Edmund Jeremy James Walker, a fair-haired, craggy-faced English character actor, was born into Yorkshire landed gentry. After serving his national duty with the Gordon Highlanders and the Black Watch, Kemp adopted his mother's maiden name as his stage moniker and pursued a degree in acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
He then embarked on a journey through repertory theatre and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Old Vic for two seasons. As a stalwart of the London stage from 1958, Kemp tended to specialize in portraying military or aristocratic types. That same year, he won the prestigious Carleton Hobbs Bursary award, which led to a six-month contract with the BBC's Radio Drama Company.
Kemp's screen career, which had begun four years earlier, did not gain significant momentum until the early 1960s. He spent a year as PC Steele in the original cast of the long-running police series Z Cars (1962) and his subsequent popularity ensured that a multitude of juicy (mainly military) roles came his way on both the small and the big screen.
Notable roles include Squadron Leader Tony Shaw in the wartime POW drama Colditz (1972),the aristocratic German fighter ace Willi von Klugermann mentoring The Blue Max (1966),the spy Colonel Kurt Von Ruger in Darling Lili (1970),Brigadier General Armin von Roon in The Winds of War (1983) (and its sequel),and General Horatio Gates in the miniseries George Washington (1984). He also played a memorable crusty Robert Picard, Patrick Stewart's conservative older brother in Family (1990).
Though once described as "a sinister-looking bloke with a smile like a razor", Kemp was a confident, natural performer with a larger-than-life personality. He was not averse to occasionally spoofing his screen personae, which he did to brilliant effect in The Prisoner of Zenda (1979) (as Prince Michael) and in Top Secret! (1984) (as the East German General Streck, featuring in some of the film's funniest scenes).
Jeremy Kemp retired from acting in 1998 and passed away after a long illness on July 19, 2019, at the age of 84.
