Esmond Knight: Blindness, Brilliance, and an Industry That Refuses to Learn

6 min readSep 10, 2025

An early autographed photo of Esmond Knight, striking a dramatic pose with a falcon in one hand and the other pointing into the distance.

When the British actor Esmond Knight recalled the day he lost his sight during the Second World War, he wrote with stark simplicity:

“There was a blinding flash, a roar, and then darkness. When I woke, the world I knew was gone.”

It was May 1941. Knight, then serving aboard HMS Prince of Wales, had been in the gunnery director tower when a shell from the German battleship Bismarck struck. Most of his crewmates were killed instantly. Knight survived, but shrapnel left him almost completely blind. For many, the story would have ended there — a promising career cut short by war.

But Knight was no ordinary actor. Over the following four decades, he amassed 166 stage credits and 160 screen roles, proving that blindness was no barrier to craft, and that disabled actors could play sighted roles with ease. His story should have reshaped casting forever. Yet more than 80 years later, disabled actors are still fighting to be included.

An early image of a young Esmond Knight in his 20s wearing a top hat and carrying a cane under his arm. This is superimposed over an image of the stricken ship he was injured on.

From Rising Star to Wartime Casualty

Born in 1906, Knight entered the British film industry in the 1930s, quickly becoming a familiar face in classics like The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). His dashing looks and stage presence seemed to mark him out as a matinee idol in the making.

The war interrupted that trajectory. His blinding during the Bismarck engagement might have meant retirement. But Knight, who later said:

“An actor’s eyes are not his talent. My imagination could still see everything I needed,”

Rebuilding a Career in Darkness

By 1943, Knight had returned to acting. His blindness was nearly total — he retained only slight perception of light in one eye — yet he was soon back on both stage and screen.

A promotional shot of the Warner Brothers production of Helen of Troy featuring Esmond in full white robes of a High Priest.

With the Royal Shakespeare Company, Knight appeared in productions of King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. On film, he became a regular in the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with appearances in Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and later Peeping Tom (1960).
He appeared in all three of Olivier’s Shakespearean films; Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955).

In 1960 returned to scene of his injury when he appeared as Captain John Leach — HMS Prince of Wales in Sink the Bismarck. This was the very ship and battle where he lost his eyesight.

The movie poster of Sink The Bismark showing the pocket battleship firing its formidable guns in turbulant seas. — Movie poster for Sink the Bismarck

And his career wasn’t just limited to British films, he also appeared in Hollywood productions, one of the last of which was Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).

On British TV he became a regular fixture, appearing in many classic series such as; Our Mutual Friend,(1958) Elizabeth R (1971), Blot on the Landscape (1985), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), I Claudius (1976) and notably he was the first disabled actor to appear on Doctor Who (1969) as Dom Issigri in The Space Pirates.

Esmond wearing a scruffy victorian dark suit with a battered top hat and fingerless gloves as Dennis in Barnaby Rudge — Esmond in Barnaby Rudge

In his memoir Seeking the Bubble, he described learning new methods:

“I counted my steps across the stage. I learned the exact weight of a sword or a goblet in my hand. The trick was not to see, but to know.”

Audiences and critics rarely remarked on his blindness because it was invisible in performance. He played sighted characters, generals and courtiers, fathers and villains, with authority. Knight’s example should have transformed how the industry thought about disability.

Incidental Disability Before Its Time

What makes Knight’s career extraordinary is that he rarely played blind men. Instead, he was cast incidentally embodying roles where his disability was irrelevant. This was decades before “authentic casting” or “incidental disability” became industry talking points.

As he once quipped in an interview:

“They gave me a sword and told me where the edge of the stage was. The rest was just acting.”

In doing so, he demonstrated a radical truth: a disabled actor need not be limited to disabled characters. Talent, not eyesight, was what mattered.

Why Didn’t the Industry Learn?

Yet the question remains: why did Knight’s success not change the industry’s practices? Why, in 2025, do we still talk about disability “breakthroughs” in the careers of actors like Peter Dinklage or Kathryn Hunter, as if each one is unprecedented?

Disability activist Frances Ryan has pointedly asks: “We wouldn’t accept actors blacking up, so why applaud ‘cripping up’?”

The hypocrisy is striking. While whitewashing has (rightly) been condemned, the casting of non-disabled actors in disabled roles is still widespread and often ableism is defended as “artistic choice.” Meanwhile, disabled actors struggle to be cast even in roles that do not require disability, or are specified as non-disabled.

Knight’s career proves audiences have never needed “realism” in this sense. They accepted him as sighted kings and courtiers without hesitation. The barrier has never been audiences, but gatekeepers and the limited creative imaginations and unconscious biases of directors.

A Culture Resistant to Change

The persistence of ableism in stage and screen is not about individual prejudice so much as structural inertia. Theatres, film studios, and broadcasters often see disability as a “problem” to solve rather than as part of the artistic landscape. As a BBC retrospective on disability in media concluded, disability only became a mainstream part of its programming within the last few decades despite disabled people being the largest minority in society

Knight’s career should have been a turning point. Instead, it became a footnote. His artistry was celebrated, but the industry chose to treat him as exceptional rather than proof of possibility.

Conclusion: Esmond Knight’s Challenge

Esmond Knight died in 1987, leaving behind an astonishing body of work. His own words remain a rebuke to the industry:

“I was blind, but not invisible. Why should blindness mean banishment?”

His career showed that disabled actors can perform any role, including sighted ones, without audiences questioning their presence. Yet more than 80 years later, theatre, film, and television still hesitate to embrace incidental casting, still speak of “firsts,” and still treat disability as a barrier.

The lesson of Knight’s life is that the problem has never been ability. It has always been the industry’s refusal to see.

Until that changes, Esmond Knight’s story will remain not just an inspiration, but an indictment.