After years on the British stage, including a turn as the Melancholy Dane "Hamlet" (1969), Courtenay made his belated Broadway debut in Simon Gray's "Otherwise Engaged" (1977) and returned to the Great White Way in the 1981 production of "The Dresser". Playing the diffident Norman, a role which he had originated in London, Courtenay earned a Tony nomination. Reprising the role opposite Albert Finney Albert Finney in Peter Yates' 1983 film version, Courtenay received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. Although primarily a stage actor, he has acted in movies like "Let Him Have It" (1991), Karel Kachyna's "The Last Butterfly" (also 1991), in which his elaborate "Hansel and Gretel" mime for the children of Terezin served as a parable for the extermination of the Jews, and "The Boy From Mercury" (1996), portraying the strange Uncle Tony, to whom a mother turns when her son's fantasies overwhelm her.