Peter Vaughan
Birthday: 1923-04-04 Place of Birth: Wem, Shropshire, England
Synopsis
Peter Vaughan (1923-2016) was a British character actor famous for playing imposing, menacing or authoritative figures in film and television across several decades.
Acting
Albatross
Beth, a bookish teenager, befriends Emilia, an aspiring novelist who has just arrived in town. Emilia soon begins an affair with Beth's father that threatens to have devastating consequences.
Christmas at the Riviera
The assistant manager of a seaside hotel is left to run the building over the Christmas period.
Malice Aforethought
Dr. Edmund Bickleigh is married to a particularly overbearing woman who reminds him at every turn that he is living in her house. But the good doctor has outside interests to help him cope.
The Queen of Sheba's Pearls
Set in post-war England, a mysterious woman arrives at the Prettys' rural family home on the eve of young Jack's 16th birthday. Her remarkable likeness to Jack's mother, Emily, who tragically died in an accident eight years ago both baffles and unsettles the family. She even wears the same pearls that Emily wore.
Beauty
Tom Fitzhenry is an ugly and reclusive aristocrat who lives on his own in a large mansion. He despairs of ever having a relationship with a woman... until Cathy comes into his life when she and her father come to repair the house's ageing plumbing.
The Mother
A grandmother has a passionate affair with a man half her age, who is also sleeping with her daughter.
Lorna Doone
The year is 1675. England is threatened by religious and political rivalries. King Charles II's Catholic brother, James, is next in line for the throne, but many Protestants put their faith in Charles' illegitimate son, The Duke of Monmouth. On the king's death, conflict is inevitable... Over seven days journey from London, Exmoor is a primitive and lawless area. Here, farmer Jack Ridd lives with his wife Sarah, son John, and two daughters. The only shadow over their simple life is cast by the notorious outlaw family the Doones. The aristocratic Doones were banished from their ancestral lands and now live through looting, theft, and murder. Their brutality is legendary...
Making Love
Costanza is drinking a beer in a Prague pub, a summer night in 1968, while a violinist enters and starts playing a "canone inverso" for her. It is not a case, that music and that violin have a story behind that could concern her. It is the love story between Jeno Varga and the music, between Jeno and Sophie.
Hornblower: The Frogs and the Lobsters
Lieutenant Hornblower and his shipmates are sent to accompany a doomed royalist invasion of revolutionary France.
An Ideal Husband
Sir Robert Chiltern is a successful government minister, well-off and with a loving wife. All this is threatened when Mrs Cheveley appears in London with damning evidence of a past misdeed. Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring, an apparently idle philanderer and the despair of his father. Goring knows the lady of old, and, for him, takes the whole thing pretty seriously.
The Legend of 1900
The story of a virtuoso piano player who lives his entire life aboard an ocean liner. Born and raised on the ship, 1900 (Tim Roth) learned about the outside world through interactions with passengers, never setting foot on land, even for the love of his life. Years later, the ship may be destroyed, and a former band member fears that 1900 may still be aboard, willing to go down with the ship.
Les Misérables
In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
The Moonstone
Greg Wise (Sense and Sensibility) and Keeley Hawes (Karaoke) star in this sumptuous adaptation of Wilkie Collins' classic mystery, the first detective novel ever written. The Moonstone, a sacred Hindu diamond was stolen from the head of the Moon God, in its shrine by John Herncastle in 1799. The stone is said to be cursed if it is removed from the shrine. In 1848, a man named Franklin Blake announces to Rachel that the Moonstone has been bequeathed to her by Herncastle. Blake gives her the jewel on her birthday and offers to mount the jewel for her, in order that she might wear it. Inevitably, the jewel is found missing the next morning and Rachel believes Blake stole it. Determined to prove his innocence, Blake leaves in order to pursue the real truth behind the theft.
Our Friends in the North
An epic tale of a changing Britain over four decades, seen through the eyes of four friends.
The Secret Agent
In 1880s London, pornographic bookseller Verloc is a double agent for the Russian government, providing information to Chief Inspector Heat about a lazy anarchist organization. In order for the anarchists to be arrested, an act of terrorism must occur. So Verloc decides to set up bombs – which leads to tragedy – not only for himself but also for his family, including wife Winnie and brother-in-law, Stevie.
Dandelion Dead
This is a dramatisation of the true story of Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong, a solicitor and magistrate's clerk who lived in the small Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye. In 1921 he was arrested and charged with poisoning his domineering wife, Catherine, and later attempting to poison a business rival, Oswald Martin, by administering arsenic to them. At his trial, Armstrong claimed that he had bought the arsenic simply to kill the dandelions on his lawn. However he was convicted of murder and executed in 1922.
Dandelion Dead
This is a dramatisation of the true story of Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong, a solicitor and magistrate's clerk who lived in the small Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye. In 1921 he was arrested and charged with poisoning his domineering wife, Catherine, and later attempting to poison a business rival, Oswald Martin, by administering arsenic to them. At his trial, Armstrong claimed that he had bought the arsenic simply to kill the dandelions on his lawn. However he was convicted of murder and executed in 1922.
Fatherland
Fictional account of what might have happened if Hitler had won the war. It is now the 1960s and Germany's war crimes have so far been kept a secret. Hitler wants to talk peace with the US president. An American journalist and a German homicide cop stumble into a plot to destroy all evidence of the genocide.
The Remains of the Day
A rule bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.
King of the Wind
In 1727, an Arab colt is born with the signs of the wheat ear and the white spot on his heel: evil and good. And thus begins the life of Sham. He is a gift to the King of France, through a series of adventures with his faithful stable boy, Agba, he becomes the Godolphin Arabian, the founder of one of the greatest thoroughbred racing lines of all time.
Countdown to War
Based on a play, the story details the dramatic negotiations between UK, France, Poland, Nazi-Germany and USSR from the day Czechoslovakia fell, until Britain's declaration of war on Germany caused by Hitler's invasion of Poland.
The Bourne Identity
An unconscious man is washed ashore on the beach of a small French village during a heavy storm. A retired doctor takes care of the unconscious stranger. When the mysterious man recovers, he can't remember a thing...he does not know his name, he does not know where his flashback memories come from, and he does not know why the access code for an anonymous Swiss bank account is implanted in his thigh. As he seeks his own identity, things quickly become dangerous. There are attempts to kill him, he is well known in first class hotels across Europe, and worst of all, there are strange similarities between his memories and reported actions of the notorious terrorist, Carlos the Jackal.
The Bourne Identity
An unconscious man is washed ashore on the beach of a small French village during a heavy storm. A retired doctor takes care of the unconscious stranger. When the mysterious man recovers, he can't remember a thing...he does not know his name, he does not know where his flashback memories come from, and he does not know why the access code for an anonymous Swiss bank account is implanted in his thigh. As he seeks his own identity, things quickly become dangerous. There are attempts to kill him, he is well known in first class hotels across Europe, and worst of all, there are strange similarities between his memories and reported actions of the notorious terrorist, Carlos the Jackal.
Monte Carlo
An American writer on the Riviera courts a Russian singer who is spying on Nazis for revenge.
Haunted Honeymoon
Radio personalities Larry Abbot and Vickie Pearle are stars of a mystery show. Since they announced their engagement, Larry has been plagued by speech problems and, seeking out an unconventional cure, he returns to his boyhood home, a mansion in the countryside, bringing Vickie along. Larry reunites with numerous family members, but discovers that there are sinister things afoot within the walls of the creepy estate.
Brazil
Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.
