Donnelly Rhodes(1936-2018)
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, Donnelly Rhodes trained to be a
warden in the National Park Service in Manitoba and joined the Royal
Canadian Air Force as an airman-mechanic before finally settling into
his long and successful career as an actor. Rhodes studied at the
Royal Manitoba Theatre Center and was a member of the first graduating class
of the National Theatre School in Canada. After making his professional
debut on stage as Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar Named Desire, he became
a contract player for Universal Pictures in the U.S., landing film and
television roles ranging from a gunslinger in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) to a country
singer in The Hard Part Begins (1973) to various guest appearances in series such as
Mission: Impossible (1966). Later, he was popular as the suave Phillip Chancellor Sr. on
The Young and the Restless (1973), but left the show in 1976 to avoid devoting too much of his
career to the one role. He continued to work steadily, taking roles in
a wide variety of television and theatrical movies and making guest
appearances on more than 100 television series. Major TV roles saw him
range from dim-witted escaped con Dutch on Soap (1977) to veterinarian and
family man Dr. Grant Roberts on the popular Canadian family series
Danger Bay (1983). More recently, he has appeared in a number of TV movies as
well as in guest spots on popular series such as Sliders (1995) and The X-Files (1993).
Rhodes' diverse interests include music and horses, but his real
passion is boats. He has said that if he hadn't succeeded as an actor,
he would have pursued a career as a naval architect.