Christopher Malcolm: Star of 'The Rocky Horror Show' who produced tours of the musical, West End hits and alternative theatre

Christopher Malcolm in ‘The Great Riviera Bank Robbery: Sewers of Gold’ (1979) (Rex Features)

Born in an earlier era, the tall, firm-jawed Christopher Malcolm might have become better known – a North American tough guy in Britain, starring in black-and-white B-movie thrillers, playing Western heroes on radio or doing the voices for a Gerry Anderson series.

Where he actually made his mark was as a producer; after playing the gormless hero Brad in the original staging of The Rocky Horror Show, he formed a rights-holding company with its creator Richard O'Brien, going on to back many West End and touring productions.

His Scottish parents had emigrated to Canada in his boyhood, and he began acting as an amateur in British Columbia, aged 17. Two years later, he came to Britain as a supernumerary, billed as Chris Malcolm, at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, for two seasons from 1966. He fondly recalled witnessing "the finest actors in the UK at that time", including Diana Rigg as Viola in Twelfth Night, Paul Scofield as Macbeth, Ian Holm as Romeo and Helen Mirren in All's Well That Ends Well. His fellow "courtiers and atttendants" included Frances de la Tour, Roger Lloyd Pack, and Malcolm McDowell, with whom he shared a flat.

Three months before Rocky Horror opened, Malcolm, O'Brien, director Jim Sharman and designer Brian Thomson collaborated for the first time and at the same venue, the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, on the British première of a Sam Shepard play, The Unseen Hand. The following year, and at the Royal Court's main venue, the quartet reassembled for a play with music by Shepard, Tooth Of Crime (1974), featuring one of the last appearances of songwriter and Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) star Mike Pratt, who died soon afterwards.

Malcolm also supported Vanessa Redgrave and Jeremy Brett in a revival of Coward's Private Lives (1973) that transferred to the Phoenix. He returned to the role of Brad for the show's third anniversary in 1976, then directed Urban Gorilla Rock (1976), an "adult rock musical" predicting a future of unemployment and dissent, for the Mayday Theatre, a south London-based community outfit.

Some of his Fringe work required him to parody all things American. Grandma Faust (1976) by Edward Bond, at the Almost Free, had him as Uncle Sam, coerced into selling Don Warrington's soul, and he was the sheriff Don Quickshott in Shoot Up At Elbow Creek (Greenwich, 1977), a raucous Western spoof.

Malcolm directed a play by O'Brien, Disaster (ICA, 1978), with future Hollywood star Eric Roberts in the cast, and, after co-producing a revival of Pal Joey (Albery, 1980), which starred Sian Phillips and was nominated for an Olivier award, he oversaw Nell Dunn's frank drama Steaming, transferring it from the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, to the Comedy Theatre, where it ran for two years until 1983.

Early in 1983, he had his fingers burnt with Yakety Yak, a musical based around Lieber and Stoller songs starring the revivalist pop outfit Darts, which failed to run long once transferred from the Half Moon to the Astoria.

In 1985, he formed Viva Theatre Productions, with partners including the record producer Trevor Horn, staging Steven Berkoff's Metamorphosis (Mermaid, 1986), starring Tim Roth. He remained loyal to the mercurial Berkoff, putting on his Sink The Belgrano at the same venue in the same year, and his Messiah: Scenes From a Crucifixion (Old Vic, 2003).

Malcolm's first overseas production was the Australian staging of When I Was A Girl I Used To Scream And Shout, for which he went with playwright Sharman MacDonald to Sydney.

As an actor, his films included The Empire Strikes Back (1980), as a Rebel pilot, Superman III (1983), as a miner confronted by Richard Pryor, and Milos Forman's Ragtime (1981). Twice on television, he played American servicemen stationed in Britain in the Second World War, in the melodramatic series We'll Meet Again (LWT, 1982) and the altogether lighter two-parter Over Here (BBC, 1996), written by John Sullivan. Also for Sullivan, and just for once as a Briton, he was on the run in the 1983 "Saturday the 14th" episode of Only Fools and Horses.

A Fringe stalwart, he worked with several of the alternative comedians of the 1980s. He was a spaced-out cafe owner in The Comic Strip Presents, "A Fistful of Travellers' Cheques" (C4, 1984), and a movie mogul, facetiously named John Steinbeck, in the same stable's film Eat The Rich (1987). Then came several appearances as the ex-husband, eventually revealed to be gay and Canadian, of Jennifer Saunders, in Absolutely Fabulous (BBC, 1992-2003). He cast Saunders's real-life husband, Adrian Edmondson, in his old role of Brad in a £700,000, 1990 revival of The Rocky Horror Show at the Piccadilly.

Until parting with O'Brien, Malcolm directed tours of the show annually throughout the 1990s and in 2002 for its 30th anniversary. He directed a version in South Africa, where the film had been banned, in 1992. The Pajama Game (1999) and Flashdance (2008) came next, but his most recent show was the 50th anniversary restaging of Oh What A Lovely War! at Stratford East, which opened a week before his death, to critical acclaim.

GAVIN GAUGHAN

Christopher Malcolm, actor, producer and director: born Aberdeen 19 August 1946; married Judy Lloyd (two daughters, one son); died London 15 February 2014.