Donald Pleasence

Donald Pleasence played George in Roman Polanski's Cul-de-sac, a balding, pedantic Englishman living with his much younger French wife Teresa on Holy Island in the north-east of Britain, in a medieval castle the tides cut off from the land for part of the day. According to David Thompson, writing for Criterion, Pleasence came to the set with a shaved head; the director had not asked for it but granted that it put a useful twist into the character. Earlier he had brought to life Lieutenant Colin Blythe, nicknamed The Forger, in John Sturges's The Great Escape, the master counterfeiter who asks for paper, ink, a camera and up-to-date travel documents for the escape, and who, as the film closes, walks straight at the soldiers without raising his hands and is shot.