On last Friday, veteran actor Paxton Whitehead took his last breathe at the age of 85.
He passed away in a Virginia hospital, his son Charles told The Hollywood Reporter. As Dr. Phillip Barbay, the pompous professor who had to deal with Thornton Melon, played by Rodney Dangerfield as a businessman trying to acquire his college degree, in the 1986 hit movie “Back To School,” Whitehead played one of the most famous roles in cinema history.
The majority of his early career was spent on stage once he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1950s. In addition, Whitehead oversaw the Shaw Festival, one of the biggest repertory companies that at first only performed plays by George Bernard Shaw. Whitehead won a Tony nomination for his performance as Pellinore in the “Camelot” revival in 1980.
Fans of television were likely aware with Whitehead because of his appearances on popular shows including “3rd Rock From The Sun,” “Frasier,” “Friends,” “The West Wing,” and “The Drew Carey Show.” Whitehead discussed the distinctions between performing on theatre, screen, and television in 2017.
Theatre, according to him, is all about projection and fitting into the theater’s space. “Film is not at all about projection. It is minimalism and is about internalism and what you’re thinking. Many television shows are now genuinely filmed. Then there was the different kind of event when it was recorded on videotape with four cameras.
“That was more like theatre because it was one-directional – all the cameras were in front of you on a staged set. And although they angled in, you were still looking as if you were looking at a proscenium. It was like doing a small one-act play without the projection required for a Broadway house or a large-scale theatre like Westport.”
