R.I.P. Ian Gelder, Game Of Thrones‘ Kevan Lannister
Gelder played Kevan Lannister on Game Of Thrones. He was 74
Aux News Kevan
Screenshot: HBO
Best known for playing Game Of Thrones’ Kevan Lannister, British actor Ian Gelder died on Monday. As confirmed by his partner, Ben Daniels, Gelder’s death was the result of complications related to bile duct cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2023. He was 74.
“It is with huge, huge sadness and a heavy heart broken into a million pieces that I’m leaving this post to announce the passing of my darling husband and life partner Ian Gelder,” Daniels wrote on Instagram. Ian was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in December and yesterday he passed.”
“I’d stopped all work to be his carer but neither of us had any idea that it would all be so fast. He was my absolute rock, and we’d been partners for more than 30 years.”
An actor on stage and screen, Gelder began his career in the early ‘70s, appearing in British anthology mysteries and mini-series, including Play For Day, New Scotland Yard, and Poirot. On stage, he acted in numerous Shakespeare adaptations with the Royal Shakespeare Company, including The Merchant Of Venice and Richard III. In 2014, he appeared as Marcus Andronicus in a revival of Titus Andronicus.
Gelder is best known for his roles on Torchwood: Children Of Earth and Game Of Thrones, where he appeared as Kevan Lannister. The younger brother of Lord Tywin Lannister, Kevan was one of the Lord’s more trusted confidants, and between seasons one and six, Gelder played him in 12 episodes. Gelder also appeared on Doctor Who, His Dark Materials, and Father Brown.
16 Comments
His was a fine characterization. Time to learn more about his other likely great performances. RIP.
His was a fine characterization. Time to learn more about his other likely great performances. RIP.
Off topic but this just reminded me how good Game of Thrones was, seasons 1-6. It was so exciting every week, the best show on TV. But its reputation just got completely massacred by those final two seasons.
Hill I die on: If they’d done 10 eps for last two seasons, they get it right
it started going downhill after 4 but was still entertaining for a while
Season 5 is when they adapted what sucks from the books and filled in what Martin said is coming and added their own suck.
Personally I think it’s slightly more complicated than that. It got bad 90% of the time they veered from the books to make up their own shit. Which in the early seasons was mostly due to budget reasons but it still happened resulting in a lot of stupid shit. It’s just that early on the good stuff far outnumbered the stupid shit.Off the top of my head seasons one and two still had Littlefinger explaining his entire motivation while training prostitutes, Ned and Jaime’s fight being randomly interrupted by a Lannister guard who I guess decides they were taking too long and randomly stabs Ned in the leg? And Yoren’s death while all those Lannister guys just stand there and watch him kill the crossbow man for some reason while quipping that he hates crossbows cause they take too long to load. They also totally botch the Ramsey/Reek thing cause they didn’t have the budget to introduce “Reek 1.0″ in season two. The scene where Ramsey is like “you Reek! Maybe we should call you Reek!” is so unintentionally hilarious.
They did do some pretty baffling stuff when they went off-book. Though I will say that I’m glad they didn’t do some of the stuff from books four and five. My biggest worry is that the show was going to have to shoehorn the totally out of the blue “Daenerys’ nephew was swapped as an infant and has been hiding in Essos and plans to win the Iron Throne back!”. Martin’s been having an (understandable) hard enough time with the direction of storylines for characters readers are actually invested in, and he throws a major player in book five of seven?! Thank goodness D&D didn’t try to cram that in.
I don’t remember who he was in either Torchwood: Children of Earth or His Dark Materials. It could be he’s one of those performers where you see the character and not the actor, which is high praise.
i dont remember who he was on game of thrones
Kevan Lannister was one of the victims of the adaption. Like in the show, he first hangs around mainly in the background next to Tywin, but after Tywin’s death, he actually turns out to be a pretty good leader/Hand of the King, maybe better as Tywin as he isn’t so ruthless and obsessed with certain stuff.
The final chapter of A Dance with Dragons (which still remains the last published chapter as of May 2024…) is written from his POV and provides a lot of interesting insight into his character. In the book he, together with Pycelle, is murdered by Varys to cause chaos in King’s Landing. It’s unclear if the Sept Explosion ever happens in the books.
I have many issues with books four and five, but I liked Kevan refusing to put up with Cersei’s nonsense.
A ‘sept explosion’ sounds like something caused by trapped sewage gases…
Hey, spoilers, I’ve been too busy to catch up with the books for the last 14 years
You will have the rest of your life to catch up as there will never be any more books
The transition from ‘walking and talking and fully active’ to ‘bedridden and paralyzed’ can be horrifyingly quick with this sort of thing :(RIP.