Dear Christopher:
I wish to thank you for your interest in my husband Donald Pleasence and I am sure he would be very flattered. Donald was a great actor and a very good and gentle man; he was also a great father who loved his daughters and was very proud of them. He has lovely grandchildren who loved him so much. He was a true gentleman and a loyal friend. When he worked on stage on the revival of The Caretaker with Colin Firth, Donald told me that Colin would become a great actor. I wish Donald were alive today to see how great Colin Firth has become. Donald also loved and admired the one and only Harold Pinter and stayed friends with Peter Vaughn, one of England’s most talented actors, until the day he died; they both had a wicked sense of humour.
Donald always stayed true to his working class roots and was always happy to see his close friends like David Warner and Ian McShane doing well in their careers. He also loved working in the United States and was a true admirer of John Carpenter. My good friend Don Calfa was one of Donald’s best friends and in my opinion is one of America’s great actors. Donald was also very proud of his children’s book Scouse the Mouse and was bitterly disappointed when due to circumstances beyond his control, the book never took off. His great friend Gerald Potterton was the illustrator of both the book and the album cover and of course is a great illustrator and film director. His good friend and marvelous agent Joy Jameson was very special to Donald because she and her then-partner Tessa Sutherland were always there for him.
I miss Donald and there’s never an hour in any day that I don’t think of him. I will love him until the day I die; he meant the world to me and still does. I would like to thank you and your publisher for this tribute to my husband, a very talented actor, a funny man and a true English gent with a big generous heart. My dear, I wish you were here to read it.
Linda Pleasence