Peter Vaughan was a star example of the sort of performer known as a “character actor” – he rarely led a cast, but he attracted a devoted following from audiences, critics and producers.
Remarkably, three generations of TV viewers associate him with a different major role. Despite appearing in only a few episodes of Porridge (1974-77), Vaughan put his wide frame and deep tones to such comically menacing effect as “Genial” Harry Grout, the HM Slade Prison godfather, that he became a stand-out character. Two decades later, he touchingly portrayed an elderly North-East trade unionist in Peter Flannery’s political epic Our Friends in the North (1996). And, almost 20 years on, he appeared, until last year, in the HBO fantasy mega-hit Game of Thrones, as Maester Aemon – a veteran member of the Night’s Watch. Playing a 100-year-old character, Vaughan joked about having to “age up” from his own mere nonagenarian experience.
Able to achieve vivid characterisation, with impact disproportionate to screen-time, Vaughan inevitably became a Dickens specialist for the BBC. He was the social climber Boffin in 1988’s Our Mutual Friend and (confirming a career-long talent for acting on either side of the thin blue line) impressively portrayed two Dickensian lawyers – Jaggers in 1967’s Great Expectations and Tulkinghorn in 1983’s Bleak House – plus the famous crook Bill Sikes in 1967’s Oliver Twist.
Though born in Shropshire – into a family with the unusual surname Ohm, later regularised to Vaughan – he had a particularly facility with London voices, such as the title character’s derisive prospective father-in-law in the revolutionary comedy Citizen Smith which, starting as Porridge ended, sealed Vaughan’s familiarity as a TV face.
Reliability can be a two-edged compliment – implying consistency within limitations – but Vaughan’s promise of reliable excellence earned him more than 200 screen appearances, mainly on TV, but also including short, sharp movie turns such as The Remains of the Day opposite Anthony Hopkins. Cameras liked his bright blue eyes.
Vaughan’s character in Our Friends in the North, Felix Hutchinson, had Alzheimer’s, and the actor’s research into the condition led him to become a campaigner for charities supporting those with dementia. Doing so, he always acknowledged his own medical and professional fortune in being able to go on working into his 10th decade.
To have reached 93 – and been acting in as huge a global hit as Game of Thrones at 92 – is a life extremely well lived. But it is a measure of his enduring talent that, even after so long a career, casting directors will continue to feel his absence from their files.
