Francis Patrick "Pat" Roach (May 19, 1937 — July 17, 2004) was an English actor and wrestler from Birmingham. His most famous role is that of West Country bricklayer Brian "Bomber" Busbridge in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He was also the only actor besides Harrison Ford to appear in all of the first three films in the Indiana Jones franchise (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).
Before Roach broke into acting, he was a well known wrestler who attracted unwarranted abuse from the crowds who wrongly assumed him to be a typical wrestling heel in a similar mould to the likes of Mick McManus. After his acting career had taken off he continued to wrestle under the name of "Bomber" Pat Roach, having previously been billed as "Big" Pat Roach, but now receiving affectionate cheering from the spectators. He was trained by Alf Kent and his first official wrestling match was against George Selko. Roach held both the British and European Heavyweight Wrestling Championships.
He made his acting debut as the red-bearded bouncer in the Korova Milkbar in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange in 1971. Roach and Kubrick reunited for Barry Lyndon; Pat portrayed a hand-to-hand brawler named Toole, who engages Ryan O'Neal (as the title character) in bare-knuckle combat and loses, of course. Roach enjoyed considerable success via being typecast as muscle-bound supporting characters; these included the non-speaking role of Hephaestus in Clash of the Titans, a SPECTRE-backed assassin in Never Say Never Again, and a bandit-warlord in the sword-and-sorcery yarn Red Sonja. (The latter two pitted him against Sean Connery and Brigitte Nielsen, respectively, in mortal combat; Roach lost on both counts.) Perhaps most notable were his roles as the skull-helmeted General Kael in Willow, and the Celtic chieftain in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
In the Indiana Jones series Roach appeared as several characters. In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Roach played a burly Sherpa who fights Jones in a bar in Nepal, and a brutal German mechanic who meets his demise via propeller blade on the airstrip in Egypt. He thus had the rare opportunity to be killed twice in one film. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Roach played a cruel Thuggee overseer. Roach appeared only briefly in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) as a Gestapo officer who runs alongside Colonel Vogel towards the zeppelin. The scene where he fights Jones in this film was cut. The role of Colonel Dovchenko in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull was a stand-in for Roach, who died in 2004.
Roach is best known to British audiences as Bomber — in the ITV/BBC comedy-drama Auf Wiedersehen, Pet — a bricklayer who joined the main cast in Dusseldorf and appeared in all four series, but died before the final special was completed.
Roach was born in Birmingham, West Midlands on May 19, 1937. He and his wife Doreen had two children and three grandchildren.
Roach died in July 2004 after a long fight against throat cancer. He is buried in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire.
His film roles have included:
