Vivian MacKerrell

Vivian Alan James MacKerrell (23 May 1944 – 2 March 1995) was a British actor of the 1960s and 1970s. He was the basis for the character of Withnail in the film Withnail and I.

Early life
Vivian MacKerrell was the son of Scottish accountant John Alexander McKerrell and Janetta Mary (née Boyns). The family were "well-off". He had two brothers, Jock and David. MacKerrell attended the private Trent College near Nottingham.

Personality
As a student at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, he shared a house in Albert Street, Camden, London with the musician David Dundas and film director Bruce Robinson, writer and director of Withnail & I (1987). Another house mate, actor Michael Feast, described MacKerrell as a "splenetic wastrel of a fop", whilst Robinson has said he was a "jack of all but a master of none", declaring himself a great actor but doing nothing to prove this. Robinson has also stated that MacKerrell was the funniest person he has ever met.

MacKerrel kept a diary, in which he recorded details of his life in Camden Town: an entry in the volumes for 1974-75 records, “After a pint, I read and corrected more of Withnail and I and when [Robinson] came back we opened the bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé which L had put out in the window box to chill.” In 2024 these volumes of diaries were put up for sale.

A biography of MacKerrell, Vivian and I, by Colin Bacon was published in 2010.

Career
In the early 1960s, MacKerrell performed with Ian McKellen in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and with John Neville in Coriolanus at Nottingham Playhouse, where he also worked as assistant stage manager. In the 1970s, he was the junior lead in Hadrian VII at the Mermaid Theatre.

MacKerrell had only a handful of television and film credits, which included a Play for Today, titled "Edna, the Inebriate Woman" (1971), and Ghost Story (1974), a horror film that also starred Marianne Faithfull. He also appeared in the 1967 BBC television version of Pride and Prejudice as Mr Hurst, for which he was credited as Vivian James, an earlier stage name.

Illness and death
MacKerrell's career was curtailed by heavy drinking. He died from throat cancer, which he contracted in his 40s. After a short remission in the mid-1980s, the illness returned and MacKerrell underwent a laryngectomy. Unable to eat or drink, he resorted to injecting alcohol directly into his stomach. In his last days, MacKerrell contracted pneumonia after a drunken incident and died in Gloucester Royal Infirmary. His ashes were scattered on Loch Indaal on the island of Islay.

Bruce Robinson claimed that MacKerrell once drank lighter fluid and was unable to see for days after the incident. This is depicted in a scene from Withnail & I.