Cushing's biggest claim to fame besides Star Wars was his tenure in the Hammer Horror films where he acted opposite Christopher Lee. Peter Wilton Cushing was born on May 26, 1913 in Kenley, Surrey, England, to Nellie Maria (King) and George Edward Cushing, a quantity surveyor. [136], Cushing wrote two autobiographies, Peter Cushing: An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting: Memoirs of the Hammer Years (1988). Here is all you want to know, and more! Very few. Peter Wilton Cushing OBE (26 May 1913 - 11 August 1994) was an English actor. [18] In the autumn of 1946, after the war ended, Cushing unsuccessfully auditioned for the part of Paul Verrall in a stage production of the play Born Yesterday that was being staged by famed actor and director Laurence Olivier. That person is so close to you that you are able to share some things only with him. [11] Cushing hated the job, where he remained for three years without promotion or advancement due to his lack of ambition in the profession. He made me believe he was evil and cruel. [65], Although most well known for his roles in the Frankenstein and Dracula films, Cushing appeared in a wide variety of other Hammer productions during this time. 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. ", British Academy Television Award for Best Actor, Coulsdon and Purley Urban District Council, Entertainments National Service Association, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, "Great Britons" commemorative postage stamp, Lawrence Van Helsing and Lorrimer Van Helsing, Medalla Sitges en Plata de Ley Award for Best Actor, "Horror actor Peter Cushing dead at age 81", Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Haeritage of Horror, Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror, "The effect was achieved by drawing on preexisting footage of the actor, particularly his work in A New Hope", "the CGI used to repurpose the footage may not age well", "Rogue One VFX head: 'We didn't do anything Peter Cushing would've objected to', "CGI resurrection of Peter Cushing is thrilling but is it right? [134] The final notable roles of Cushing's career were in the comedy Top Secret! "How Jim fixed it for horror actor Cushing" (8 May 2004). When Cushing died, Lee said, "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. [58] Cushing said one of the biggest challenges during filming was not missing whenever he struck a prop stake with a mallet and drove it into a vampire's heart. Although the idea was ultimately abandoned before filming began, Cushing and Prowse rehearsed those scenes in a set built by computer animation artist Larry Cuba. [21] He once said that he learned his parts "from cover to cover" before filming began. [21][53] The two men continued to work together in many films for Hammer, and their names became synonymous with the company. As a Hammer Film actor, he portrayed Baron Frankenstein, Dr. Van Helsing, and . The set provided technical difficulties, and all of Cushing's lines had to be post-synched. He married actress Helen Beck in 1943. [10] In 1986, he appeared on the British television show Jim'll Fix It, hosted by Jimmy Savile, in which it was arranged for the wishes of guests to be granted. [13] He spent the next three years in an apprenticeship at Southampton Rep.,[10] auditioning for character roles both there and in other surrounding theatres, eventually amassing almost 100 individual parts. It is also difficult to visualise Cushing - at least for me - without also visualising Christopher Lee. [115][116][117][118][119] During rehearsals, Lucas originally planned for Tarkin and Vader to use a giant screen filled with computerised architectural representations of hallways to monitor the whereabouts of Skywalker, Solo and Organa. Peter Wilton Cushing was born on May 26, 1913 in Kenley, Surrey, England, to Nellie Maria (King) and George Edward Cushing, a quantity surveyor. Parents who let children . [39] For that film, he travelled to Spain and filmed scenes on location in the castles of Manzanares el Real and El Escorial. [28][35] Nevertheless, a second televised production was filmed and aired, and Cushing eventually drew both critical praise and acting awards, further cementing his reputation as one of Britain's biggest television stars. [105], In 1975, Cushing was anxious to return to the stage, where he had not performed in ten years. 1965. He portrayed heroes and villains with equal skill. This caused a great deal of pain for him during shooting, but the costume designers did not have enough time to get him another pair. [112] However, Cushing has claimed that Lucas originally approached him to play the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and only decided to cast him as Tarkin instead after the two met each other. Although not a particular fan of science fiction, Cushing accepted the part because he believed his audience would love Star Wars and enjoy seeing him in the film. The cause was cancer, The Associated Press reported. Actually, I'm a gentle fellow. [151] In 2013, Cushing was honoured by the Royal Mail as one of ten people selected for their "Great Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.[157]. The episodes aired in 1968. ", "How a Holby City actor brought one of Star Wars' most iconic characters back to life", "See the Stunning Detail That Went into Recreating Two Star Wars Characters For Rogue One", "What Peter Cushing's Digital Resurrection Means for the Industry", "CUSHING, PETER (19131994) The Bois Saga", "Peter Cushing's Obituary The Vegetarian (Autumn 1994)", "Peter Cushing, actor, Dies at 81; Known for Playing Frankenstein", "Royal Mail celebrates 'Great Britons' with launch of latest special stamp collection", The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Cushing&oldid=1136944646, Alumni of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Best Actor BAFTA Award (television) winners, Officers of the Order of the British Empire, People associated with the Vegetarian Society, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2022, Internet Broadway Database person ID same as Wikidata, Turner Classic Movies person ID different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This film was "riffed" on 14 April 2017 as part of the Season One (episode 14) release of, Season 1, episode 20: "The Escape of Rudolf Hess", Season 2, episode 7: "Drama '62: Peace with Terror", Season 1, episode 4: "La Grande Breteche", Season 1, episode 5: "The Counterfeit Trap", Four separately recorded interviews, (with, Long running gag involving being owed payment, This page was last edited on 2 February 2023, at 00:06. [7] Cushing harboured aspirations for the arts all throughout his youth, especially acting. [68] However, Cushing was able to star in Twins of Evil (also 1971), a prequel of sorts to The Vampire Lovers, as Gustav Weil, the leader of a group of religious puritans trying to stamp out witchcraft and satanism. [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. It was also turned down by Christopher Lee, and eventually went to Donald Pleasence, another of Cushing's former co-stars. [39] Cushing, who enjoyed the tale as a child,[10] had his agent John Redway inform the company of Cushing's interest in playing the protagonist, Baron Victor Frankenstein. [1] They went on to make two other films together, Legend of the Werewolf (1975) and The Masks of Death (1984) with the actor playing Sherlock Holmes once more. He was forced to withdraw from the film to care for his wife, and was ultimately replaced by Andrew Keir. Peter Cushing's former partners: Peter Cushing's former wife was Helen Cushing. 2014-12-17 19:28:59. Allon, Yoram; Cullen, Del; and Patterson, Hannah (2002). [43] He also starred in the film adaptation of the Graham Greene novel The End of the Affair (1955) as Henry Miles, an important civil servant and the cuckolded husband of Sarah Miles, played by Deborah Kerr. [111], Film director George Lucas approached Cushing with the hopes of casting the actor in his upcoming space fantasy film, Star Wars. In 1959, he began his career in the movie The Hound of the Baskervilles by Terence Fisher with Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville. His is most identified with the horror films of Hammer Pictures, often sharing the screen with Christopher Lee. There was no reference to such an injury in the film script, and when he asked the publicity department why it was on the poster, they said it was simply meant to serve as a shocking image to promote the movie. When this hindered the post-synching process, Olivier leaned in close to Cushing's face and said, "Now drown me. [13] Cushing often learned and practised his lines in an attic at work, under the guise that he was putting ordnance survey maps into order. Early life [ edit ] Child was born in Montclair, New Jersey , on January 15, 1902, to Bertha Cushing and Charles Tripler Child. Studio executives were pleased with Cushing's performance, and there was talk among Hollywood insiders grooming him for stardom. His career was revitalised once he started to work in live television plays, and he soon became one of the most recognisable faces in British television. [139] He hand-painted many and used the Little Wars rule set by H. G. Wells for miniature wargaming. "[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. [81], He appeared in the biographical epic film John Paul Jones (1959), in which Robert Stack played the title role of the American naval fighter in the American Revolutionary War. [27] During this tour he met Violet Hlne "Helen" Beck, a former dancer who was starring in the lead female role of Amanda Prynne. [106] After Cushing was cast in the role, several changes were made to the script at his suggestion. [21] Cushing became very ill with dysentery during filming and lost a considerable amount of weight as a result. [78] Among his final Hammer roles was Fear in the Night (1972), where he played a one-armed school headmaster apparently terrorising the protagonist, played by Judy Geeson. Did peter cushing have any children? Moorehead claimed she got the illness from a feature film she starred in, and she was not the only one. Both he and his wife feared Cushing would become typecast into horror roles, but he continued to take them because they guaranteed regular work. [18] After Cushing attempted the accent and failed, Olivier replied, "Well, I appreciate you not wasting my time. The film failed to make a mark in critical terms as its source material (the classic novel Seven Keys to Baldpate) had already been adapted several times before. As a Hammer Film actor, he portrayed Baron Frankenstein, Dr. Van Helsing, and Sherlock Holmes. [121], When Star Wars was first released in 1977, most preliminary advertisements touted Cushing's Tarkin as the primary antagonist of the film, not Vader;[122] Cushing was extremely pleased with the final film, and he claimed his only disappointment was that Tarkin was killed and could not appear in the subsequent sequels. [35] His largest television success from this period was the leading role of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, (1954) an adaptation by Nigel Kneale of George Orwell's novel of the same name about a totalitarian regime. [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. They immediately accepted, and among the works Cushing recorded was The Return of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of thirteen one-hour stories. [44], During a brief quiet period following Cushing's television work, he read in trade publications about Hammer, a low-budget production company seeking to adapt Mary Shelley's horror novel Frankenstein into a new film. [20], Only a few days after filming on The Man in the Iron Mask was completed, Cushing was in the Schwab's Drug Store, a famous Sunset Boulevard hangout spot for actors, when he learned producer Hal Roach was seeking an English actor for a comedy film starring Laurel and Hardy. ", 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. When Peter Cushing was a child, his mother dressed him as a girl. [13][15] Cushing continued to pursue a scholarship, writing twenty-one letters to the school,[15] until actor and theatre manager Bill Fraser finally agreed to meet Cushing in 1935 simply so he could ask him in person to stop writing. They were the best of friends. one didn't go to work if you had children. [10] Along with Alec Guinness, who was ultimately cast as Kenobi, Cushing was among the best known actors at the time to appear in Star Wars, as the rest of the cast were then relatively unknown. The Hammer horror star, who lived in Whitstable for the final 25 years of his life, appeared in . Later that year he was set to appear in Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971), an adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel The Jewel of Seven Stars. "Peter Cushing: The First Gentleman of Horror". [90][93], Cushing appeared in a handful of horror films by the independent Amicus Productions, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), as a man who could see into the future using Tarot cards;[94] The Skull (1965), as a professor who became possessed by a spiritual force embodied within a skull;[95] and Torture Garden (1967), as a collector of Edgar Allan Poe relics who is robbed and murdered by a rival. [36] Other successful television ventures during this time included Epitaph for a Spy, The Noble Spaniard, Beau Brummell,[35] Portrait by Peko,[37] and Anastasia, the latter of which won Cushing the Daily Mail National Television Award for Best Actor of 195354. Text taken from Peter Cushing, Wookieepedia, Wikia. List of the best Peter Cushing movies, ranked best to worst with movie trailers when available. [76] The next year, Cushing starred as an Ebenezer Scrooge-like manager of a bank being robbed in the Hammer thriller film Cash on Demand (1961). Peter Bogdanovich's passing was announced by one of his daughters, Antonia, on Thursday, January 6. Hope was the name of a whaling ship sailing from Scotland's Peterhead to Greenland. During this period, he lived with Joyce Broughton and her family at their homes in Hartley, Kent. Never harmed a fly. "Talking toPeter Cushing". [14][28][29][145], In 1971 Cushing's wife died of emphysema. His next role was in Vigil in the Night (1940), which was a much larger part and played opposite Carole Lombard. [41] Despite this continued success in live television, Cushing found the medium too stressful and wished to return to film. Cushing sought and was cast in the role. [61], In 1959, Cushing agreed to reprise the role of Van Helsing in the sequel, The Brides of Dracula (1960). [10] Cushing met a Columbia Pictures employee named Larry Goodkind, who wrote him a letter of recommendation and directed him to acquaintances Goodkind knew at the company Edward Small Productions. He also won best actor awards from the Guild of Television Producers in 1955,[39] and from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1956. [99][141] He was an ardent vegetarian for most of his life who served as a patron with the Vegetarian Society from 1987 until his death. The supremely talented British actor portrayed some of horror literature's best-loved heroes . During filming he asked director Terence Fisher for permission to drive a harpoon through the mummy's body during a fight scene, to explain the poster image. [91] He tried to keep his performance identical to his portrayal of Holmes from The Hound of the Baskervilles. 1959 - 1984. Lee once again starred as Dracula. He and his older brother David were raised first in Dulwich Village, a south London suburb, and then later back in Surrey. Here are five little-known facts behind the man who brought the Grand Moff to life. Cushing's biographer Tony Earnshaw said Cushing's performance in The Masks of Death was arguably the actor's best interpretation of the role, calling it "the culmination of a life-time as a Holmes fan, and more than a quarter of a century of preparation to play the most complex of characters". Did Peter have any children. Nevertheless, he worked hard to master the lines so they sounded natural and that his character appeared intelligent and confident. [52], The Curse of Frankenstein was an overnight success, bringing both Cushing and Lee worldwide fame. Most, however, were complimentary of Cushing's performance,[50] claiming it added a layer of distinction and credibility to the film. [28] Shot in dynamic colour with a 65,000-budget, the film became known for its heavy usage of gore and sexual content. Though only in his early 50s at the time, Cushing regularly played decrepit characters. [77] Cushing and director Peter Graham Scott did not get along well during filming and at one point, when the two were having a disagreement on set, Cushing turned to cameraman Len Harris and said, "Take no notice Len. "[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. At the age of 82, Peter died at his Los Angeles, California home. 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. Peter Cushing was born in Kenley, Surrey, England, on May 26, 1913. Despite performing in a string of roles, including one as Osric in Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Hamlet (1948), Cushing struggled greatly to find work during this period. The first was J.B. Priestley's Eden End, which was televised in December 1951. [143], Cushing was known among his colleagues for his gentle and gentlemanly demeanour, as well as his professionalism and rigorous preparation as an actor. I shall remember you. Accent and failed, Olivier leaned in close to Cushing 's wife died of.... The arts all throughout his youth, especially acting south London suburb, and she was not the only.! Studio executives were pleased with Cushing 's former co-stars played opposite Carole Lombard former partners Peter... Years of his daughters, Antonia, on Thursday, January 6 former:. 8 May 2004 ) H. G. Wells for miniature wargaming with Joyce Broughton her. Scotland & # x27 ; s best-loved heroes you want to know, and later... 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And failed, Olivier replied, `` Now drown me claimed she got the illness from feature. First in Dulwich Village, a collection of thirteen one-hour stories were made to the script at Los... ] the final notable roles of Cushing 's performance, and among the works Cushing recorded was the return Sherlock. Homes in Hartley, Kent was also turned down by Christopher Lee and! The name of a whaling ship sailing from Scotland & # x27 ; s former partners: Peter Cushing Wookieepedia! Back in Surrey 145 ], in 1975, Cushing was a much larger part played. Talented British actor portrayed some of horror literature & # x27 ; s best-loved.. Associated Press reported age of 82, Peter died at his Los Angeles, California.... Who lived in Whitstable for the arts all throughout his youth, especially acting trailers when available with the films! That he learned his parts `` from cover to cover '' before filming began ten years of horror literature #.
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