Peter Barkworth: The actor and director Peter Barkworth, who has died aged 77, claimed to have felt "the sheer sensual pleasure of acting" when he first appeared on a stage. He was five years old, in the wolf cubs, and appearing as Simple Simon in a church hall in his home town of Margate, Kent.
What followed was a notable stage career, though Barkworth became known to a wider public on television. His presence was established by his role as Kenneth Bligh in the boardroom drama The Power Game (1965), and confirmed in Brian Clark's Telford's Change (1979), opposite Hannah Gordon.
Other small-screen roles took in such productions as Dr Who, The Avengers (1961-69), Paul Temple (1971) and Colditz (1972). At the Haymarket - his favourite theatre - in 1972 he had his first London leading stage part, as Edward VIII in Royce Ryton's abdication drama, Crown Matrimonial. He repeated the role on television two years later.
In 1977, Barkworth was cast as a British academic adrift in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, in Tom Stoppard's Professional Foul. It won him the Royal Television Society and Bafta's best actor awards. Later television work included the part of Stanley Baldwin in Winston Churchill: the Wilderness Years (1981) and the kidnap serial The Price (1985), with Harriet Walter, again written by Brian Clark.
His film work began in 1959 with A Touch of Larceny. It took in No Love for Johnnie (1963), Where Eagles Dare (1969), Patton (1970) and concluded with Stephen Fry's Wilde (1997).
The Barkworth family moved from Margate to Bramhall, Cheshire, when his father - who worked in the motor trade - was promoted to a sales managership in Manchester.
He was educated at Stockport school and, as an 11-year-old in 1940 began taking part in concerts for the war effort - and enjoying the applause. After he played the role of Macbeth, the producer rewarded the cast with a trip to see John Gielgud's Hamlet in Manchester. Barkworth was duly impressed.
While still at school he appeared with the Frank H Fortescue weekly repertory company at the Stockport Hippodrome in For What We Are (1942), and had some parts with the BBC drama repertory company. His headmaster wanted him to go to university but, having played Hamlet at school, Barkworth decided to apply to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (Rada).
He won a Michelhill scholarship, but it only covered his tuition fees. His father, earning £8 a week, gave up tobacco and alcohol to give his son a weekly allowance of £2/15s.
Barkworth's Rada contemporaries from 1946 to 1948 included John Neville, Barbara Jefford and Robert Shaw, with whom he shared a flat. Having been awarded the judges' special medal at the academy's public show, in 1948 he was offered a part in The Guinea Pig with the Arthur Brough Players at the Folkestone repertory company.
After national service he returned to weekly rep in Folkestone and the Brough Players. But when Barkworth moved to fortnightly rep in Sheffield, Brough furiously accused him of disloyalty and vowed he would never have him back at Folkestone.
Barkworth did not need to make the return. He appeared at the Q theatre in Palmers Green, north London, and in Sheffield was given some good parts in a company that included his Rada contemporary Peter Sallis. He also wrote the songs and incidental music for the Christmas play. Eventually, he was given a contract by HM Tennent.
His first London appearance was in Dodie Smith's adaptation of Henry James's Letter from Paris, which opened in October 1952 at the Aldwych, was roundly booed and came off after three weeks. His next part, Gerald Arbuthnot in Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance (1954), gave him another kind of shock. There were rows in the company; the lead, Clive Brook, quarrelled explosively. Barkworth was so depressed that he was on the brink of giving up the stage. Athene Seyler persuaded him to carry on.
From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s he taught acting. His pupils included Anthony Hopkins, Simon Ward and Diana Rigg, while Richard Wilson found he was the first Rada teacher to give him real confidence.
His stage roles included that of Capt Christopher Mortlock in Noel Coward's South Sea Bubble (1956) with Vivien Leigh, and from September 1957, Bernard Taggart and Stuart in Lesley Storm's Roar Like a Dove. He remained in the play for its entire three-year run at the Phoenix.
At the Haymarket he was the cynical Sir Benjamin Backbite in Gielgud's production of The School for Scandal (1962), which went to New York in 1963 - his first appearance in the city. His other stage work included The Chinese Prime Minister (1965), while at the Globe in 1976, he was in Michael Frayn's Donkeys' Years with Penelope Keith. He wrote an erudite script for his one-man Siegfried Sassoon (1987), which he gave at the Hampstead theatre in the West End and on tour.
Barkworth's books included First Houses (1983), About Acting (1980), More About Acting (1984), The Complete About Acting (1991) and For All Occasions (1997). In November 1999 a new theatre in Stockport was named after him.
One of his hobbies was gardening; he received an award for his small garden at Hampstead, where he lived for 40 years.
Peter Wynn Barkworth: born January 14th 1929; died October 21st, 2006