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★ Acting

Martyn Read

1944 – 2022 · Reading, Berkshire, England, UK · Active 1974–2000

Martyn Read was a British actor, known for The Sweeney (1974), The Darling Buds of May (1991) and Juggernaut (1974).

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Dracula

Dracula

1974 ★ 6.9
as Coastguard

"Bistritz, Hungary May 1897": natives in Transylvania seem afraid when they learn solicitor Jonathan Harker is going to Castle Dracula. Jonathan finds the Count abrupt and impatient to get things done. Dracula reacts very strongly to a photograph of Harker's fiancée Mina and her best friend Lucy. After preventing his brides from devouring Harker, he forces the young solicitor to write a letter saying that he will be staying in Transylvania for a month. Harker climbs down the castle wall and finds Dracula's coffin, but is attacked and knocked out by one of Dracula's gypsy servants before he can stake Dracula. They later throw him in the lower levels of the crypt, where the brides attack him again. The Demeter runs aground carrying only Dracula and the dead captain lashed to the wheel. Soon after, Lucy begins to fall ill. Her fiancé, Arthur Holmwood, is perplexed and calls in Dr. Van Helsing. The doctor begins to recognize what might be happening, especially after Lucy walks out of her home at Hillingham and is found, drained of blood, under a tree the next morning. Dracula has flashbacks of his wife - of whom Lucy is the spitting image - on her deathbed centuries earlier. Lucy's mother is in the room with Mina when Dracula comes calling the last time, a wolf shattering the window. Lucy soon rises from the dead, and comes to the window of Arthur's home, begging to be let in. Arthur does so, delighted and amazed that she's alive, unaware that she is now a vampire under Dracula's control. This very nearly gets him bitten, but Van Helsing interrupts with a cross causing her to flee. They go to Lucy's grave and drive a wooden stake into her heart. When Dracula comes to the tomb later and beckons to her, he goes berserk upon finding that she's truly dead. Mina tells Van Helsing about the news story about the Demeter and the boxes of earth, and about Jonathan going to meet Dracula to sell him a house. From these clues, Van Helsing and Holmwood go about finding all but one of Dracula's "boxes of earth" (containing his native soil, in which a vampire must rest). But back at the hotel, the vampire hunters discover Dracula is there seeking revenge. He has bitten Mina, and before their eyes forces her to drink blood from a self-inflicted gash in his chest. All that they love, all that is theirs, he will take, he says. The tracking of Dracula back to his home commences with Van Helsing hypnotizing Mina. Via the bond of blood, she sees through Dracula's eyes and discovers where he is headed. At the castle, Van Helsing and Holmwood find and stake the brides. Jonathan, now a rabid and bloodthirsty vampire, attacks Arthur and Van Helsing, but in the struggle is knocked by Arthur into a pit of spikes and killed. The final confrontation with Dracula takes place in what looks like a grand ballroom. The crosses wielded by the two men are something Dracula doesn't seem to want to look upon. Dracula gets the better of them, ridding them of their crosses. Van Helsing pulls down the window curtains and sunlight pours in. Dracula is weakened, finally going dormant long enough for Van Helsing to pierce his heart with a long spear. They leave him there. Before the portrait of a living warrior Dracula, with Lucy's lookalike in the background, a text scrolls across the screen, about a warlord who lived in the area of Hungary known as Transylvania, and how it was said he had found a way to conquer death—a legend no one has ever disproven.

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Career Highlights Top 6 by popularity · TMDB

Filmography

25 credits
2000s 1 credit
2000
Movie ★ 6.1
1990s 9 credits
1995
Beyond Reason as Desmond Squire
Movie ★ 8.0
1994
Chandler & Co as Gordon Breaker
TV ★ 8.0
1991
The House of Eliott as Barney Kemp
TV ★ 6.6
1991
The Darling Buds of May as Sergeant Wilson
TV ★ 7.9
1991
TV ★ 7.9
1991
TV ★ 7.9
1991
TV ★ 7.9
1990
Movie ★ 7.0
1990
The Chief as Chief Supt. Derry
TV ★ 7.0
1980s 3 credits
1984
TV ★ 7.5
1981
Movie ★ 8.0
1980
Buccaneer as Airport Official
TV ★ 6.0
1970s 12 credits
1979
Minder as Policeman
TV ★ 7.1
1978
Blake's 7 as Nagu
TV ★ 7.3
1977
Street Party as Landlord
Movie
1977
Target as Police Sergeant
TV ★ 7.0
1977
Jubilee 1977 as Landlord
TV
1977
The Sunday Drama as Policeman
TV ★ 5.0
1975
Good Salary, Prospects, Free Coffin as Timothy Bryant (as Martin Read)
Movie ★ 7.0
1975
The Sweeney as DC Jimmy Thorpe
TV ★ 8.0
1975
Rumpole of the Bailey as Supt. Rodney
TV ★ 7.0
1974
Dracula as Coastguard
Movie ★ 6.3
1974
Juggernaut as Kelsey
Movie ★ 6.2
1974
The Inheritors as Fullerton
TV