I was a big fan of The Equalizer back in the 1980’s. Woodward’s heart condition led to an early cancellation of this award winning show. Woodward was nominated for Emmy’s and actually won The Goldens Globe in 1987 for his work in this role.
I saw Woodward in The Wicker Man. He’d changed a lot in the last twenty years. It was good to see him still working, because his heart attack in 1987 was very serious. He returned to The Equalize afterwords, but it wasn’t the same. He didn’t have the same physical approach to the role.
Here’s a short clip of the Equalizer’s best moments. For a middle-aged guy, Woodward brought an incredible physical intensity to the character. The Equalizer was bad ass.
I think I remember that show. He played a spy/assassin in the 1960’s?
Yeah. It was iconic early television. Really cheap B&W production values but I can still recall scenes 40 years later. He managed to always seem really, really pissed off no matter what he said or did.
I looked it up on IMDB and it seems to me that his filmography is missing a B movie that I vaguely recall. He played a nutjob who set himself up in a shop with a rifle intending to shoot shoppers in the street below. I saw it as the first half of a double feature and hopefully someone else will remember it.
I loved The Equalizer as a kid, and Woodward still stands as one of TV’s smartest, savvies badasses. He was nominated for an Emmy every year of the show’s run, but never won. It’s from there that I discovered Breaker, Wicker and even the not-good King David where he was very very good as King Saul.
It was a treat seeing him again recently in Hot Fuzz, but his years were catching up on him, and I can only hope his golden years were full of happiness and contentment, since every interview I saw with him made him seem like a cool, good-humored guy.
That was my first thought, followed by wondering if his body would be returned to the earth, or to fire, to air, or water… (Yes, I’ve seen that movie way too many times.)
Fans of EW and the original *Wicker Man *must see, if they haven’t already, the Simon Pegg comedy Hot Fuzz!, in which EW played a small but important part as a village elder with a secret – a role that let him send up the *Wicker Man *shtick.
Same here. His ‘ghost of Christmas present’ was terrific. For any not familiar with the role, it was in the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol.
When I was a little kid I used to love the Equalizer–or rather, I loved the music, and that nifty looking guy with the keen British accent. I’d go to sleep watching it every… Wednesday? Whenever it was on, anyway.
Of course, the real question is, why does he have four Ds in his name?
Cheers, Equalizer, and thanks for helping me sleep as a kid.
I don’t know why, but even though I loved the Equalizer, my first reaction upon hearing his death was thinking of a silly line from an old Benny Hill episode. Benny was playing a tour guide (I think) at a TV studio, and when asked who his favorite actor would be, he claimed, “Edward Woodward would.”
