Grant Leonard Ridgway Tilly MBE (12 December 1937 – 11 April 2012) was a New Zealand stage, movie and television actor, set designer, teacher and artist.
He was awarded an overseas bursary and studied children's drama in England during the early 1960s, learning from the best, Peter Slade and Brian Way.
He made his television debut in the 1967 one-off comedy The Tired Man then ad-libbed alongside playwright Joseph Musaphia on the children's show Joe's World.
[9] Tilly's biggest screen roles include that of a headmaster who has an affair in 1979's film adaptation of Middle Age Spread (showbusiness magazine Variety compared him to "an antipodean Woody Allen"[10]) and in the 1982 comedy Carry Me Back, as the farmer who must sneak his father's body back home after he unexpectedly dies.
[11] His television credits include an award-winning performance as artist Toss Woollaston in the teleplay Erua, Reverend Henry Williams in the historical epic The Governor, the Margaret Mahy fantasy Cuckooland (1995), and a starring role in 2009 short Roof Rattling.