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British actor Michael Gough, who could convey quiet dignity or ham it up with the best of them, has died, it has been announced. He had been in films, television and theatre since the forties, appearing in anything from big budget blockbusters like the Batman franchise (as Alfred the butler) to UK classics like The Man in the White Suit and some of the tawdriest horrors around such as Horror Hospital, always entertaining no matter if he was on the side of the heroes or the villains.
His earliest films included Blanche Fury, The Small Back Room, Laurence Olivier's Richard III and Brit megahit in its day Reach for the Sky, but it was his appearance in Hammer's groundbreaking Dracula in 1958 that set him on a path to cult acclaim, and many horrors followed. From then on he appeared with Alec Guinness in The Horse's Mouth, Horrors of the Black Museum and Konga (two priceless performances of villainy), What a Carve Up!, The Phantom of the Opera, Black Zoo, They Came from Beyond Space, Berserk, The Curse of the Crimson Altar (with a host of other horror stars), with A Walk with Love and Death rounding off the sixties.
The seventies onwards saw him in camp classic Trog, The Go-Between, Ken Russell's Savage Messiah, Satan's Slave, The Boys from Brazil, The Dresser, Top Secret!, Out of Africa, Caravaggio, Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wittgenstein, Nostradamus and other Tim Burton movies such as Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and his final film, Alice in Wonderland. He was also a regular in cult TV such as Doctor Who (with both William Hartnell and Peter Davison), The Avengers (including the first Cybernauts episode), The Champions, Blake's 7, Inspector Morse and Dennis Potter's notorious Blackeyes. |
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