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Sir Alan Arthur Bates CBE (17 February 1934 – 27 December 2003) was a British actor of stage, screen and television. Bates was born in Allestree, Derby, England on February 17, 1934, the eldest of three sons of Florence Mary (née Wheatcroft), a homemaker and a pianist, and Harold Arthur Bates, an insurance broker and a cellist. The family briefly moved to Mickleover, then returned to Allestree. Both of his parents were amateur musicians, and encouraged him to pursue music, but by age 11, young Bates already had determined his life`s course as an actor, and so they sent him for dramatic coaching instead.

In 1956, Bates debuted on stage in the West End as Cliffe in Look Back in Anger, a role he had originated at the Royal Court and which made him a star. He also played the role on television (for the ITV Playhouse) and on Broadway. In the late 1950s, he appeared in several plays for television in Britain. In 1960, he appeared in The Entertainer opposite Sir Laurence Olivier, his first film role. Bates worked for the Padded Wagon Moving Company in the early 1960s while acting at the Circle in the Square Theater in New York City. Throughout the 1960s he starred in several major films including Whistle Down the Wind (1961), A Kind of Loving (1962), Zorba the Greek (1964), Phillipe de Broca`s King of Hearts (1966), Georgy Girl (1966), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), and in the Bernard Malamud film The Fixer (1968), which gave him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In 1969, he starred in Women in Love in which, along with Oliver Reed, he became the first actor to do frontal nudity in a major studio motion picture. Bates was handpicked by director John Schlesinger (with whom he had previously worked on Far From The Madding Crowd) to star in the film Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) in the role of Dr. Daniel Hirsh. Even though he wanted the part very much, Bates was held up filming The Go-Between (1970) for director Joseph Losey. He had also become a father around that time, and so he had to pass on the project with regrets. The part then went first to Ian Bannen who balked at kissing and simulating sex with another man, and then to Peter Finch, who earned an Academy Award nomination for the role. Bates continued to work in film and television throughout the 1970s and 80s, and starred in such international films as An Unmarried Woman (1978), Nijinsky (1980), and also played Bette Midler`s ruthless business manager in the 1979 film The Rose. On television, his parts ranged from classic roles such as 1978`s The Mayor of Casterbridge (his favourite role he said), "A Voyage Around My Father" (1982), An Englishman Abroad (1983) (playing Guy Burgess), and Pack of Lies (1987) (in which he played a Russian spy). He continued working in film and television in the 1990s, including the role of Claudius in Mel Gibson`s version of Hamlet (1990), though most of his roles in this era were more low-key. In 2001, Bates joined an all-star cast in Robert Altman`s critically acclaimed period drama Gosford Park, in which he played the butler Jennings. He later played Antonius Agrippa in the 2004 TV film Spartacus, but died before it debuted. The film was dedicated to his memory and that of writer Howard Fast, who wrote the original novel that inspired the film Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick.

Bates was married to Victoria Ward from 1970 until her death from a wasting disease in 1992. The Bates had twin sons born in November 1970, the actors