Sir Nigel Hawthorne

Nigel Barnard Hawthorne, actor: born Coventry 5 April 1929; CBE 1987; Kt 1999; died Radwell, Hertfordshire 26 December 2001.

Those who associate Nigel Hawthorne only with those roles calling for his uniquely dry, laconic irony first nationally noticed in the television series Yes, Minister might be surprised to learn that his own favourite part in a rich and crowded career was Falstaff.

He played the role in 1970 at the Sheffield Playhouse – where his season also included a notable Macbeth (never, perhaps, totally "Bellona's bridegroom" but haunting in the latter scenes of guilt and despair) – revelling in its variety and beautifully charting the old scoundrel's progress from roistering royal sidekick to sidelined decline. At that time, prior to television fame but following a varied career through regional repertory and innovative work at the most lively 1960s London theatres, he had established himself within the profession as a remarkably versatile and often surprising actor.

That reputation took a long and often lonely time – most of the 1950s – to build. Born in Coventry where his father was a doctor, he moved as a boy with his family to South Africa, educated there at the Christian Brothers' College and at the University of Cape Town, where he was soon drawn into student theatre.

He made his own professional début in 1950 as Archie in the old rep warhorse The Shop at Sly Corner (Hofmeyr Theatre, Cape Town). With high hopes for British success, he sailed for the UK in 1951 and first appeared on the British stage as Donald (somewhat bizarrely, especially for one just arrived from apartheid-era South Africa, given that Donald is described as "a coloured man of no uncertain hue") in Kaufman and Hart's 1930s classic You Can't Take It With You (Embassy, 1951).

Hawthorne – like a later arrival from the same background, Anthony Sher – would later speak eloquently of the sense of alienation he felt initially in England. And in his case a drab, age of austerity 1950s world was made doubly miserable by lack of work and personal insecurities. Endless auditions led only to rejection or understudy work, further undermining his confidence and sense of self in an adopted land.

At a particularly low point spiritually and financially he returned to South Africa only to feel, if anything, even more in exile than he had in an unbending London. He returned to England in 1957, at first to only sporadic work in small television roles and in a short-lived West End play as Fancy Dan in Talking to You (Duke of York's, 1962). Intimate revue was in its death throes following 1961's Beyond the Fringe, but his work in the sketches of Nymphs and Satires (Apollo, 1965) was noticed by spotters of individual talent, although the show itself had only a brief run.

Thereafter, albeit slowly, Hawthorne finally began to carve out a meaningful career. Joan Littlewood, even if the real glory days of E15 were behind her, was on top form when she directed The Marie Lloyd Story (Stratford East, 1967), bewitchingly evoking the backstage world of the halls with minimal scenery and richly textured character work from Avis Bunnage in the title role and Hawthorne, oozing metropolitan shrewdness as the impresario Sir Oswald Stoll.

He worked with Littlewood again, delighting packed houses during the continuing long run of the topical lampoon based on Private Eye's feature Mrs Wilson's Diary (Criterion, 1967), taking over as Roy Jenkins and investing a broadly written role with slyly unctuous invention.

A rewarding association with the Royal Court included the first club performance (it was the Lord Chamberlain's last gasp) of Edward Bond's Early Morning (1968) as Prince Albert, repeating his exquisite study in Teutonic myopia in the full-stage 1969 production. Other Sloane Square appearances included a surprisingly ferocious Commodore in Bond's Narrow Road to the Deep North (1969) and a blissful piece of comic legerdemain as Lord Touchwood in The Double Dealer (1969).

Hawthorne's gift for a more farouche style of comedy, too rarely exploited then by directors, found a perfect outlet in the braggadocio of Tom Stoppard's Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Cambridge Theatre Co, 1971), after which he returned to the Court, more conventionally cast as an underwritten colonial in John Osborne's slapdash West of Suez (Royal Court and Cambridge Theatre, 1971). His loyalty to the Court continued with another Osborne, the divertissement A Sense of Detachment (Royal Court, 1972), in which his Chairman surveyed proceedings including the surreal scenes of Rachel Kempton reading out the hardest of hardcore porn. He also took over in the major Court success at Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist (Mayfair, 1973) after its transfer, ideally cast as Philip the politely vacillating don ("A man of no convictions. At least I think I am"). One more takeover – his last – saw him in splendidly outrageous form (less of a Frankie Howerd clone than Derek Jacobi's original) as Touchstone in the National's all-male As You Like It (American tour and Mark Hellinger, New York, 1975).

Amidst a strong cast, Hawthorne's Shavian precision shone in The Doctor's Dilemma (Mermaid, 1975), his Cutler Walpole palpably relishing any opportunity to remove his speciality of "the nuciform sac". Equally fine was his work – understated but deeply affecting – as Alan Bates's brother in Simon Gray's Otherwise Engaged (Queen's, 1975) under Harold Pinter's direction.

In Peter Nichols's Privates on Parade (Aldwych, 1977) for the RSC he played – memorably – Major Giles Flack, a hopeless dinosaur of an army martinet in post-war Malaya, full of his beloved Bunyan and anti-Soviet jingoism ("Uncle Joe is a wily old bounder"), bemusedly trying to cope with the British Song and Dance Unit South-East Asia ("Singing and dancing's all very well but it won't stop Communist Chinamen"). Flack enters the play late in proceedings, but Hawthorne's hilariously blimpish but ineffably touching performance, magically suggesting the character's inner solitude, more than held its own with the more outrageous of Nichols's gallery.

A lumpy all-star revival of Shaw's The Millionairess (Haymarket, 1978) was enlivened by the scenes involving Hawthorne's wily Segamore opposite Penelope Keith's Epifania. There was, however, little chemistry in a weak play, Charles Wood's Hollywood-set comedy Across from the Garden of Allah (Comedy, 1986), between him and a somewhat dour Glenda Jackson. Much happier was his RSC double of a whiskery old Button Moulder in Peer Gynt and a smugly blinkered Orgon in Tartuffe opposite Sher (both The Pit, 1983-84).

By now, personally and professionally, Hawthorne had come into his own. On tour in The Heiress (1979), playing the chilly Jamesian paterfamilias, he met Trevor Bentham, then a respected stage-manager. They remained happily together for the rest of Hawthorne's life. Bentham turned to writing with success and together they created comfortable homes with lovingly planned gardens away from the showbiz whirl but welcoming a wide circle of friends.

Following the huge success of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister in the 1980s, his civil servant Sir Humphrey a wonderful blend of mandarin Jeeves and long-suffering nanny to an increasingly bemused Hacker (Hawthorne, Paul Eddington and Derek Fowlds contributing equally to a master-class in comedy timing), he was established as a major box-office star. At the National he had a major success as the flustered pillar of respectability innocently drawn into high jinks in a London hotel in Pinero's farce The Magistrate (Lyttelton, 1986), although the National's revival the same year of the Werfel/Behrman Jacobowsky and the Colonel, with Hawthorne as a turkey-cock German officer, proved only the piece's datedness.

But Hawthorne then had the great good luck – and stars need that too – of two superb leading roles in succession, C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands (Queen's and Brooks Atkinson, New York, 1990) initially seemed another exercise in the donnish dryness at which he excelled, but, as the play moved into the area of a life surprised by love, the character's carapace cracked, allowing Hawthorne a whole new emotional dimension, devastating in its impact.

Even more rich was Alan Bennett's creation in The Madness of George III (National Theatre, 1992, and US tour, 1993) which saw Hawthorne at his very best, at the peak of his powers and drawing on his extraordinary full range from tiny comedic details to pathos, heartrending in its echoes of King Lear. This genuinely majestic performance won every award going.

Hawthorne followed in the footsteps of Donald Wolfit and Alastair Sim as the vain old monster Lord Ogleby, corseted and berouged, to woo a young heiress in The Clandestine Marriage (Queen's, 1994) which he also directed.

And then, finally, he played King Lear (Tokyo, 1999, Barbican and Stratford, 2000), but unfortunately this much-anticipated event fell somewhat flat. All the omens were good – a strong supporting cast and a production by the great Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa – but, more perhaps because of fundamental language problems than because of any sense of Hawthorne's being over-parted as some critics suggested, the English actor seemed straitjacketed by a rigid production concept. Despite some individually affecting scenes, earnests of what he could have done with the role, he too seemed crushed under the production's ponderous weight.

Stardom brought Nigel Hawthorne unexpected late-flowering leading roles in movies and on television. Probably Sir Humphrey will remain his television high-water mark, but other creations must include a deliciously toupeed epicene Georgie in the Mapp and Lucia series (1985-86), the faithful Walter Monckton in Edward and Mrs Simpson (1980) and Dr Grantly, Trollope's character to the life, in The Barchester Chronicles (1984).

Alan Bennett defiantly held out for Hawthorne to repeat his stage role in The Madness of King George, superbly reworked for the screen by Nicholas Hytner in 1994. Later films included some Hollywood turkeys – although Hawthorne rather enjoyed his occasional forays into the world of mega-bucks moviemaking – but other film work included his starched Malvolio in Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996) and, again directed by Hytner, his touching portrayal of an older man resignedly watching his lover fall for a younger man in The Object of my Affection (1998).

By far the best of his later films was David Mamet's subtly controlled version of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (1999) with Hawthorne outstanding as the accused naval cadet's father determined to fight for his idea of justice.

He and Trevor Bentham coped well – with both dignity and humour – with their unexpected and unwelcome press "outing" during the run-up to the 1995 Oscars when Hawthorne was nominated for King George. But then he never took the hoop-la of fame too seriously; he was quite happy to enjoy himself, as in the recent Call Me Claus (2001), in which he and Whoopi Goldberg made up a joyous if unlikely screen pairing as veteran and apprentice Father Christmases respectively.

As on stage, so on screen, Nigel Hawthorne liked to surprise and to avoid repeating the familiar, in an extraordinary career spanning over half a century.

By Alan Strachan