Donald Pleasence

Donald Pleasence is one of those actors who could walk into any scene — a cold war thriller, a slasher film, a Shakespeare stage — and immediately make the air feel a little heavier. Born in 1919 in Worksop, he came up through a Britain shaped by war, and you can feel that weight in every role he took. The bald head, the pale eyes that never quite blinked enough — he weaponized his own appearance into something genuinely unsettling. Playing Blofeld in You Only Live Twice and then Dr. Loomis across multiple Halloween films, he somehow became iconic in two completely different genres of fear. And he never phoned it in; even in the B-movies he did plenty of, he brought real craft. Getting the OBE in 1994, just a year before he passed, felt like a well-deserved tip of the hat to nearly six decades of committed, unforgettable work.

Name (English)

Donald Pleasence

Name (Japanese)

ドナルド・プレザンス

Reading

どなるど・ぷれざんす

Born

October 5, 1919 – February 2, 1995

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Goat

Origin

Worksop, United Kingdom

Occupation

actor / screenwriter / television actor

Awards & achievements

• 1994 Officer of the Order of the British Empire

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%89%E3%83%8A%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%83%97%E3%83%AC%E3%82%B6%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9

Tags

• actor
• screenwriter
• television actor

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.