Sherlock Holmes Appearances
Sherlock Holmes is in the guinness book of world records as the "most portrayed literary character in film & tv". When he was inducted in 2012, he had been depicted 254 times. This is JUST film & tv, it doesn't include radio shows, the wide variety of theatrical adaptations including extensive runs on both Broadway and the London Stage, and of course his status as a recurring public domain character appearing near constantly in all forms of media.
All of this means that my task of giving you even a small percentage of the depictions of the character is... well, it's impossible. Here is a tiny, tiny FRACTION of the depictions of this classic character.
All of this means that my task of giving you even a small percentage of the depictions of the character is... well, it's impossible. Here is a tiny, tiny FRACTION of the depictions of this classic character.
Most of the visuals and characterizations we attribute to Sherlock Holmes come from one of the very first men to ever play him, American actor and director William Gillette. He started playing him on Broadway in 1899 (!), and he went on to play the roll on film in 1916, and even in radio dramas as late as the mid thirties. All told, he performed as the character more than 1300 times. (this is totally unrelated, but William Gillette actually built a castle on the shores of the Connecticut River, which is now a state park and not far from where I live... lots of my friends have been married there.)
Meanwhile, Holmes was also being performed on stage in his native London by Harry Arthur Saintsbury, an early mentor or Charlie Chaplin.
One of the very earliest actors to portray Holmes on film was Alwin Neuß, a German director and actor who played him in a series of silent films in the 1910's.
Although he was also played during the same era by another German film artist, Otto Lagoni.
Also during those early years of the silent film era French actor Georges Tréville, who was most famous for playing Arsène Lupin, went to Britain to star in several Holmes short films.
One of the greatest stage actors of his generation, John Barrymore, made a transition into silent films in the late 1910's and early 1920's. One of his more famous roles was as Holmes in the 1922 film Sherlock Holmes.
At the same time, Ellie Norwood was playing the character in a series of British silent films. These were incredibly popular, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself said of Norwood that "His wonderful impersonation of Holmes has amazed me."
During the 1930's, Holmes was performed on stage by Tod Slaughter. Tod is most famous for playing the lead in 1936's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but he also played a lot of Victorian-era maniacs in lots of early horror movies. Frankly, I'm only about 70% sure this is a picture of his Sherlock, but I'm including it anyway because I love this guy's name.
1931's The Speckled Band starred noted stage and screen actor Raymond Massey, which is funny because he would go on to be known for his voice, but this is still a silent film.
One of the very first actors to SPEAK the role on film was Clive Brook, a British stage and silent film actor that successfully transitioned to sound as one of the major stars of Paramount Pictures in the early thirties. He played Holmes both in radio dramas and in several feature films.
The character of Sherlock appeared in The Immortal Sherlock Holmes, an episode of the CBS Radio series The Mercury Theory of the Air, where he was voiced by series creator Orson Welles.
For several generations, Basil Rathbone is considered THE Sherlock Holmes. He played the part in 14 movies from 1939 to 1946, as well as in the Blue Network Radio series. He returned to the part in 1953 on stage. When Disney made the animated movie The Great Mouse Detective about a mouse that lives in Holmes & Watson's flat, they used audio of Basil for the part of Sherlock.
The very first of many BBC TV series about Sherlock Holmes began to air in 1951, where he was played by Alan Wheatley
The BBC ran a Sherlock Holmes radio series from 1952-1969. During it's run, voice actor Carleton Hobbs performed a full 56 stories of the Doyle cannon, which was the most done by a single actor for a very long time.
A syndicated Sherlock Holmes TV series aired in 1954, starring Ronald Howard.
Peter Cushing has played the character several times over the course of his career, when he wasn't busy being Van Helsing or Grand Moff Tarken. He first played the part in the 1959 Hammer Films production of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and then again in the BBC's second Sherlock Holmes television series that ran from 1965 to 1968. He played the role AGAIN in 1984, this time in his seventies, in the TV movie The Masks of Death.
Christopher Lee, consummate bad-ass, played Sherlock for the first time in 1962 in the movie Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace. He would return to the character 30 years after his original performance in a pair of Telefilms, 1991's The Incident at Victoria Falls and 1992's Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (Opposite Morgan Fairchild's Irene Adler).
Fritz Weaver played Sherlock in the 1965 Broadway musical Baker Street.
Long before he was Baron Munchausen, legend of the British stage John Neville played Sherlock in the 1965 film A Study in Terror. He would later play him again on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1973.
Douglas Wilmer's turn as Holmes is a pretty unique one, because he actually started his association with the character in the 1965 BBC series, but would later return to play him in the 1975 movie The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. It was Gene Wilder's directorial debut using his own script, and starred Gene, Gilda Radner, Marty Feldman, Dom Deluese.... just a firehose of talent. The idea of casting the actual Sherlock Holmes from the actual BBC series was a stroke of genius.
The 1970 movie The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes was a decidedly unique little nugget of a film, nestled right in the middle of the long-shot slow jam film style of the time, but delivering a very slick rendition of the character as played by Robert Stephens.
the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants was based on a book by James Goldman, about man living in in a delusion that he's Sherlock Holmes. He was played by George C. Scott, who is such a titan of the screen that the idea of him playing Sherlock Holmes only seems to make sense with the understanding that the movie is also a psychological drama.
John Cleese of Monty Python fame played Sherlock in Elementary, My Dear Watson, a 1973 episode of the long-running British comedy anthology series Comedy Playhouse. He played the part again in the 1977 film The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It.
Roger Moore, right at the height of his run as James Bond (1976, between The Man With the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me, but well before Moonraker), played Sherlock Holmes in the TV movie Sherlock Holmes in New York.
The 1976 movie The Seven-Per-Cent Solution is actually based on a 1974 novel by Nicholas Meyer. It's not incredibly well known, but it's just a fantastic piece of work; it was nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, features original music by Stephen Sondheim, and while Nicol Williamson (an actor described by John Osborne as "The best actor since Marlon Brando") plays Sherlock, the cast also includes Robert Duvall, Alan Arkin and Laurence Olivier. Really great stuff.
The stage play Sherlock Holmes was still in continual production both on Broadway and the London Theater for several decades. In 1976, it was performed again by the Royal Shakespeare Company, where the part was performed by Leonard Nimoy. (It had been established back during the orignal run of Star Trek that Sherlock Holmes is actually a human ancestor of Spock's.)
This one actually looks like it might be weird enough to be entertaining. In the 1976 TV movie The Return of the World's Greatest Detective, Larry Hagman (Yes, Larry Hagman... I Dream of Genie and Dallas Larry Hagman) plays an inept motorcycle cop who suffers a head injury and wakes up thinking he's Sherlock Holmes.
Film legend Christopher Plummer played Holmes in two films, 1977's Silver Blaze, and 1979's Murder by Decree.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson was a series of Russian television films that ran from 1979-1986. They starred Russian actor Vasily Livanov, who actually became an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire for his performance.
Barrel-chested megazord Charlton Heston actually performed the part of Sherlock in the 1980 Los Angeles production of the classic Paul Giovanni Broadway show The Crucifer of Blood. A decade later when the play was turned into a Telefilm by TBS, Heston reprised the role.
Conversely, Frank Langella first played the part of Sherlock Holmes in a 1981 TV film before he took on the part in a 1990 Broadway production of Sherlock's Last Case.
Considering that Sherlock Holmes is such a hugely important character in the lexicon of British film and literature, and has been played by a veritable who's who of legendary British actors of the stage and screen, it should come as no surprise at all that, in the 1982 TV special The Hound of the Baskervilles, he was played by the Doctor himself, Tom Baker.
While the more popular telling of the "Sherlock Holmes as a teenager" premise is probably the Barry Levinson movie that came out a few years later (which we'll get to), the concept actually originated in the TV series Young Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House from 1982, where Sherlock was played by Guy Henry
A series of four animated Sherlock Holmes movies were produced in Australia in 1983; Sherlock Holmes and the Valley of Fear, Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four, Sherlock Holmes and A Study in Scarlet, and Sherlock Holmes and the Baskerville Curse. They were actually of a pretty high quality, and also represent the only time Peter O'Toole played the character.
Legendary stage actor Ian Richardson played Holmes in a pair of 1983 TV films, The Sound of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The 1984 Italian-Japanese anime series Sherlock Hound was actually something I watched as a kid and loved: an only-slightly-steampunk take on Sherlock Holmes in a world populated by anthropomorphic dogs. The character of Sherlock was voiced by Taichirō Hirokawa in the original Japanese cast, Elio Pandolfi in the Italian, and Larry Moss in the English.
Jeremy Brett is one of the actors often credited as THE Sherlock Homes, along with William Gillette and Basil Rathbone. He played the character in four separate TV series: 1984's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1986's The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1991's the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and 1994's the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. He also played the character on stage in 1988 with the British tour of The Secret of Sherlock Holmes.
The BBC radio series Sherlock Holmes ran from 1984 to 2004 and actually covered the entire cannon of the character, making Clive Merrison the only actor to ever perform the entire cannon, placing him up there with William Gillette, Basil Rathbone & Jeremy Brett as one of the greatest Sherlock actors of all time.
Nicholas Rowe starred in the 1985 Barry Levinson movie Young Sherlock Holmes, which is often very high on a lot of people's list of favorite interpretations of the character. Rowe actually also had a part in the 2015 Ian McKellen movie, Mr. Holmes.
This one is a bit of a cheat, but I'm including it because it's one of my favorites. In several classic Star Trek The Next Generation episodes from 1987 to 1993, Brent Spiner's Data enjoyed taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes in a series of holodeck missions. Even under the edifice of his being performed by an android in the future, it's a great take on the character.
The 1988 movie Without a Clue imagined that Sherlock was a complete fabrication by Dr. Watson who was the real genius detective, and who only invented the character so that he could work as a detective while still maintaining his medical practice. To maintain the illusion he hires an out-of-work actor (played by Michael Caine) to play Holmes. Hilarity ensues.
The play Sherlock Holmes: The Musical ran in England from 1988 to 1989. Holmes was played by Ron Moody, who is most famous as Fagin in the London Stage, Broadway, and film versions of Oliver!.
Patrick Macnee's turn as Sherlock in the 1993 Telefilm The Hound of London is particularly special, because while Macnee is most famous for having played John Steed in the British series The Avengers, he had previously played Watson opposite two separate renditions of Sherlock: with Roger Moore and then twice with Christopher Lee.
The TV movie 1994 Baker Street: The Return of Sherlock Holmes broadcast in 1993, starring Anthony Higgins. Evidently, it features Holmes waking up from suspended animation in modern times. It sounds thoroughly terrible.
The animated series Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century aired in 1999 to 2001, and while it seems like a pretty outlandish concept, apparently the show actually won a daytime Emmy. The part of Sherlock was voiced by Jason Gray-Stanford, a very prolific TV and Voice actor. If you're interested, you can watch the several full episodes on Youtube.
The BBC radio series The Newly Discovered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes broadcast in 1999. It was a comedy series recorded in front of a live audience. Roy Hudd played the part of Sherlock.
Portugese Actor Joaquim de Almeida is best known, at least to me, as the villain from both Desperado and Clear & Present Danger. He played Holmes in the 200 Brazilian-Portuguese movie O Xangô de Baker Street.
Noted stage and screen actor Richard Roxburgh played Holmes in the 2002 movie The Hound of the Baskervilles.
American actor Matt Frewer played the character in four Telefilms: The Hound of the Baskervilles in 2000, The Royal Scandal & The Sign of Four in 2001, and the Case of the Whitechapel Vampire in 2002. Matt is a pretty awesome journeyman character actor that I always enjoy whenever he turns up. He's probably best remembered as Max Headroom, a sort of cyberpunk migraine walking nightmare of the Regan-Thatcher era.
While we were still a few years away from the wave of contemporary updates to the character, in 2002 we got the TV film Sherlock Holmes: Case of Evil. By casting a young, sexy James D'Arcy, we started to see the inklings of what would become a resurgence in popularity of the character...
Likewise in 2004, when notably uber-hot actor Rupert Everett played Holmes in the TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stalking.
Johnathan Pryce is yet another legendary actor to have taken the role, this time in the 2007 film Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars
Guy Ritchie's 2009 movie Sherlock Holmes and it's 2011 follow-up Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows introduced us to Robert Downey Jr's shirtless boxing, struttingly weird take on the character. At the time, it felt like a complete re-imagining of the concept, although given the huge variety of takes on the character over the years it wasn't exactly forging new grounds as much as it was taking a lot of the interesting, less-famous ideas and wrapping them in a Robert Downey Jr shaped package.
Right as the character was experiencing a huge upswing in popularity thanks to the Guy Ritchie movie it got it's own 'Mockbuster'... a direct-to-video movie deliberately designed to cash in on that popularity. In this case, the movie was also called Sherlock Holmes, and featured a lot of steampunk elements... and dinosaurs. It starred absolute newcomer Ben Syder.
Of course, even in the absolute ocean of renditions of the character, the 2010 BBC series Shelock is clearly the basis for his appearance in the building-verse. The modern-day series is an international sensation, and has made it's star Benedict Cumberbatch into a globally recognized icon.
The UK series is so popular it's produced several copycat series. Here in the states, we had Elementary, another show moving Holmes into the modern day. Airing from 2012 to 2019, this show really hung it's hat on the fact that their Watson was played by Lucy Liu, but it's actual strength is their deliberately-it's-own-thing version of Holmes... played as a tattooed ex-junkie by Johnny Lee Miller, who will always have a dear place in my heart for being in Hackers, one of my favorite bad movies of all time.
Meanwhile, it looks like Russia ALSO had a new Sherlock Holmes series. This 16 episode series from 2013 stared Igor Petrenko, and returned the character to their traditional 19th century setting. The series played with the idea that the 'cannon' version of the character is a construct of Watson and his publisher in the books he wrights, and that the actual character is much younger, nerdier & and awkward, which is actually something I think I'd like to see.
Stage productions of Sherlock Holmes have enjoyed a revival following the success of the Steven Moffat series. In 2013 in the UK, Benjamin Lawlor starred in The Hound of the Baskervilles...
...in France, Julien Masdoua played Holmes in Le Cabaret Sherlock Holmes....
... and in 2015, Paul Andrew Goldsmith played Sherlock in Sherlock Holmes & the Case of the Christmas Carol, a UK theater tour with the Baroque Theatre Company.
Meanwhile in Japan a puppet series called シャーロック ホームズ... which I think is just "Sherlock Homes", aired from 2014 to 2015 on Japanese television. The Japanese puppet version of Holmes was voiced by Kōichi Yamadera, who is a pretty big deal in the world of anime voice acting.
Holmes was also the main character in the 2015 anime The Empire of Corpses, where he's voiced by Yoshimitsu Takasugi in the Japanese cast and Chuck Huber in the English cast.
Sir Ian McKellen, one of the few legendary British actors that HADN'T played Sherlock, got his turn in 2015's Mr. Holmes.
Of course, if you asked me for my current favorite take on Sherlock Holmes, the answer would have to be Miss Sherlock, the current Japanese series that takes the 'Sherlock in modern day' trope to the next logical step and casts both Sherlock and Watson as women in Tokyo. The show stars Yūko Takeuchi as Sara "Sherlock" Shelly Futaba and completely sidesteps a lot of the weird tropes of the series in other formats and manages to be downright joyful.
This is more examples than i've used for any other character on this site by a wide margin, and it's such a small selection of the what's available it's actually kind of embarrassing. Still, you have to stop somewhere, and I have a very real sense that someone could probably make a career out of this.
This is more examples than i've used for any other character on this site by a wide margin, and it's such a small selection of the what's available it's actually kind of embarrassing. Still, you have to stop somewhere, and I have a very real sense that someone could probably make a career out of this.