After graduating from Cambridge in 1880, he enrolled at the Inner Temple with the intention of becoming a barrister, but left shortly afterwards to pursue a career as an actor.

[1][2] He went to New York City in 1880 and worked as a sketch artist, when sheer chance turned him into an actor.

Osmond Tearle, an actor living there, heard from his own producer that an Englishman was needed for a production of The School for Scandal.

Over the next fifty years, he travelled back and forth across the Atlantic several times for theatrical work both in New York City and in London.

[citation needed] He died from the consequences of an earlier heart attack in a nursing home in London on 2 May 1933 at the age of 74.