor Finlay's Casebook (1964) and A Requiem for Modigliani (1970)
His reputation as a magician was growing, and John decided to move to France, where his act featuring clocks and timepieces was successful in cabaret at venues in Paris and Monte Carlo. He used the name "John Klox" and was in demand in the US, too, for seasons at Palm Springs, Hollywood and Los Angeles. John also worked as an entertainer at children's parties.
