Allan Royal

Allan Royal (born August 17, 1944) is a Canadian actor, who is also sometimes credited as Allan G. Royal and Alan Royal. He is known for playing the crime reporter Tom Kirkwood on the hit Canadian police drama Night Heat from 1985 to 1989. He is also known for his recurring role on such programs as the American TV drama Falcon Crest as well as roles in numerous other TV shows, movies, and plays.

Early career Royal grew up in a bilingual home. His father was a French Canadian and his mother was of British ancestry. Royal began performing while still in high school, and ultimately left Montreal to study acting in New York with Lee Strasberg. He returned to Canada, performing on stage in Toronto beginning in the mid-1960s. He joined the Toronto Arts Production theater company, where he played a wide range of roles throughout the 1970s, in new plays as well as productions of Shakespeare and Molière. Prior to the end of Night Heat, he had moved to Los Angeles, where he hoped to appear in more films. He instead portrayed novelist R.D. Young on Falcon Crest.

Throughout the late 1980s well into the 2010s, Royal has worked steadily, appearing in productions that were made in the US and several that were made in Canada, such as the 1988 film Switching Channels, a remake of the 1931 movie classic Front Page, which was filmed in Toronto. In addition, he was in several made-for-television films, including a role as John Sculley in the 1999 production Pirates of Silicon Valley, and the role of Mark Roberts in the 1999 production of "Crime in Connecticut: The Story of Alex Kelly" (later renamed "Cry Rape"). Royal also appeared in guest roles in Star Trek: Voyager, Amerika, Forever Knight, Mutant X, Relic Hunter, The Practice, JAG, and The Border. He played Chief Constable Stockton in the Canadian detective show Murdoch Mysteries and Judge Phillip Hopkins in three episodes of Suits.

In 2011, he returned to the stage in Toronto, where he had not performed live since the early-1980s, to star in a one-man play, The Disappearing Act, which he also wrote.

Filmography

Film

Television