Paul Scofield has died, at the age of 86. He had been suffering from leukemia. Widely regarded as one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation, Scofield had a richer career in the theater than in the movies, where his recessive, slightly chilly presence as much as his devotion to the stage may have prevented him from ever becoming a major star. Yet he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his fourth film and second Hollywood-funded production, playing Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons (1966), director Fred Zinnemann Oscar-garlanded film version of Robert Bolt's play. (Scofield had earlier played the Nazi villain in John Frankenheimer's The Train, starring Burt Lancaster. Maybe he and Lancaster got on well, because one of his few other adventures in Hollywood hackwork came in the 1973 Lancaster vehicle Scorpio.) Scofield already had a Tony for the Broadway production of the play, in which he had made his American debut. Even after winning the Oscar, Scofield was mostly seen in movie theaters in filmed versions of plays, such as the movie of Peter Brooks's famously icy production of King Lear with Scofield in the title role, and Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, made in 1973 as part of Ely Landau's American Film Theater subscription series. In 1989, he appeared briefly as the King of France in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, and a year later he played Hamlet' father's ghost in Franco Zeffirelli's ill-advised film of the play with Mel Gibson in the lead. He also played the historian Mark Van Doren in Quiz Show (1994) and the witchfinding judge in the 1996 The Crucible. His final film role was as the voice of the horse, Boxer, in an ambitious 1999 TV movie version of Orwell's Animal Farm.