Kenneth Colley

Kenneth Colley is the kind of character actor I have enormous respect for, the sort whose face you know even if the name takes a second. Born in Manchester in 1937, he worked steadily for over sixty years before his death in 2025. To most people he'll always be Admiral Piett, the one Imperial officer in Star Wars who somehow survived Vader's wrath in both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But his work with Ken Russell and his unnervingly serene Jesus in Monty Python's Life of Brian show real range. A quietly indispensable craftsman who never needed top billing.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Kenneth Colley

Name (Japanese)

ケネス・コリー

Reading

けねす・こりー

Born

December 7, 1937 – June 30, 2025

Origin

Manchester, United Kingdom

Occupation

actor / film actor / film director / screenwriter / film producer

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Ox

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth%20Colley
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B1%E3%83%8D%E3%82%B9%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q367017

Tags

• actor
• film actor
• film director

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.