He harboured a particular hatred for Sir John Gielgud; Gielgud would claim he always worried that when Wolfit achieved a great success, 'he now has enough money to hire a man to kill me.' It was said that Wolfit could never pronounce Gielgud's name 'without a hiss.' Yet the two men worked together on the film 'Becket' and neither side was wounded.
Although Sir Donald was a very good actor, he was also quite arrogant and always surrounded himself with inexperienced or lesser-talented actors, so that the role would always remain at the centre of the stage, unquestioned by a better performer.
When Laurence Olivier first played Richard III on stage in 1944, Wolfit's Richard had set the standard and was considered definitive, but Olivier's portrayal easily surpassed Wolfit's and became the new standard against which other performances of the role were judged.
His third wife Rosalind appeared on Broadway alongside Donald in 1947: she played Cordelia to his Lear, Rosalind to his Touchstone, Portia to his Shylock and Ophelia to his Hamlet.
He appeared in three films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Room at the Top (1958), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Becket (1964). Of these, only Lawrence of Arabia (1962) won in that category.
Although he was frequently accused of deliberately hiring mediocre actors for his theatre company so that he could overshadow them, in fact many distinguished theatre figures found their first opportunities under his management. Among them were Harold Pinter, Joan Greenwood, Eric Porter, Ronald Fraser and Alun Owen; most spoke of him with praise after they became famous.
His daughter Margaret Wolfit, with Chris Castor, was also a successful stage actress.
Despite being good, he was often mocked as a 'ham actor' because his company was filled with ordinary actors who could not overshadow the star. He gave his name to the character 'Wolfit' played by Spike Milligan in the groundbreaking 1950s radio comedy 'The Goon Show'; Milligan repeated the character in the 1956 film The Case of the Mukkinese Battle-Horn (1956), in which a 'resting' silent actor mistakenly walks into a police station instead of an employment exchange.
He was made a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the 1950 Queen's New Year Honours and received a Knight Bachelor in the 1957 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to drama.
In 1948 Donald finally married the actress Rosalind Iden, with whom he had long appeared. Rosalind was the daughter of the English director, actor and educator B. (Ben) Iden Payne (1881-1976) and the Edwardian actress Mona Limerick. Dr. Payne was internationally known as a Shakespeare director and for his modified Elizabethan staging. In 1936 he directed both Donald and his daughter in 'Troilus and Cressida' and 'Much Ado About Nothing' in Stratford Festival productions. From 1946 until his retirement in 1973, Payne, th…
His father was an accountant.
He got his first job teaching at a preparatory school in Eastbourne.
Sir Donald's first professional acting job came in the 1920s, in the company of a now-forgotten actor-manager, Charles Doran. Sir Ralph Richardson also began in the same company and at the same time. The two future actor-knights were not friends.
Harold Pinter played a knight in his company's production of King Lear.
His wife Rosalind Iden was his leading lady in most of his plays.