After his schooldays at Adelaide High, Ron picked up work as a dental technician. But his heart was in the radio plays he would perform in the evenings on 5DN's Radio Canteen and in meeting Lorraine most lunchtimes on the banks of the Torrens above North Terrace, where they would sit on the grass and hold hands while he quoted Shakespeare sonnets. All the time his cricket career also progressed and in 1953 he was opening the batting for South Australia and dreaming of the Australian test team. New dreams emerged, however, when the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre played in Adelaide while on tour through Australia. Acclaimed English actor Anthony Quayle was managing the company on that tour and he held limited auditions in the various capital cities. Haddrick was lucky enough to gain an audition and even luckier to be offered a contract to sail to England and join the Company at Stratford-Upon-Avon. It was a fork in the road. Acting or cricket. With encouragement from his father to follow his new dream, Ron decided he couldn't pass up the golden opportunity to improve his acting and learn from the best in the world. He sailed for England and left first-class cricket behind, but soon found himself on stage with Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Michael Redgrave, Sir John Gielgud, Harry Andrews, Dame Edith Evans and Dame Peggy Ashcroft, among many others. Ron Haddrick as Tartuffe in Moliere's satire makes advances to Elmire (Jennifer Wright), in a scene from the play, 1965. Credit:ABC After a year or so in Stratford he scored a small raise and immediately wrote to Lorraine saying they could now afford - just - to live in Stratford together. Lorraine arrived in England in 1956 and they were married in Stratford on March 10. His days with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre culminated in the tour of Russia in 1958 at the height of the Cold War.

But his desire was always to strengthen Australian theatre and the following year he and Lorraine and their young daughter, Lyn, returned to settled in Sydney. He immediately joined the Elizabethan theatre trust, played Alf Cook in the world premier of Alan Seymour's iconic hit The One Day of the Year and bought a family home in Homebush - although on the mortgage documents he had to declare himself a dental technician as loans to actors were rarely approved. In 1963 Robert Quentin phoned to say he was starting The Old Tote Theatre Company on the UNSW campus and invited Haddrick to star in the first production - which was Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and also featured a young John Bell. It was the beginning of a long association with The Old Tote and nearly thirty years of almost continual work. He was also in the first production staged at the new Parade Theatre in 1969 and the two of the three productions (in repertory) that the Old Tote staged to open the Opera House in 1973. While on stage in the evenings he also squeezed in many television roles, notably as Dr Redfern in the ABC's The Outcasts (1962), and as Adam Suisse in The Stranger (1964), which has been re-mastered this year and is currently having a revival run on iView! Haddrick received an MBE for Services to the Arts in 1974, but kept working at breakneck speed on stage, television and radio. Memorable roles included Jock in David Williamson's hugely successful The Club (1977), which transferred to London after a sell-out tour of Australia. Then in 1981 came his Big Daddy for the STC's production of Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, and his Chebutykin for Aubrey Mellor's breathtaking production of Three Sisters for Nimrod. Ron Haddrick (centre) with Ronnie Corbett (left) and Ronnie Barker at the Music Hall in Neutral Bay, 1979. Credit:SMH

Haddrick played many roles for Nimrod, the STC, Marian Street Theatre and the QTC throughout the 80s and 90s and even expanded into musicals in the 1990s, enjoying roles in Hello Dolly and My Fair Lady. In the 00s his status grew as a tribal elder, taking smaller roles in many Bell Shakespeare productions but always mentoring younger cast members with tips and anecdotes from the vast menagerie of actors he'd worked with over the years. He often quipped that if he were ever to write a memoir he’d probably title it "Leading Ladies I Have Known". During the course of his life he also served many years on the Board of NIDA and two terms as Governor of the Actors Benevolent Fund. His final television performance was recording Fish's voice-over for Screentime's 2010 mini-series adaptation of Tim Winton's Cloudstreet. In 2012 he received an AM for Services to the Arts and the same year he also received the Actors Equity Lifetime Achievement Award. His final stage role was an acclaimed performance in the STC's production of Michael Frayn's Noises Off in 2014 at the Opera House - where he celebrated his 85th birthday at the end of the run. He never officially retired, although in his final years he would declare himself sadly unavailable if approached for a role. Ron Haddrick, an 84-year-old actor, performing in the stage play Noises Off at the Sydney Theatre Company, 2014. Credit:SMH He and Lorraine stayed constant lifetime partners, going to concerts together, seeing plays, signing up for weekly educational lectures at the Art Gallery of NSW, watching every game of cricket televised and never missing a Swans game - either live or on TV.