Alan John Scarfe

peacefully on April 28th, 2024, from colon cancer at his home in Longueuil, QC.

He is a former Associate Director of the Stratford Festival (1976–77) and the Everyman

Theatre in Liverpool (1967–68). He won the 1985 Genie Award for Best Performance by an

Actor in a Supporting Role for his role in The Bay Boy and earned two other Genie best actor

nominations for Deserters(1984) and Overnight (1986) and a Gemini Award nomination for

best actor in aka Albert Walker (2003). He won a Jessie Award for best actor in 2005 for his

performance in Trying at the Vancouver Playhouse. In 2006 he won the Jury Prize for best

supporting actor at the Austin Fantastic Fest in The Hamster Cage and the Vancouver Film

Critics Circle honorary award for lifetime achievement.

Son of Gladys Ellen Scarfe (Hunt), and Neville Vincent Scarfe, he was born June 8th, 1946

in Harpenden, England. He emigrated to Canada with his parents and two brothers, Colin

and Brian Scarfe, as his father pursued an academic career, finally settling in Vancouver.

The current education building at the University of British Columbia (the Scarfe Building) is

proudly named after his father, Neville.

Shortly after graduating from Lord Byng Secondary School in Vancouver, Alan returned to

England to study at the prestigious LAMDA (1964-1966), and from there quickly began a

prolific and lifelong career as an actor and director. Beginning as a classical stage actor, he

performed over 100 major roles in theatres across Europe (London, Liverpool, Coventry,

Paris, Lille, Copenhagen, The Hague, Madrid, Warsaw, Kraków, Moscow and St.

Petersburg), Canada (eight seasons at the Stratford Festival, 1972-73, 1976–79, 1985,

1992, two seasons at the Shaw Festival, 1970, 1974, as well as Vancouver, Calgary,

Toronto, Montreal and Halifax) and the United States (New York, Boston, New Haven,

Stamford, Philadelphia, Seattle, Dallas and Los Angeles), including King Lear, Othello,

Hamlet, Iago, Brutus, Cassius, Petruchio, Prospero, Cyrano de Bergerac, Doctor Faustus,

Luther, Uncle Vanya, Verlaine, John Barrymore in Sheldon Rosen's Ned and Jack and Harras

in Zuckmayer's The Devil's General. He was also a stage director whose productions have

ranged from the works of Shakespeare to Albee, Brecht, Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold

Pinter, Yevgeny Schwarz and Preston Jones.

It was during his time at Stratford where he met the love of his life, Barbara March (Maczka),

who was a brilliant actress in her own right, most well known for her portrayal of Lursa in

the Star Trek series.

After marrying Barbara and having a daughter, Antonia “Tosia” Scarfe, Alan pivoted from the

stage to the screen and moved to Los Angeles in 1989 with his family. Some (but certainly

not all) of his major roles included main baddies in Lethal Weapon III (alongside Mel

Gibson) and Double Impact (alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme), NSA member Dr. Bradley

Talmadge, the director of the Backstep Project operations, on the UPN series Seven

Days, and roles as two separate Romulan characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation and

as Magistrate Augris in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Resistance". In 2003 he starred in

the Canadian production Burn: The Robert Wraight Story.

In his later years, Alan found a new artistic avenue - writing. His first novel, The Revelation

of Jack the Ripper won the 2019 BIBA (Best Indie Book Award) and his other three novels,

“The Carnivore Trilogy,” have been translated into multiple languages. The first book in the

series, The Vampires of Juarez, was awarded the 2018 BIBA Star, and the third novel, The

Mask of the Holy Spirit, won the 2020 BIBA for Satire.

Alan is predeceased by his parents and his brother, Brian, who also succumbed to the

same disease. He is also predeceased by his cherished and beautiful wife, Barbara, who

passed away from cancer on August 11th, 2019.

Surviving are his beloved daughter Tosia, and son-in-law Austin, who lived with and cared

for Alan up until his death, and without whom Alan, “would have been lost,”. He also leaves

behind his brother Colin, son Jonathan Scarfe, and his darling grandchildren Kai and

Hunter Scarfe, university students at the University of Victoria, and McGill, respectively.