Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Is Ian McDiarmid still alive?
Ian McDiarmid (/məkˈdɜːrmɪd/; born 11 August 1944) is a Scottish character actor and director. He has appeared in 47 films since 1976. He portrayed Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars film series.[1] He has received an Olivier Award for Best Actor and a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performances.
He was the Hungarian dubbing voice of Ian McDiarmid in the "Star Wars Prequel Trilogy", and in "Return of the Jedi" VHS edition, 1992.
St Johnstone enjoyed great success when the stadium first opened. The club won promotion to the Premier Division in their first season at McDiarmid. In the first season back in the top flight, the average attendance at McDiarmid was 6,000, approximately three times what it had been at Muirton. These high attendances led the club to create space for another 600 seats, raising the capacity to over 10,700. A record home attendance of 10,721 was set by a home game against Rangers on 26 February 1991. McDiarmid Park also hosted matches of the Scotland under-21 team and the Scotland women's national team. By the mid-1990s, however, attendances had drifted down to below 4,000, although this was still nearly double what they had been at Muirton.
In 1990 the Scot Ian McDiarmid and the South African Jonathan Kent took over as joint artistic directors.
In the 2004 re-release of The Empire Strikes Back, a brief scene between Darth Vader and a hologram of Emperor Palpatine was updated to include McDiarmid. The Emperor was originally voiced by Clive Revill for that scene, and visually portrayed by Marjorie Eaton.[14][15][16] With this addition to The Empire Strikes Back, McDiarmid has now appeared in every live-action film version in which Palpatine appears.
From 1990, McDiarmid and Jonathan Kent served as the artistic directors of the Almeida Theatre in Islington, London, gaining the commitment of prominent actresses such as Glenda Jackson and Claire Bloom for their productions.[4] The two men resigned in 2001 with the venue in good shape.[5] In 1998, they shared the Special Evening Standard Award for Theatrical Achievement of the Year. Their tenure was marked by a string of highly successful performances involving actors such as Kevin Spacey and Ralph Fiennes.[6] While connected with the Almeida, McDiarmid directed plays such as Venice Preserv'd (1986) and Hippolytus (1991). In 2002, McDiarmid won Almeida Theatre's Critic's Circle Award for Best Actor for his role as Teddy in a revival of Brian Friel's Faith Healer. Five years later in 2006, he reprised this role in his debut on Broadway.[7] Directed by Kent, he performed alongside Ralph Fiennes and Cherry Jones, and won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play. From April to June 2012, he played the title role in Timon of Athens at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.[8]
Nicholas Hytner (1985–1989), Ian McDiarmid (1986–1988) and Phyllida Lloyd (1990–1991).
In January 2016, BBC Radio 3 revived the play with a cast that included Derek Jacobi, Ian McDiarmid, Geoffrey Whitehead and Pippa Nixon.
In September 2016, McDiarmid starred in the audio podcast drama series . He played Cuttings, a ham radio buff who picks up a mysterious voice (Joy McAvoy) coming from an abandoned amusement park.
In 1986, still in New York, McDiarmid was diagnosed HIV positive and decided to return to Australia. Back in Sydney McDiarmid devoted himself to producing art which raised awareness of the AIDS epidemic and empowered those who were HIV positive. His influential one-person exhibition focussing on the sexual and cultural politics of AIDS, 'Kiss of Light', was held at the Syme Dodson Gallery, Sydney in 1991. This exhibition inspired the AIDS Council of New South Wales to commission from McDiarmid a series of five safe sex and safe injecting posters which were launched at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in April 1992. 
McDiarmid's performance as Palpatine was generally well received by critics. Todd McCarthy of Variety commented, "Entertaining from start to finish and even enthralling at times, 'Sith' has some acting worth writing home about, specifically McDiarmid's dominant turn as the mastermind of the evil empire."[80] Ed Halter of The Village Voice wrote that "Ian McDiarmid's unctuous Emperor turns appropriately vampiric as he attempts to draw Anakin into the Sith fold with promises of eternal life."[81] Still, his performance was not without detractors; David Edelstein of Slate critiqued, "McDiarmid isn't the subtlest of satanic tempters. With his lisp and his clammy little leer, he looks like an old queen keen on trading an aging butt-boy (Count Dooku) for fresh meat — which leaves Anakin looking more and more like a 15-watt bulb."[82] McDiarmid had expressed interest in reprising the role of Palpatine in the planned Star Wars: Underworld TV series,[83] which remains un-produced.
He portrayed Harry Hackamore in Sam Shepard's play Seduced. McDiarmid described Hackamore as a Howard Hughes-type character. To play the part, he was made up in prosthetics, including a false beard and long fingernails. McDiarmid was only 37 at the time, and this convinced George Lucas and Richard Marquand that he could convincingly play a much older character in extreme cinematic close-up, which helped him land the role of Palpatine.[9]
He has also worked with the Star Wars expanded universe as the voice of Palpatine in the video game adaptations of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. McDiarmid made a small appearance during Celebration Europe. On 23–26 August 2012, he attended Celebration VI in Orlando, Florida and had his own show titled The Phantom Menace: Ian McDiarmid, hosted by James Arnold Taylor, in which he talked about his experience working on Star Wars and how he landed the role of Palpatine. Ian McDiarmid also voiced a pig version of Palpatine for a promo video on Angry Birds Star Wars II, entitled "Join the Pork Side".[17]
In 1968, McDiarmid received a gold medal for his work, the first of many recognitions given to him for his work in the theatre. McDiarmid claimed he became its recipient "by doing all the boring jobs you have to do when you are young, to eke out an existence."[3]
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Jonathan Kent revived the play again for the Gate Theatre in Dublin early in 2006, this time with Ralph Fiennes, Ingrid Craigie and Ian McDiarmid. This production opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on 4 May 2006, with Cherry Jones as Grace. On Broadway it received four Tony Award nominations and won the Best Featured Actor in a Play, Ian McDiarmid.
McDiarmid has won praise as an actor and director in British theatre. He has starred in several Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet (1972), The Tempest (1974, 2000), Much Ado About Nothing (1976), Trevor Nunn's 1976 Macbeth (television 1978), The Merchant of Venice (1984) and King Lear (2005). He played Ivanov in Tom Stoppard's play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the Mermaid Theatre in 1978.
In the 2014 BBC Radio dramatisation, Merrin is voiced by Ian McDiarmid.
In "The Empire Strikes Back", the Emperor appears via hologram. In the original theatrical 1980 release, he was portrayed by Marjorie Eaton under heavy makeup and voiced by Clive Revill. The Emperor was later played by Ian McDiarmid in "Return of the Jedi", and McDiarmid reprised the role for the prequel trilogy. To reflect this, the 2004 DVD release of "The Empire Strikes Back" replaced the woman with McDiarmid and new dialogue was written.
In 2017 he played Biesenthal in "Marathon Man" with Ian McDiarmid for Radio 4.
McDiarmid played intelligence chief LeClerc in a 2009 BBC Radio dramatization of John le Carré's The Looking Glass War.
In part due to Richardson's death in 2007, plans for a television transfer were abandoned. However, a radio sequel – "The Pickerskill Reports" – aired on BBC Radio 4 in four parts from 28 August 2009. It starred Ian McDiarmid in the Pickerskill role, with support by Thomas Brodie Sangster, Tony Gardner and Philip Madoc. Moira Petty of "The Stage" praised it by saying that "Ian McDiarmid has stepped brilliantly into the central role." Gillian Reynolds of "The Sunday Telegraph", reviewing the second series in 2011, called it "scorchingly funny". This second series added Sheridan Smith to the cast.
In April 2018 the BBC announced that Archive on 4 would transmit "50 Years On: Rivers of Blood", a programme marking the 50th anniversary of the speech. Ian McDiarmid would read the entire speech, the first time it would be broadcast on British radio, and it would be discussed and analysed. In the days before the broadcast, there was criticism from a number of commentators of the BBC's decision to broadcast the still-controversial speech.
McDiarmid took an early role as Mickey Hamilton, a killer intent on avenging the death of his wife and child in The Professionals for London Weekend Television. In 1990, he starred in the Inspector Morse episode "Masonic Mysteries" as the psychopathic con man Hugo DeVries. In 1997, McDiarmid played the villain, Ronald Hinks, in the Touching Evil two-part episode "Through the Clouds/The Lost Boys". He played the role of police detective Porfiry Petrovich in the BBC's 2002 adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In 2003, McDiarmid took the role of the Stuart statesman Edward Hyde, in the BBC series Charles II: The Power and The Passion.
The main stars of the film are William Hurt as Arkady Renko, Lee Marvin as Jack Osborne, Joanna Pacula as Irina Asanova, Rikki Fulton as Major Pribluda, Brian Dennehy as William Kirwill, Ian McDiarmid as Professor Andreev, Michael Elphick as Pasha and Ian Bannen as Prosecutor Iamskoy. James Horner wrote the score. Ralf D. Bode was cinematographer.