Pat Roach receiving affectionate cheering from the spectators. He was trained by Alf Kent, his first official wrestling match was against George Selko in 1960. Roach held both the British and European Heavyweight Wrestling Championships at one time. Roach made his acting debut as the red-bearded bouncer in the Korova Milkbar in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971). He worked on another Kubrick film "Barry Lyndon" (1975), where he played a hand-to-hand brawler named 'Toole' who engages Ryan O'Neal (as the title character) in fist fight. Roach went on to play a number of strong-man supporting character roles in cinema films in
The Luck of Barry Lyndon of trying to get the lad killed in battle. Then his own child—Bryan—dies in a tragic horse-riding accident. Combined with Barry's own profligate spending practices, he is ruined on many levels. As the "memoir" ends, (Redmond) Barry Lyndon is separated from his wife, and lodged in Fleet Prison. A small stipend allows him to live in moderate luxury, and his elderly mother lodges close by to tend to him. He spends the last nineteen years of his life in prison, dying of alcoholism-related illness. Stanley Kubrick adapted the novel into the film "Barry Lyndon", released in 1975. Unlike the film,