Actors Who Have Played Sherlock Holmes. Wesley Snipes has taken out more in single scenes, no doubt. Ryan and Slater agreed, and Cushing later said performing the part was his most pleasant experience since his wife had died four years earlier. [86] Cushing also starred in several horror films released in 1975. As a result, playwright Edward Percy was brought in to make modifications to the script, though the rewrites pushed filming into early 1960 and brought additional costs to the production. [14][151] In accordance with his wishes, Cushing had a low-profile funeral with family and friends, although hundreds of fans and well-wishers came to Canterbury to pay their respects. [15][26] In 1942, the Nol Coward play Private Lives was touring the military stations and hospitals in the British Isles, and the actor playing the lead role of Elyot Chase was called to service. Among them were Land of the Minotaur, where he played Baron Corofax, the evil leader of a Satanic cult opposed by a priest played by Donald Pleasence. Cushing was cast (again uncredited) in one of a series of short films in an entry in the MGM series The Passing Parade, which focused on strange-but-true historical events. Cushing later appeared in The Vampire Lovers (1970), an erotic Hammer horror film about a lesbian vampire, adapted in part from the Sheridan Le Fanu novella Carmilla. [147] In a silent tribute to Helen, a shot of Van Helsing's desk includes a photograph of her. Peter Wilton Cushing OBE (26 May 1913 - 11 August 1994) was an English actor. He was paid more for Star Wars than the lead actors. You have my permission to publish that really, you know, dear boy, it's all just killing time. Crisp and executive producer Kevin Francis both in turn sought to portray them as two old-fashioned men in a rapidly changing world. [87][102] Cushing wrote the forewords to two books about the detective: Peter Haining's Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook (1974) and Holmes of the Movies: The Screen Career of Sherlock Holmes (1976), by David Stuart Davies. [98], In July 1969, Cushing appeared as the straight man in The Morecambe & Wise Show, the British comedy series. The set provided technical difficulties, and all of Cushing's lines had to be post-synched. Cushing reprised the role of Baron Victor Frankenstein in five sequels. [14][28][29][145], In 1971 Cushing's wife died of emphysema. "[50] Donald F. Glut, a writer and filmmaker who wrote a book about the portrayals of Frankenstein, said the inner warmth of Cushing's off-screen personality was apparent on-screen even despite the horrific elements of Frankenstein, which helped add a layer of likability to the character. The actor has to smoke a pipe, but he did not like it. After attending the London premiere, she was reportedly "taken aback" and "dazzled" with the effect of seeing Cushing on screen again. Lee once again starred as Dracula. [41] Director Val Guest said he was particularly impressed with Cushing's preparation and ability to plan which props to best use to enhance his performance, so much so that Cushing started to become known as "Props Peter". Cushing appeared in several other Hammer films, including The Abominable Snowman (1957), The Mummy and The Hound of the Baskervilles (both 1959), the last of which marked the first of the several occasions he portrayed the detective Sherlock Holmes. I remember quite vividly the sincere anguish he so openly expressed to me when his beloved wife Helen passed away. Peter Cushing Among my many acting heroes was the marvelous Peter Cushing whom I both loved and respected. ", Thanks to his former teacher Davies, Cushing continued to appear in school productions during this time, as well as amateur plays such as W.S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea,[12] George Kelly's The Torch-Bearers, and The Red Umbrella, by Brenda Girvin and Monica Cosens. [10] As a result, while the film did well at the box-office with its target audience, it drew mixed to negative reviews from the critics. Cushing agreed to take his place with very little notice or time to prepare, and earned a salary of ten pounds a week for the job. [61], In 1959, Cushing agreed to reprise the role of Van Helsing in the sequel, The Brides of Dracula (1960). As a Hammer Film actor, he portrayed Baron Frankenstein, Dr. Van Helsing, and . They immediately accepted, and among the works Cushing recorded was The Return of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of thirteen one-hour stories. [10] Director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp both said the portrayal of Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow was intended to resemble that of Cushing's old horror film performances. [64] Cushing and Lee both reprised their respective roles in the sequel The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974), which was known in the United States as Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride. [20] Cushing was hired as a stand-in for scenes that featured both characters played by Louis Hayward, who had the dual lead roles of King Louis XIV and Philippe of Gascony. He and his older brother David were raised first in Dulwich Village, a south London suburb, and then later back in Surrey. [4][42], In an interview included on the DVD release of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), Lee said of his friend's death: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, I don't want to sound gloomy, but at some point of your lives, every one of you will notice that you have in your life one person, one friend whom you love and care for very much. Peter Sellers died young, and in the decades since his passing, debate about his character and behavior has rarely ceased, with a great number of well-researched biographies and a big-budget movie, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, trying to get a grip on the reverse side of this most gifted creator of characters, to show something of the real [29], Cushing recorded occasional radio spots and appeared in week-long stints as a featured player in London's Q Theatre, but otherwise work was difficult to come by. 1965. "[7] A fan of comics and toy collectibles in his youth, Cushing earned money by staging puppet shows for family members with his glove-puppets and toys. Others closed after a few showings, like an ambitious five-hour stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace that opened and closed in 1943 in London's Phoenix Theatre. During that meeting, Cushing was given a walk-on part as a courier in that night's production of J.B. Priestley's Cornelius. Instead, Cushing asked to play Arthur Grymsdyke,[105] a kind, working-class widower who gets along well with the local children, but falls subject to a smear campaign by his snobbish neighbours. [10] However, Cushing was very proud of his experiences with the Hammer films, and never resented becoming known as a horror actor. Cushing also wrote a children's book called The Bois Saga, a story based on the history of England. Even though Peter Cushing was on screen for only a . [155][156], In 2008, fourteen years after his death, Cushing's image was used in a set of stamps issued by the Royal Mail honouring Hammer Studios films on the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Dracula. [127] Henry provided the on-set capture and voice work with the reference material augmented and mapped over his performance like a digital body-mask. [107] His performance in Tales from the Crypt won him the Best Male Actor award at the 1971 French Convention of Fantasy Cinema in France. He regularly applied for auditions and openings for roles he found in the arts-oriented newspaper The Stage, but was turned down repeatedly due to his lack of professional experience in the theatre. The horror films were produced by Hammer Films in Britain. Lawrence broke off the engagement citing his frequent crying and bringing his parents on dates. "Who wants to see me as Hamlet? Cushing often appeared alongside actor Christopher Lee, who became one of his closest friends, and occasionally with the American horror star Vincent Price. In 1987, a watercolour painting Cushing painted was accepted by Prince Edward and auctioned at a charity event he organised to raise funds for The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme. [10] Cushing saw a promotional poster for The Mummy that showed Lee's character with a large hole in his chest, allowing a beam of light to pass through his body. O'Flinn, Paul (1983). UnknownQTY 5 yr. ago Cushing later said his unscreened scenes alongside Hayward were terrible performances, but that his experience on the film provided an excellent opportunity to learn and observe how filming on a studio set worked. Christopher Lee had asked me to organise one thing: a television and a VHS player in a private room and to have some alone time with Peter. Fans of classic films may remember the sappy 1956 movie "The Conqueror." It was a movie centered on the love affair between a . Peter Cushing may have been best known for bringing life to ghostly characters, but in an unlikely twist, the actor was brought back from the dead himself in 2016. . He earned particular acclaim for his lead performance as Winston Smith in a BBC adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954). "[32], Hamlet won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and earned Cushing praise for his performance. PETER CUSHING, the prolific and . But he never did it with that same natural panache. In the skit, Cushing portrayed King Arthur, while the other two gave comedic portrayals of characters like Merlin and the knights of the Round Table. His dialog usually runs along the lines of, 'But good heavens, man! Although one of her lines referred to Tarkin's "foul stench," she said the actual actor smelled like "linen and lavender," something Cushing attributed to his tendency to wash and brush his teeth thoroughly before filming because of his self-consciousness about bad breath. His daughter Antonia told the Hollywood Reporter that he passed on due to natural causes. [120] The close-up shots of Cushing aboard the Death Star, shown right before the battlestation is destroyed, were actually extra footage taken from previously-shot scenes with Cushing that did not make the final film. "[71], Although he appeared in both television and stage productions, Cushing preferred the medium of film, which allowed his perfectionist nature to work out the best performance possible. This article incorporates text from a free content work. [21] Around the same time, Cushing played the original nineteenth century Van Helsing in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (also 1974), a co-production between Hammer Studios and the Shaw Brothers Studio, which brought Chinese martial arts into the Dracula story. [72] Lee later claimed to be awestruck by Cushing's ability to incorporate many different props and actions into his performance simultaneously, whether reading, smoking a pipe, drinking whiskey, filing through papers or other things while portraying Holmes. [101], In 1971, Cushing contacted the Royal National Institute for the Blind and offered to provide voice acting for some of their audiobooks. Filmed on location in Munich, Cushing played Otto Wesendonck, the husband of poet Mathilde Wesendonck, who in the film is portrayed as having an affair with Wagner. In the film, Clive tries to shoot himself twice but the gun misfires, then he fires a third time at a pitcher of water and the gun works perfectly. One tradition says that Peter had at least one daughter but there is no confirmation of this. [139] He hand-painted many and used the Little Wars rule set by H. G. Wells for miniature wargaming. It was so successful that he learned how to screen print and began designing scarves professionally. He and his older brother David were raised first in Dulwich Village, a south London suburb, and then later back in Surrey. Shooting ran from September to November 1939,[23] and the film was released in 1940, drawing Cushing's first semblance of attention and critical praise. To their surprise, however, Cushing recovered well enough to be released from the hospital,[149] and although his health continued to gradually decline, Cushing lived another twelve years without any operative treatment or chemotherapy. 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