Alan Scarfe, ‘Double Impact’ and ‘Seven Days’ Actor, Dies at 77

Alan Scarfe

Paramount Television/Courtesy Everett Collection

Alan Scarfe, the classically trained British Canadian actor known for his turns as bad guys in Double Impact and Lethal Weapon III and as Dr. Bradley Talmadge on the UPN sci-fi series Seven Days, has died. He was 77.

Scarfe died April 28 of colon cancer at his home in Longueuil, Quebec, his family announced.

Survivors include his son, actor Jonathan Scarfe (ER, Raising the Bar, Hell on Wheels, Van Helsing).

Born in England and raised in Vancouver, Scarfe portrayed the Romulans Tokath and Admiral Mendak on episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1991 and 1993 and was another alien, the powerful Magistrate Augris, on a 1995 installment of Star Trek: Voyager.

“Science fiction on film and television, especially if you are playing some kind of alien character with fantastic make-up, is great for actors with a strong stage background,” he said in a 2007 interview. “The productions need that kind of size and intensity of performance. You can’t really mumble if you’re a Klingon.”

Scarfe battled twins Alex and Chad Wagner (both portrayd by Jean-Claude Van Damme) as the wicked Nigel Griffith in the action film Double Impact (1991), then played the underhanded Internal Affairs chief Herman Walters in Lethal Weapon III (1992).

He appeared as National Security Agency member Talmadge, director of the Backstep Project operations, on all 66 episodes of Seven Days, which ran for three seasons, from 1998-2001.

Alan John Scarfe was born on June 8, 1946, in Harpenden, England. His parents, Gladys and Neville, were university professors who brought the family to Vancouver when he was young. (A building at the University of British Columbia is named for his dad, who was the founding dean of the faculty of education there.)

After graduating from Lord Byng Secondary School in Vancouver, Scarfe returned to England to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art from 1964-66, then served as associate director of the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool from 1967-68.

He spent two decades performing in theaters across Europe, the U.S. and Canada — including eight seasons at the Stratford Festival and two at the Shaw Festival, both in Ontario — doing lots of Shakespeare.

“I wanted to be a great classical actor in the long tradition of Burbage, Garrick, Kean, Booth, Olivier,” he said. “Forty-five years ago when I began, it was still possible to think in such a romantic, idealistic way.”

He made it to Broadway in 1988, portraying Macduff in a production of Macbeth that starred Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson.

He pivoted from the stage to the screen and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1989 but returned to Canada in 2002 and co-starred with his son in the 2003 telefilm Burn: The Robert Wraight Story.

His big-screen résumé included The Bay Boy (1984), Deserters (1984), Overnight (1986), Street Justice (1987), Iron Eagle II (1988), The Portrait (1992), the David Steinberg-directed The Wrong Guy (1997), Aka Albert Walker (2003) and The Hamster Cage (2005).

Scarfe also was an author. His first novel, The Revelation of Jack the Ripper, was published in 2017, and he quickly followed with what he called “The Carnivore Trilogy”: The Vampires of Juarez, The Demons of 9/11 and The Mask of the Holy Spirit. (He originally wrote under the pen name Clanash Farjeon, an anagram of his full name.)

Scarfe’s second wife was actress Barbara March, who played Lursa, one of the villainous Duras sisters, on three Star Trek series. They met at Stratford and were married from 1979 until her death from cancer in August 2019 at age 65.

His first wife was actress Sara Botsford.

He is also survived by his daughter, Tosia, a musician and composer, and her husband, Austin, who both lived with and cared for him until his death; his grandchildren, Kai and Hunter, and his brother, Colin.