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Robert Hardy was born Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy in Cheltenham, England on October 29, 1925. He attended Oxford University and served in the Royal Air Force before becoming an actor in Stratford-upon-Avon with the troupe that later became the Royal Shakespeare Company. He had a notable stage career, but was better known as a film and television actor. He played Siegfried Farnon in the long-running British television series All Creatures Great and Small and Cornelius Fudge in four Harry Potter movies. He portrayed Winston Churchill several times including in the British mini-series Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years; the American mini-series War and Remembrance; the television movies The Woman He Loved, Bomber Harris, and Churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain; the London stage production Winnie; and a French play, Celui Qui a Dit Non. He also appeared in The Shooting Party, Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Dalloway, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Inspired by an early Shakespearean role, he became interested in archery and wrote Longbow: A Social and Military History. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1981. He died on August 3, 2017 at the age of 91.

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