Leonard Rossiter (21 October 1926 – 5 October 1984) was an English actor with careers in film, television and theatre. He is best known for his roles as Rupert Rigsby, in the British comedy television series Rising Damp, and Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-79), as well as for a series of Cinzano commercials (1978-1983), with Joan Collins.
Leonard Rossiter was born in Liverpool, where he lived over the barbe...
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Leonard Rossiter (21 October 1926 – 5 October 1984) was an English actor with careers in film, television and theatre. He is best known for his roles as Rupert Rigsby, in the British comedy television series Rising Damp, and Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-79), as well as for a series of Cinzano commercials (1978-1983), with Joan Collins.
Leonard Rossiter was born in Liverpool, where he lived over the barber shop which had been owned by his father. He was educated at Liverpool Collegiate Grammar School and it had been his ambition to go to university to read modern languages and become a teacher. Tragically his father, a voluntary ambulanceman during the Second World War, had been killed in an air-raid in 1942 and so, having his mother to support, he was unable to afford to take up the place he had been offered by Liverpool University. Finishing grammar school aged 18, as the war in Europe came to an end, he was conscripted into the Army...
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