British actor James Aubrey died 6 April 2010 of pancreatitis. Born James Aubrey Tregidgo on 28 August 1947, in Klagenfurt, Austria, his best film role was his first, as Ralph, the hero in Lord of the Flies (1963).
Aubrey’s father was a career British Army soldier, and the young would-be actor was educated in Germany, Singapore, and Jamaica, following his father’s assignments. At the age of 13, while living in Jamaica, he was spotted in a swimming pool by director Peter Brook, who cast him as the lead in Lord of the Flies. After filming completed, but before it was released, Aubrey’s made his only Broadway appearance, in the very short-lived play Isle of Children, which had nothing to do with Lord of the Flies.
By then, he knew he wanted to be an actor. He trained at the Drama Center in London, and later earned an MA in Drama from Flinders University in South Australia. He built a busy career on stage and television in England, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court Theater, Birmingham Rep, and the Cambridge Theater Company. In his adult career, he was probably best known as Gavin Sorenson, an American interloper in a British family, in the series Bouquet of Barbed Wire (1976) and its sequel, Another Bouquet (1977), but he never achieved the level of success he hit with his first appearance.
His genre roles include: Der Mann nebenan (1991, A Demon in My View), The Rift (1990), Mission: Eureka (1989), Worlds Beyond (1986), The American Way (1986), The Hunger (1983), Tales of the Unexpected (1982), and Terror (1978).
Aubrey married once, to Agnes Kristin Hallander, but the marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his sister and his daughter.