Chris Langham, the BAFTA-winning actor whose career was effectively ended after he was found guilty of downloading child abuse images, has died. He was 77.
Langham’s death on June 24 was announced Thursday in an obituary in The Times of London. The newspaper reported that the actor, who is survived by five children, died in June of pancreatic cancer.
Born in 1949, Langham was a prolific writer and performer who is best known for his work in Armando Iannucci’s political satire The Thick of It, in which he played Hugh Abbot MP.
Langham won a BAFTA TV Award in 2006 for the comedy performance, but a year later he was found guilty of possessing child pornography.
He was convicted of 15 counts of making an indecent photograph of a child between September and November 2005, but was cleared of having sex with an underage female fan. He was sentenced to six months in prison.
Langham always protested his innocence and said he downloaded the images when researching a role for the BBC comedy series Help. Paul Whitehouse, his co-star, contradicted this evidence in court.
Langham was the sole British writer on The Muppet Show, winning an Emmy during his five years working on the series, scripting lines for Miss Piggy.
He cameoed in Monty Python’s Life of Brian and appeared regularly in Not the Nine O’Clock News, an iconic BBC sketch series that helped launch the career of Rowan Atkinson.
Following his conviction, he featured in the odd screen project, such as 2020’s Vengeance, but his career was never the same again, despite him claiming that the likes of John Cleese stood by him.
