Jeremy Brett Biography

Jeremy Brett is best known for his ascerbic portrayal of master detective Sherlock Holmes in a series of episodes for British television filmed between 1984 and 1994.

Jeremy Brett studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, then began his acting career on local stages in the 1954. (He is said to have changed his stage name to Jeremy Brett because his father felt that acting would taint the family name; the new name came from the label on his suit.) Within a few years, he was doing Shakespeare at the Old Vic.

Brett went on to a long career on stage and screen, especially on British television, and often in period pieces. He his roles included the foppish Freddy Eynsford-Hill in 1964’s My Fair Lady (opposite Audrey Hepburn) and the daring D’Artagnan in the 1966 television mini-series The Three Musketeers (based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas). He also played poet Robert Browning in the 1982 TV movie The Barretts of Wimpole Street.

Brett came into his own as Sherlock Holmes in the Grenada Television series which began in 1984. His pitch-perfect Holmes — brilliant, impatient, but still wryly human — was a hit right away with television audiences. The New York Times said his Holmes was “breathtakingly analytical” and given to “the blackest moods.” Natalie Haynes of The Guardian called his Holmes “as close to his literary roots as he has ever been on screen” and said Brett “could play every variant of him: loyal friend, relentless pursuer, bored logician, avenging angel and mischievous impersonator.” True!

Jeremy Brett was only 61 when he died of heart failure in 1995. Per Wikipedia, citing Terry Manners’s 1997 biography The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes, Brett’s “heart valves had been scarred by rheumatic fever contracted as a child, and on top of this he had been a heavy smoker throughout his life.”