Ram John Holder

Acting

Ram John Holder

Born 1934-01-01 · Georgetown, British Guiana

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

Acting credits

Joy Division poster
5.2

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.

Joy Division

2006

My Beautiful Laundrette poster
6.7

A young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.

My Beautiful Laundrette

1985

Lucky Break poster
6.3

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?

Lucky Break

2001

Your Christmas or Mine? poster
6.4

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.

Your Christmas or Mine?

2022

Song for Marion poster
6.8

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.

Song for Marion

2012

City of Tiny Lights poster
5.2

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.

City of Tiny Lights

2016

Your Christmas or Mine 2 poster
6.2

They've swapped Christmas – again. Can Hayley and James' relationship survive another turbulent family Christmas or has their future together gone off-piste?!

Your Christmas or Mine 2

2023

Cuba poster
5.5

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.

Cuba

1979

The Calcium Kid poster
5.5

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.

The Calcium Kid

2004

Half Moon Street poster
5.0

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.

Half Moon Street

1986

Britannia Hospital poster
6.2

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.

Britannia Hospital

1982

Robinson Crusoe poster
7.0

A man struggles to survive after being shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Robinson Crusoe

1974

Man Friday poster
9.0

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.

Man Friday

1972

Virtual Sexuality poster
5.3

A frustrated teenage girl creates her perfect man in a virtual reality machine and in a freak accident, gives him life.

Virtual Sexuality

1999

Leo the Last poster
5.3

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.

Leo the Last

1970

Two Gentlemen Sharing poster
5.5

An insecure Briton and a Briton of Jamaican descent share a London apartment together.

Two Gentlemen Sharing

1969

Roadrunner poster
NR

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.

Roadrunner

1977

No artwork available
8.5

Lenny has some perplexing dreams.

In Dreams

1992

The Passion of Remembrance poster
NR

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.

The Passion of Remembrance

1986

The Education of Sonny Carson poster
5.7

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.

The Education of Sonny Carson

1974

In the Beautiful Caribbean poster
NR

Play set in the Caribbean showing how life is hard and a struggle, with problems of unemployment and lack of money.

In the Beautiful Caribbean

1972

Missing Persons poster
4.0

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.

Missing Persons

1990

Pressure poster
6.5

A British-born younger son of an immigrant family from Trinidad finds himself adrift between two cultures.

Pressure

1976

No artwork available
NR

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.

Playboy of the West Indies

1985