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James Donald

The film career of Scotsman James Donald began in earnest with the role of Theo Van Gogh, opposite Kirk Douglas as Vincent, in the 1956 biopic "Lust for Life." Two years later, he had another one of his more famous film opportunities alongside Douglas once again, this time as a manly rather than a sensitive sibling in the 1958 adventure "The Vikings." But it was the movie that Donald made in between, David Lean's timeless wartime drama "Bridge on the River Kwai," that forever stamped the Scot in the cinematic consciousness. At the end of epic battle between the characters played by Alec Guinness and William Holden, it was Donald as Major Clipton who got to utter the famous final line of dialogue, "Madness. Madness!" In 1963, Donald was part of another one of the great World War II movies of all-time, "The Great Escape," starring as Group Captain Ramsey, the senior British officer interned in the German POW camp at the center of the fact-inspired Steve McQueen classic. Some of the actor's other performances of note include yet another World War II POW film, 1965's "King Rat," set in Singapore, and the co-starring role of Nathaniel Winkle in a 1952 version of Charles Dickens' "The Pickwick Papers."