Legendary star of countless Hammer Horror classics

Few actors have become as synonymous with the output of a single studio as Peter Cushing who died on 11 August, 1994, aged 81.

Mr Cushing made 19 appearances in Hammer Film productions, most famously as the amoral creator of evil Baron Frankenstein and as the destroyer of evil Dr Van Helsing.

With his hawk-like features and clipped delivery, Mr Cushing, often performing alongside his great friend, Christopher Lee, made some of the most memorable gothic horror movies of the era.

His virtuoso horror roles sometimes overshadow the fact that Mr Cushing was an extremely versatile actor who turned in memorable performances as Sherlock Holmes in Hound of the Baskervilles and Governor Tarkin in Star Wars.

Peter Wilton Cushing was born on 26 May 1913 in Kenley, Surrey . He was raised in Dulwich, South London , and left his first job as a surveyor’s assistant to take up a scholarship at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

After a spell in repertory theatre he moved to Hollywood in 1939 where he appeared in minor roles in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939) and Laurel and Hardy’s, A Chump at Oxford (1940).

Having moved back to England , Mr Cushing was turned down for military service on health grounds. He spent the Second World War in a theatre company touring military bases and during this period met actress Helen Beck who he married in 1948.

Mr Cushing worked in television during the early 1950s and achieved his first notable success playing Winston Smith in the 1954 adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984.

In 1957 he was cast as Baron Frankenstein in the first Hammer production, The Curse of Frankenstein and a year later played the vampire’s nemesis, Abraham Van Helsing in Dracula. He reprised both roles on a number of occasions over the following two decades and became a stalwart of the increasingly popular genre.

In 1958, Mr Cushing proved his versatility playing Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles and his performance remains one of the finest portrayals of the famous detective.

In the mid 1960s he played Dr Who in two film adaptations of the cult television series. In Dr Who and the Daleks and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD Mr Cushing bid to shed his “horror” image, by portraying the time-lord as a lovable eccentric.

In 1977, Mr Cushing appeared in one his most memorable roles as the sneeringly evil Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. His last film role was as Colonel William Raymond in 1986’s Biggles.

Mr Cushing never really recovered from the death of his wife, Helen, in 1971, saying in an interview with the Radio Times the following year that his loneliness was “almost unbearable.”

He was awarded an OBE in 1989 and spent his retirement painting watercolours and writing two volumes of memoirs – An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting (1989).

But it will be as the star of some of the great gothic horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s that Mr Cushing will be best remembered. The darkness of these films aside, there are few people who met him who do not speak of Mr Cushing as a kindly and generous man.

It is a fitting testament to the man and the actor Peter Cushing that he is affectionately referred to as “the gentleman of horror.”