After starring in the lackluster Olympics film "The Games" and the abysmal love triangle story "Hello-Goodbye" (both 1970), Crawford concentrated on British TV and the London stage where he made a name for himself in the sex farce "No Sex Please, We're British" (1971), the short-lived musicals "Billy" (based on "Billy Liar") and "Flowers for Algernon" (based on the novel of the same name that was the basis of the 1968 feature "Charly"). His energetic, exuberant performance in the boisterous Cy Coleman musical "Barnum" (1981 in London; filmed for the BBC and later aired on PBS in the US) transformed Crawford into a popular musical theater star. His sensitive, archly-romantic portrayal of the tormented, masked antihero of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "The Phantom of the Opera" (1987 in London; 1988 on Broadway) turned him into a musical theater superstar and latter-day matinee idol.