Leon Vitali, who has died aged 74, occupied a unique position in the life and cinema of Stanley Kubrick. He was assistant, facilitator, casting adviser, archivist, intermediary and dogsbody. “A sort of gatekeeper” was how Vitali put it in 2018. It could be difficult to tell where one man ended and the other began: Kubrick sometimes signed letters with Vitali’s name, while Vitali had permission to tell intransigent colleagues: “What you say to me, you say to Stanley.” The men even shared the same birthday, two decades apart.
They met when Vitali was cast at the age of 24 in the director’s magisterial Thackeray adaptation Barry Lyndon (1975). Vitali gave an indignant, explosive performance as Lord Bullingdon, who rages against his stepfather, an opportunistic cad played by Ryan O’Neal, finally challenging him to a pistol duel. The confrontation, which begins with Bullingdon misfiring his gun before vomiting in a corner of the barn, is agonisingly protracted.
