Lee Montague, a robust and somber-looking actor, carved out a niche on screen as tough or menacing characters. Born Leonard Goldberg in Bow, East London, to Jewish ancestry, Montague trained for acting at the Old Vic Theatre School and began his stage career there in 1950. He headlined on Broadway just two years later as the troubled youth Gregory Hawke in Moss Hart's play The Climate of Eden.
Montague's classical stage career was marked by his ensemble memberships with the Old Vic London (1950-52, 1962-63),the Bristol Old Vic (1952-53),the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon (1954-55),the Royal Shakespeare Company (1955-57),and the Royal Exchange, Manchester (1976-79).
On screen, Montague was prolific as a supporting player, frequently cast in meaty or pivotal roles as 'exotic' foreign types. He played Japanese officers in The Camp on Blood Island (1958),Yesterday's Enemy (1958),and The Baron (1966),Frenchmen in Moulin Rouge (1952),Secret Agent (1964),and The Legacy (1978),Chinese characters in Danger Man (1960) and Espionage (1963),and Russians in The Spy Killer (1969),Pope John Paul II (1984),and Sakharov (1984). He also portrayed Mexicans, Hungarians, Greeks, Arabs, and even an Inuit in various films.
Montague's extensive television credits include playing historical personae, such as the prophet Habbakuk in Jesus of Nazareth (1977),Pietro di Bernardone in Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1972),Chinese statesman Sun Yat Sen, Bernhard Mahler, Lucky Luciano, Karl Marx, Lenin, Charles Darwin, and British cabinet minister Leslie Hore-Belisha.
Due to his dark, baleful looks, Montague excelled in villainous roles, often in classic 60s and 70s British crime dramas like Department S (1969) and The Sweeney (1975). He portrayed the psychic antagonist Dorzak in an episode of Space: 1999 (1975) and was chillingly effective as Roche, the erudite, relentless assassin, in the TV miniseries Bird of Prey 2 (1984).
