Alan Scarfe — a classically-trained British-Canadian actor who starred opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in Double Impact and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 3 — has died. He was 77.
Scarfe’s family announced in an online obituary that the actor died peacefully on April 28 following a battle with colon cancer. The family also shared that Scarfe died at his home in Longueuil in the province of Québec, Canada. The online obituary listed many of his accolades as an actor, director and novelist.
For so long, Scarfe — born in Harpenden, England but raised in Vancouver, Canada — romanticized the idea of becoming a classically-trained actor.
“I wanted to be a great classical actor in the long tradition of Burbage, Garrick, Kean, Booth, Olivier,” he gushed in an August 2007 interview. “45 years ago when I began, it was still possible to think in such a romantic, idealistic way.”
He accomplished the feat after studying at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He’d go on to play a big role behind the scenes in the late 1960s as an associate director of the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, England.
Scarfe would eventually dedicate his professional career to stage theater, globetrotting and performing across Europe, the U.S. and Canada and performing more than 100 roles. And it was in Canada while performing eight seasons at the Stratford Festival when he began his ascend and landed a number of film roles, including The Bay Boy (1984), Deserters (1984), Overnight (1986), Street Justice (1987) and Iron Eagle II (1988), among others.
Scarfe once played coy when asked which films he was most proud of following a long career in Hollywood.
“I don’t really think of film and television as the impressive part of my career,” he said. “But of the films it is mostly the small, independent ones of which I am most proud. Films like Deserters and The Portrait and the recent Hamster Cage.”
In 1988, Scarfe made his way onto Broadway, portraying Macduff in Macbeth opposite Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson. But fans will undoubtedly remember him from his sci-fi roles, including Dr. Bradley Talmadge from the National Security Agency in Seven Days. The UPN series aired 66 episodes across three seasons from 1998 to 2001.
Scarfe also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. He’d continue to endear himself with Trekkies during his numerous appearances at Star Trek conventions. Suffice it to say, he relished his sci-fi roles.
“Science fiction on film and television, especially if you are playing some kind of alien character with fantastic make-up, is great for actors with a strong stage background,” he once shared. “The productions need that kind of size and intensity of performance. You can’t really mumble if you’re a Klingon.”
Born Alan John Scarfe on June 8, 1946, the late actor emigrated to Canada with his parents and two brothers as his father pursued a career in academics. In fact, the Scarfe Building at the University of British Columbia is named after his father.
Scarfe, who wrote three novels including The Revelation of Jack the Ripper, was first married to Sara Botsford, but he would later meet his second wife, the actress Barbara March, when he was performing at the Stratford Festival in the mid 1970s. They remained married until her death in 2019.
Scarfe is survived by his daughter, son, brother and two grandchildren.
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