Ram John Holder

Ram John Holder

Birth : 1934-01-01, Georgetown, British Guiana

History

Guyanese actor and musician, Ram John Holder started his professional life as a folk singer in New York in the early '60s before moving to the UK to work as a musician and later an actor for Pearl Connor's Negro Theatre Workshop. His big break was as the effeminate dancer Marcus in the 1969 film Two Gentlemen Sharing and he's worked in film and TV ever since, most notably as the loveable Porkpie in Channel 4 sitcom Desmond's (1989-1994) and the shortlived spin-off Porkpie

Profile

Ram John Holder

Movies

Your Christmas Or Mine?
Grandad
Students Hayley and James are young and in love. After saying goodbye for Christmas at a London train station, they both make the same mad split-second decision to swap trains and surprise each other. Passing each other in the station, they are completely unaware that they have just swapped Christmases.
City of Tiny Lights
Trinidad Pete
In the teeming, multicultural metropolis of modern-day London, a seemingly straightforward missing-person case launches a down-at-heel private eye into a dangerous world of religious fanaticism and political intrigue.
Song for Marion
Charlie
Arthur is a grumpy pensioner who can't understand why his wife Marion would want to embarrass herself singing silly songs with her unconventional local choir. But choir director Elizabeth sees something special in the reluctant Arthur and refuses to give up on him. As she coaxes him out of his shell, Arthur realizes that it is never too late to change.
Joy Division
Neville
A teenage orphan fights against the Red Army at the end of WWII and in the aftermath is 'adopted' by a Commissar. Years later he is sent to London during the Cold war to work for the KGB, where he questions his life.
The Calcium Kid
Jamaican Barber
When milkman Jimmy Connelly accidentally puts Britain's contender for the World title out of action, he is propelled from amateur boxer to the world stage and announced as the replacement contender for the championship fight.
Lucky Break
Old Billy Morris
Half-way through his 12-year prison sentence for an incompetent armed robbery, Jimmy Hands gets a lucky break: he's transferred to a prison from which he can probably escape. He convinces the governor to stage a musical in an old chapel next to the prison's outer wall. He rounds up volunteer actors and puts his escape plan into production. Two other barriers, besides the wall, confront him: the arrival of a nasty inmate, John Toombes, who insists on joining the escape, and Jimmy's feelings of attraction for Anabel, a social worker who agrees to appear in the play. Opening night approaches: is this Jimmy's breakout performance?
Virtual Sexuality
Declan
Desperate to find her perfect man Justine goes to a technology fair with her nerdy classmate Chas. It's not really her thing but is eventually persuaded to try a virtual reality makeover machine and discovers that she can create her perfect man even if it is only an electronic facsimile. The power surge from a freakish accident causes a part of her psyche to be copied into her virtual perfect man.
O Mary This London
Neville
Three young Dubliners go to London in search of fun, fortune and, in the case of 17-year-old Mary Kelly, an abortion. Homeless and jobless, their adventures quickly turn sour.
Missing Persons
Chalky White
During a visit to childhood friend Edith, retired housewife Hetty Wainthropp discovers that Edith's husband, Frank, has a son by a previous marriage. Hetty decides to turn amateur detective to trace him. When this gives her a taste for detection, Hetty decides to set up a private detective agency.
Playing Away
Wilf
To mark the conclusion of their "Third World Week" celebration, a cricket team in a small English village invites a black cricket team from South London to a charity game with comical results.
Half Moon Street
Lindsay Walker
Dr. Lauren Slaughter, a research fellow at the Arab-Anglo Institute in London is utterly frustrated by her job. To supplement her income, she starts moonlighting at the Jasmine Escort Service, where she has more control over men and money than she does at the office. On one of her 'dates', Lauren meets the politician Lord Bulbeck who is trying to mediate a peace accord between the Arabs and Israelis. Bulbeck falls in love with his escort, and unwittingly, Lauren becomes a pawn in some very dirty politics.
The Passion of Remembrance
Benjy Baptiste
Co-directed by Blackwood and Julien, the first full-length feature film by Sankofa Film and Video offers a radical and necessary interrogation into what constitutes 'post-colonial' identity at a time of political and social restlessness in Britain. Set within an isolated desert landscape contrasted with recognizable scenes of the intensity of family life, this vanguard work demonstrates the richness and variety of the black experience; it is a poetic and hard-hitting commentary on the complexities of race, gender and sexuality.
My Beautiful Laundrette
Poet
A Pakistani Briton renovates a rundown laundrette with his male lover while dealing with drama within his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
Playboy of the West Indies
Mac
Based on J. M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World. Peggy Ford runs her father's rum bar in Mayaro, a quiet fishing village in Trinidad. Nothing much happens in Mayaro until a handsome young stranger appears and insists that he has just murdered his father.
Britannia Hospital
Radical
Britannia Hospital, an esteemed English institution, is marking its gala anniversary with a visit by the Queen Mother herself. But when investigative reporter Mick Travis arrives to cover the celebration, he finds the hospital under siege by striking workers, ruthless unions, violent demonstrators, racist aristocrats, an African cannibal dictator, and sinister human experiments.
Cuba
Fat Sergeant
A British mercenary arrives in pre-Revolution Cuba to help train the corrupt General Batista's army against Castro's guerrillas while he also romances a former lover now married to an unscrupulous plantation owner.
Roadrunner
Trevor Ford
A young West Indian has to interrupt his rich international life to sort out some passport trouble at home. His lifestyle is very different from the simple one of his family in North London, leading to considerable tension.
Pressure
Brother John
A British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad finds himself adrift between two cultures.
The Education of Sonny Carson
Preacher
A 1974 film based on the best-selling autobiography of Sonny Carson who joined a gang and committed petty crime before being sent to prison. After his release from prison he changes his life.
Man Friday
Man Friday
Play based on the tale of Robinson Crusoe, examining the relationship between Crusoe and Man Friday, with a new twist by which both characters believe they are teaching the other.
Take a Girl Like You
Musician
Young Jenny heads to the South of England to start a new career as a school teacher. Even before she has had a chance to settle in she meets Patrick, one of the local "lads". Within a short time she has her hands full when a number of the local boys take a liking to her. But who will be the lucky one who wins her affections?
Leo the Last
Black Preacher
Prince Leo, last in the line of rulers of a long-deposed monarchy on continental Europe and jaded with the frenetic search for kicks with the European jet-set, returns to his father's London town house for rest.
Two Gentlemen Sharing
Marcus
An insecure Briton and a Briton of Jamaican descent share a London apartment together.