Johan du Plooy

Johan du Plooy (1926?-2011) was an actor.

Biography

Unlike many of his contemporaries in the film industry, Johan du Plooy did not have any professional theatrical experience before embarking on a movie career. In fact, initially he was a traffic officer who one day was called upon to write out a ticket for a young film director called Jamie Uys. Uys thought du Plooy had potential as an actor and gave him a role in Geld Soos Bossies (1955), on which he also acted as unit manager. After that he made seven more appearances (sometimes uncredited) in Uys’s films and six in productions by Emil Nofal. Though he never became a major star, his presence in small roles was always reassuring and he joined South Africa’s growing roster of character actors. In the 1960s he had augmented his income as a press photographer for newspapers as diverse as Die Transvaler and the Rand Daily Mail. In later years he was in poor health and was forced to leave the film industry. He and his wife Joey were married for 54 years. He died in Roodepoort on 15 February 2011.