In 1960, Bailie moved to Britain from South Africa, having been cast for a minor role in the film
Flame in the Streets (1961). Subsequently, he played one of the
bell boys in
Arthur Kopit's ''
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad'' (1961) with
Stella Adler playing Madame Rospettle. He then bluffed his way into weekly
repertory in
Barrow-in-Furness as a juvenile lead, though he was worried his inexperience would show. Recognising the need for training, he auditioned three times for a bursary to the
RADA, each time being accepted only as a fee-paying student, which he could not afford. He sent for the last of his standby money (£200), which he had left in Rhodesia, and paid for the first term (1963). At the end of the term, he persuaded John Fernald to allow him free tuition for the next two years.
Terry Hands was also a student at the same time, but had left earlier than Bailie and formed the
Everyman Theatre with Peter James in Liverpool. Upon leaving RADA, Bailie was invited to join the Everyman in 1964. Amongst other roles, he played Tolen in
The Knack..., Becket in
Murder in the Cathedral, Dion in
The Great God Brown,
MacDuff in
Macbeth and
Lucky in
Waiting for Godot. During the early 1970s, Bailie worked with
Stomu Yamashta at his Red Buddha Theatre. He was cast as the lead in a show called
Raindog, which required him to sing, dance, perform martial arts and gymnastics. He later admitted that this job was too demanding for him. When Yamashta offered him a small sum for his performance, he departed the theatre. He was then cast by
Michael E. Briant in 1976 to play the part of the villain "Dask" in the
Doctor Who serial
The Robots of Death. Bailie then took a long hiatus from his acting career for personal reasons. Between 1980 and 1989, he ran a furniture-making business. In 1990, he closed down the furniture business and restarted his acting career. Around this time, Bailie developed cancer in his lip, necessitating its removal and forcing him to relearn how to speak. While awaiting work in the acting field, he busied himself with CAD design, self-training, writing computer programs, and also doing health and safety work in the building industry. In the mid-1990s, after playing alongside
Brian Glover in
The Canterbury Tales, he made a comeback in the film business as "Skewer" in
Cutthroat Island (1995), then played an English Judge in
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), and also "The Engineer" in
Gladiator (2000). His character did not say any lines in the three films. Bailie found this to be a problem and proposed to director Gore Verbinski and writer Terry Rossio a storyline that Cotton was able to speak, but it was not included in the films. In 2014, Bailie joined the ensemble cast of the
British-
American short
Artificio Conceal for the role of Vitruvius. The film, written and directed by
Ayoub Qanir, was selected to film festivals worldwide, including the
Cannes Film Festival's Short Film Corner, the
Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the
Seattle International Film Festival. Bailie reprised his
Doctor Who role as Dask in the Kaldor City audio drama series. He was also involved in
Big Finish Productions audio dramas playing the
Celestial Toymaker. Bailie also worked as a professional photographer, with portraiture and landscapes being his speciality. He established a YouTube channel,
mdebailes, where he uploaded readings and performance excerpts. == Filmography ==