Sir Robert Graham Stephens (14 July 1931 – 12 November 1995)[1] was an English actor in the early years of Britain's Royal National Theatre.

[3] When aged 18, he won a scholarship to Esme Church's Bradford Civic Theatre School in Yorkshire, where he met his first wife Nora, a fellow student.

London director Tony Richardson saw a performance at the Royalty; this led to an offer of a place in the "momentous" first season of English Stage Company at the Royal Court in 1956.

[4] Stephens appeared in two versions of Epitaph for George Dillon on Broadway during the 1958-59 season for which he received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.

[6] Although Stephens continued to work on stage (notably in the National Theatre's The Mysteries in 1986), film (The Fruit Machine in 1988—titled Wonderland in the US—and Kenneth Branagh's Henry V), and television (notably in the role of Abner Brown in the 1984 BBC TV dramatisation of the children's classic The Box of Delights[7] and as the Master of an Oxford college in an episode of Inspector Morse), it was not until the 1990s that he re-established himself at the forefront of his profession, when the Royal Shakespeare Company invited him to play Falstaff in Henry IV for director Adrian Noble (opening April 1991), the title roles in Julius Caesar (director Steven Pimlott) later in the year and then King Lear, again for Noble, in May 1993.