Gray was born in Bournemouth, Dorset,[nb 1] the son of surveyor Donald Gray (died 1975), who had served as a Captain in the Royal Engineers, and Maude Elizabeth (née Marshall).[4][5] Gray attended Bournemouth School alongside Benny Hill, whose school had been evacuated to the same buildings, during the Second World War. Some of his friends remember that his bedroom walls were plastered with pictures of film stars.
By his mid-twenties, Gray had left his first job as a clerk for an estate agent to become an actor. He began his stage experience at the theatre club next to the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth, where he was a last-minute cast replacement in The Beaux' Stratagem.[6] Gray surprised everyone, including himself, with the quality of his performance. He later made his first professional stage appearance under his given name, Donald Gray, as Charles the Wrestler in Roger Atkins' production of As You Like It.[7] He moved away from Bournemouth in the late 1950s, but his parents remained at the family home until their deaths.
On becoming a professional actor he had to change his name, as there was already an actor named Donald Gray. He chose Charles Gray partly because Charles was the name of his maternal grandfather, partly because he had a close friend named Charles, and partly because he thought it sounded nice. For his first appearance on Broadway, in the 1961 musical Kean, he went under the name Oliver Gray.
He played Bob Gringle in the TV Western Gunsmoke in the 1958 episode "Lynching Man" (S4:E10).
During the 1960s, Gray established himself as a successful character actor and made many appearances on British television. Work in this period included Danger Man, with Patrick McGoohan, and Maigret. Gray also appeared opposite Laurence Olivier in the film version of The Entertainer (1960) as a reporter. He played Jack Baker that same year in the Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Bullied Bowler".
Gray's most prolific work as an actor was between 1968 and 1979, when he appeared in more than forty major film and television productions. From this period, he is perhaps best known for portraying the Criminologist (the narrator) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a similar character, Judge Oliver Wright, in its sequel Shock Treatment (1981). This more expansive role is said to be the same character (the Criminologist in The Rocky Horror Picture Show is not named). In 1973, he played Lord Seacroft in the television series The Upper Crusts opposite Margaret Leighton, and in 1983, he starred alongside Coral Browne and Alan Bates in the award-winning made-for-TV film An Englishman Abroad. In 1985, he starred in an episode of the BBC-TV detective series Bergerac, entitled "What Dreams May Come?". Other well-known film work includes The Devil Rides Out, Mosquito Squadron, Cromwell and The Beast Must Die. In 1991, Gray co-starred with Oliver Tobias in the science-fiction film Firestar – First Contact for Ice International Films.
