Roy Dotrice, OBE was a British actor. For Disney, he portrayed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color and narrated most of the Disney Read Along Books and other audio stories. He also voiced Obi-Wan Kenobi during the Read Along versions of the Star Wars Trilogy. In addition, he was the storyteller for the Mickey Mouse short The Prince and the Pauper. He also played Rev. Thomas Cheever in The Scarlet Letter.
He is probably best known to television audiences as Jacob "Father" Wells, the patriarch of the underground community beneath New York City in the live-action Beauty and the Beast series; his character was a surrogate father to the "Beast", Vincent (Ron Perlman) and a frequent mentor to his friend, Catherine (Linda Hamilton). Other guests on the show included Mayim Bialik, Dorian Harewood, Delroy Lindo, and Tony Jay as Father's nemesis, Paracelsus.
Dotrice was awarded two Guinness World Records: his one-person play "Brief Lives", based on the diaries of Elizabethan figure John Aubrey, played for over 1,700 performances, setting a record for solo performances by an actor; his second was awarded in 2004, for his audiobook performance of A Game of Thrones (the first volume of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series), for having the highest number of distinct character voices in a single audiobook (two hundred and twenty-four).
Dotrice was married to his wife, Kay, for 60 years, until her death on August 2, 2007. He had three daughters, all of whom are actresses. His second daughter was the actress, Karen Dotrice, who is best known for her role as Jane in the Disney 1964 musical film Mary Poppins, and was named a Disney Legend in 2004. He also had three grandchildren from her.
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