Dorian Gray Appearances
As the only novel by one of the most treasured playwrites in history, The Picture of Dorian Gray has almost continually been adapted since it was published in 1891. The first film version of the story came out in 1910, and no less than seven more movies were released in less than a decade. Here are some of the renditions of Dorian that have happened over the last century:
Hurd Hatfield starred in 1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray, the first adaptation of the book after the introduction of sound in movies...
In 1969, Televisa produced a Telenovela called El Retrato de Dorian Gray, starring Enrique Alvarez Felix…
Helmut Berger starred in the 1970's The Evils of Dorian Gray, which took full advantage of the fact that it's a 70's horror movie.
Shane Briant had JUST starred in the horror classic Demons of the Mind when he starred in the 1973 made-for-television movie The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Peter Firth starred in the 1976 BBC Play of the Week The Picture of Dorian Gray. (my high school English teacher showed us a VHS copy of this)
The 1983 made-for-television movie The Sins of Dorian Gray made a small but topical change to the story by making Dorian a woman. She was played by Belinda Bauer, years before she built Robocop 2.
The 2000's direct-to-video market exploded with Dorian Gray adaptations, like 2001’s Pact with the Devil starring Ethan Erickson…
2002’s The Picture of Dorian Gray starring a young Josh Duhamel…
And 2006’s The Picture of Dorian Gray with David Gallagher.
Ben Barnes (one-time Prince Caspian and future Punisher villain) played Dorian Gray in the 2009 Irish movie Dorian Gray, which is the most recent rendition of the classic novel. Still, the character is public domain, and continues to show up in other stories.
The most obvious is of course Stuart Townsend's role as Dorian Gray in the 2003 movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the movie most famous for ending Sean Connery's career...
Reeve Carney played Dorian in the criminally underappreciated 2014 series Penny Dreadful...
And earlier this year (2019), The character actually showed up in the Netflix series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.