Peter Vaughan's Main TV Roles Show Character(s) Game of Thrones Maester Aemon Silk Michael Dodd Porridge (UK) Harry Grout Hornblower: The Frogs and the Lobsters Admiral Lor… Chancer (UK) Tom Franklyn Dandelion Dead (UK) Dr. Hinks The Jury (UK) Michael Col… The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (UK) Horace Dorr… Citizen Smith (UK) (1977) Dad Deadline Midnight (UK) Joe Dunn Fox (UK) Billy Fox Game, Set, and Match (UK) David Kimbe… Madigan Lyman Bleak Nightingales (UK) The Inspect… No Exit (UK) Calder Oliver's Travels (UK) Delaney The Gold Robbers (UK) DCS Cradock The Informer (UK) David Janner Zodiac (UK) Richard Meade

Main Movie Roles 2008 - Is Anybody There? 2007 - Death at a Funeral 2004 - The Life and Death of Peter Sellers 2000 - Canone inverso - making love 1999 - An Ideal Husband 1998 - The Legend of 1900 1998 - Les Miserables 1996 - The Secret Agent 1996 - The Crucible 1993 - The Remains of the Day 1990 - Mountains of the Moon 1986 - Haunted Honeymoon 1985 - Brazil 1984 - The Razor's Edge 1981 - The French Lieutenant's Woman 1981 - Time Bandits 1979 - Zulu Dawn 1974 - 11 Harrowhouse 1973 - The MacKintosh Man 1971 - Straw Dogs 1963 - The Victors 1960 - Village of the Damned 1959 - The 39 Steps

BIOGRAPHY:

A true character actor in the best sense of the word, offbeat British thesp Peter Vaughan's hefty frame could appear intimidating or marshmallow benevolent; his beady, hollow eyes menacing or tender; his mere presence menacing or avuncular. Adept at playing both sides of the law, his characters usually possessed a strange, somewhat wary countenance that seemed to keep his audience slightly off balance. A homely sort with a bloated face, jutting chin, sliver lips and pronounced nose, this veteran has been a stalwart presence for nearly fifty years. Born Peter Olm in 1923, he began on the stage and didn't enter films until 1959, well into his thirties.

Married in 1952 to rising actress Billie Whitelaw, Peter was primarily in the background at first, offering a cheapjack gallery of thugs, unsmiling cops, and foreign agents in movies. An easily unsympathetic bloke, he played unbilled policemen in his first two films, then slowly gravitated up the credits list. He appeared as the chief of police in the spy drama The Devil's Agent (1962), which also featured his wife, and then gained a bit more attention in a prime part as an offbeat insurance investigator in the programmer Smokescreen (1964), a role that propelled him into the higher ranks. Noticeably shady roles came with playing Tallulah Bankhead's seedy handyman who meets a fatal end in the Gothic horror Fanatic (1965) [aka Die! Die! My Darling!]; his villainous roles in the spy thrillers The Naked Runner (1967) opposite Frank Sinatra and The Man Outside (1967); a German thug in A Twist of Sand (1968); and Sgt. Walker in The Bofors Gun (1968).

Divorced from Whitelaw in 1966, he later married actress Lillias Walker, who had roles in a couple of his pictures: Malachi's Cove (1974) and Intimate Reflections (1974). TV became a large source of income for Vaughan in the 1970s, particularly in his role of Grouty in Porridge (1979) on both the large and small screen, and his quirky demeanor fitted like a glove for bizarre director Terry Gilliam, who cast him as the Ogre in Time Bandits (1981) and then as Mr. Helpman in Brazil (1985). For the past few decades he has maintained a healthy balance between film (including standout roles in Zulu Dawn (1979), The Remains of the Day (1993) and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)) and TV mini-movies, both contemporary and period. He is still performing past age 80.


TRIVIA:

• Has twice played a wheelchair-bound man in need of assistance in the restroom, once in _Brazil (1985)_ (qv) and again in _Death at a Funeral (2007)_ (qv).
• Has appeared in three different film versions of The Crucible as a different character each time.
• His brilliant performance as Denethor in the BBC radio dramatization of "The Lord of the Rings" is considered by some to be the unsurpassed and defining portrayal of this character.