Peter Cushing

"My criterion for accepting a role isn't based on what I would like to do. I try to consider what the audience would like to see me do and I thought kids would adore Star Wars."

- Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing (May 26, 1913–August 11, 1994) was the actor who played Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin in A New Hope. He was best known for his work in horror films produced by Hammer Studios, as well as some other British B-movies. These films often had him collaborating with his good friend and frequent co-star Christopher Lee, who played Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In another Hammer Studios Film, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Peter Cushing plays Dr. Victor aka Dr. Frankenstein. The Monster he creates in the film is played by David Prowse who would later play Darth Vader in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

Early life
Peter Wilton Cushing was born in Kenley, a district in the English county of Surrey, on May 26, 1913, to George Edward Cushing and Nellie Marie Cushing, nee King. The youngest of three boys — his brother George was three years older — his mother had so hoped for a daughter that for the first few years of his life, she would dress Peter in girls' frocks, let his hair grow in long curls and tied in bows of pink ribbon, so others would often mistake him for a girl. His father, a quantity surveyor from an upper-class family, was a reserved and uncommunicative man who Peter claimed he never got to know very well. His mother was the daughter of a carpet merchant and considered of a lower class than her husband. Cushing's family consisted of several stage actors, including his paternal grandfather Henry William Cushing, his paternal aunt Maude Ashton and his step-uncle Wilton Herriot, in honor of Peter Cushing received his middle name.

The Cushing family lived in Dulwich during World War I, but moved to Purley after the war ended in 1918. Although raised during wartime, Cushing was too young to understand or become greatly affected by it, and was shielded from the horrors of war by his mother, who encouraged him to play games under the kitchen table whenever the threat of possible bombings arose. In his infancy, Cushing twice developed pnuemonia and once what was then known as "double pneumonia". Although he survived, the latter was often fatal during that period. During one Christmas in his youth, Cushing saw a stage production of Peter Pan, served as an early source of inspiration and interest toward acting. Cushing loved dressing up and pretend play from an early age, and later claimed he always wanted to be an actor, "perhaps without knowing at first". 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.

He began his early education in Dulwich, an affluent area of South London, before attending the Shoreham Grammar School in Shoreham-by-Sea, on the Sussex coast between Brighton and Worthing. Prone to homesickness, he was miserable at the boarding school, and spent only one term there before returning home. He attended the Purley County Secondary School, where he played cricket and swam. Cushing was a self-proclaimed poor student (except for in art) with little attention span for that which did not interest him, and he got fair grades only through the help of his brother, a strong student who did Peter's homework for him. Cushing harbored aspirations for the arts all throughout his youth, especially acting. His childhood inspiration was Tom Mix, an American film actor and star of many Western films. D.J. Davies, the Purley County Secondary School physics teacher who produced all the plays, recognized some acting potential him and encouraged him to participate in the theater, even allowing Cushing to skip class to paint sets. He played the lead in nearly every school productions during his teenage years, including the role of Sir Anthony Absolute in a 1929 staging of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy of manner play, The Rivals.

Cushing wanted to enter the acting profession after school, but his father was strongly opposed to the idea, the theatrical background of several of family members. Instead, seizing upon Cushing's interest in art and drawing, he got his son a job as a surveyor's assistant in the drawing department of the Couldsdon and Purley Urban District Council's surveyor's department during the summer of 1933. Cushing hated the job, where he remained for three years without promotion or advancement due to his lack of ambition in the profession. The only enjoyment he got out of it was drawing prospectives of proposed buildings, which were almost always rejected because they were too imaginative and expensives and lacked strong foundations, which Cushing disregarded as a "mere detail". Thanks to his former teacher Davies, Cushing continued to appear in school productions during this time, as well amateur plays such as W.S. Gilbert's Pygmalion and Galatea,, George Kelly's The Torch-Bearers, and The Red Umbrella, by Brenda Girvin and Monica Cosens. Cushing would often learn and practice his lines at work, rather than actually performing the job at hand. He would regularly apply for auditions and openings for roles he found in The Stage, but was turned down repeatedly due to his lack of experience in the theater.

Early career
"That I should turn up at the precise moment was one of those extraordinarily lucky breaks which we all need at some time or other during this life, but don't always get."

- Peter Cushing, regarding The Man in the Iron Mask

Cushing eventually applied for a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. His first audition was before the actor Allan Aynesworth, who was so unimpressed with Cushing's manner of speech that he rejected him outright and insisted he not return until he improved his diction. Cushing continued to persistently pursue a scholarship, so much so that in 1936, actor and producer Bill Fraser agreed to meet Cushing simply so he could ask him in person to stop writing. During that meeting, Cushing was given a walk-on part as a courier in that night's production of J. B. Priestley's Cornelius. This marked his professional stage debut, although he had no lines and did little more than stand on stage behind other actors. Afterward, he was given odd jobs around the theater, such as selling refreshments and working as an assistant stage manager. By the end of the summer of 1936, Cushing accepted a job with the repertory theater company Southampton Rep., working as assistant stage manager and performing in bit roles at the Grand Theatre in the Hampshire city. He spent the next three years in an apprenticeship at Southampton Rep. repertory theater, auditioning for character roles both there and in other surrounding theaters, eventually amassing almost 100 individual parts.

Soon, he felt the urge to pursue a film career in the United States. In 1939, his father bought him a one-way ticket to Hollywood, where he moved with only £50 to his name. Cushing met a Colombia 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. Cushing visited the company, which was only a few days away from filming the 1939 film The Man in the Iron Mask, the James Whale-directed adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas tale based on the French legend of a prisoner during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Cushing was hired as a stand-in for scenes that featured both characters played by Louis Hayward, who had the dual lead roles of King Louis XIV and Philippe of Gascony. Cushing would play one part against Hayward in one scene, then the opposite part in another, and ultimately the scenes would be spliced together in a split screen process that featured Hayward in both parts and left Cushing's work cut from the film altogether. Although the job meant Cushing would receive no actual screen time, he was eventually cast in a bit part himself as the king's messenger, which made The Man in the Iron Mask his official film debut. The small role involved sword-fighting, and Cushing lied to director Whale about his fencing experience to ensure he got the part. Cushing later said his experience on the film provided an excellent opportunity to learn and observe how filming on a studio set worked.

Only a few days after filming on Man in the Iron Mask was complete, 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. Cushing sought and was cast in the role. Cushing appeared only briefly in A Chump at Oxford (1940) and his scenes took just one week to film, but he was proud to work with who he called "two of the greatest comedians the cinema has ever produced". Around this time actor Robert Coote, who met Cushing during a cricket game, recommended to director George Stevens that Cushing might be good for a part in Stevens' upcoming film Vigil in the Night (1940). Adapted from a serial novella of the same name, it was a drama film about a nurse played by Carole Lombard working in a poorly-equipped country hospital. Stevens cast Cushing in the second male lead role of Joe Shand, the husband of the Lombard character's sister. Shooting ran from September to November 1939, and the film was released in 1940, drawing Cushing's first semblance of attention and critical praise.

Cushing continued to work in a few Hollywood engagements, including an uncredited role in the war film They Dare Not Love (1941), which reunited him with director James Whale. In 1941, Cushing was cast in one of a series of short films in the MGM series The Passing Parade, which focused on strange-but-true historical events. He appeared in the episode Your Hidden Master as a young Clive of India, well before the soldier established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company. 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. Clive takes this to be a omen that he should live, and he goes on to perform great feats in his life. Studio executives were pleased with Cushing's performance, and there was talk among Hollywood insiders grooming him for stardom. Despite the success he was starting to enjoy, however, Cushing grew homesick and decided he wished to return to England. He moved to New York City in anticipation of his eventual return home, during which time he voiced a few radio commercials and joined a summer stock theater company to raise money for his trip home. He performed in such plays as Robert E. Sherwood's Wikipedia:The Petrified Forest:The Petrified Forest, Arnold Ridley's The Ghost Train, S. N. Behrman's Biography and a modern-dress version of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. He was eventually noticed by a Broadway theater talent scout, and in 1941 he made his Broadway debut in the religious wartime drama The Seventh Trumpet. It received poor reviews, however, and ran for only eleven days.

Return to England
Cushing returned to England during World War II. Although some childhood injuries prevented him from serving on active duty, entertained the troops by performing as part of the Entertainments National Service Association. In 1942, the Noel Coward play Private Lives was touring the military stations and hospitals in the British Isles, and the actor playing the lead role of Elyot Chase was called to service. Cushing agreed to take his place with very little notice or time to prepare, and earned a salary of ten pounds a week for the job. During this tour he met Helen Beck, a former dancer who was starring in the lead female role of Amanda Prynne. They fell in love and were married on April 10, 1943. The two had little money during this period, and Cushing had to collect from both National Assistance and the Actors Benevolent Fund. Cushing struggled to find work during this period, with some plays he was cast in failing to even make it to theaters. Others closed after a few showings, like an ambitious five-hour stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace that opened and closed in 1943 in London Phoenix Theatre.

Cushing made occasional radio appearances and appearing in week-long stints as a featured player in London's Q Theatre, but otherwise work was difficult to come by. Cushing found a modest success in a 1945 production of Sheridan's The Rivals at Westminster's Criterion Theatre, which earned him enough money to pay off some growing debts. But the war years continued to prove difficult for him, and at one point he was forced to work designing ladies head-scarves at a Macclesfield-based silk manufacturer to make ends meet. 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 Laurence Olivier. He was not cast because he insisted he could not perform in an American accent. Upon attempting the accent and failing, Olivier replied, "Well, I appreciate you not wasting my time. I shall remember you." Nearing middle age and finding it increasingly harder to make a living in acting, Cushing began to consider himself a failure.

In 1947, when Lawrence Olivier sought out to adapt the William Shakespeare play Hamlet into a film, Cushing's wife Helen pushed him to pursue a role. Far from deterred by Cushing's audition the year before, Olivier remembered the actor well and was happy to cast him, but the only character left unfilled was the relatively small part of the foppish courtier Osric. Cushing accepted the role, and Hamlet (1948) marked his British film debut. One of Cushing's primary scenes involved Osric talking to Hamlet and Hamlet and Horatio while walking down a wide stone spiral stairway. The set provided technical difficulties, and all of Cushing's lines had to be rerecorded later as part of a post-synching process. Cushing had recently undergone dental surgery and he was trying not to open his mouth widely for fear of spitting. When this hindered the post-synching process, Olivier leaned in close to Cushing's face and said, "Now drown me. It'll be a glorious death, so long as I can hear what you're saying".

Hamlet went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and earned Cushing praise for his performance. Also appearing in the film was Christopher Lee, who would eventually become a close friend and frequent co-star with Cushing, and would later go on to portray Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005). During the filming of Hamlet, both Peter and Helen Cushing accepted a personal invitation from Olivier to join Old Vic, Olivier's repertory theater company, which embarked on a long tour of Australasia. The tour, which lasted until February 1949, took them to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Tasmania, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, and included performances of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The School for Scandal, Shakespeare's Richard III, Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, Jean Anouilh's Antigone and Anton Chekhov's The Proposal.

Success in television
"Peter, you are unaware of your own value, and what your name means to people. They will be only too glad to have you work for them. You'll see."

- Peter Cushing's wife, Helen, encouraging him to seek television work

Cushing struggled greatly to find work over the next few years, and became so stressed that he felt he was suffering from an extended nervous breakdown. Nevertheless, he appeared continue to appear several small film roles in radio, theater and film. Among them was the 1952 John Huston film Moulin Rouge, where he played a racing spectator named Marcel de la Voisier appearing opposite star José Ferrer, who played the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. During this discouraging period for Cushing, his wife encouraged him to seek roles in television, which was only just starting to grow in popularity in England. She suggested he write to all the producers listed in the Radio Times magazine about work in the medium. The move proved to be a wise one, as Cushing was hired to fill out the cast of a string of major theater success that were being adapted to live television. The first was J. B. Priestley's Eden End, which was televised on December 1951. Over the next three years, he became one of the most active and favored names in British television, and was considered something of a pioneer in British television drama.

He earned praise as the lead male role of Fitzwilliam Darcy in the BBC's 1952 television miniseries production of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Other successful television ventures during this time included Epitaph for a Spy, The Noble Spaniard, Beau Brummell, Portrait by Peko, and Anastasia, the latter of which won Cushing the Daily Mail National Television Award for best actor of 1953-54. But his largest television success of the period was the leading role of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Rudolph Cartier's 1954 British television adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel of the same name about a totalitarian socialist regime. The production would prove to be controversial, resulting in death threats for Cartier and Cushing to be vilified for appearing in such "filth". Parliament even considered a motion immediately after the first screening to ban the play's live repeat. Nevertheless, the performance continued to repeat and eventually drew Cushing both critical praise and acting awards, further cementing his reputation as one of Britain's biggest television stars.

In the next two years following Nineteen Eighty-Four, Cushing appeared in 31 television plays and two serials, and won Best Television Actor of the Year from the Evening Chronicle. He also won Best Actor awards from the Guild of Television Producers in 1955, and from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1956. Among the plays during this time were Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version, Gordon Daviot's Richard of Bordeaux, and a 1955 production of Nigel Kneale's The Creature, the latter of which Cushing would star in a film adaptation for two years later. Despite this continued television success, however, Cushing found live television too stressful and wished to return to film. He continued to work in some movie roles during this period, including the adventure film The Black Knight (1954) opposite Alan Ladd. For that film, he traveled to Spain and filmed scenes on location in the castles of Manzanares el Real and El Escorial. He also starred in the 1955 film adaptation of the Graham Greene novel The End of the Affair as Henry Miles, an important civil servant and the cuckolded husband of Sarah Miles, played by Deborah Kerr. Also that year, he appeared in Magic Fire, an autobiographical film about the German composer Richard Wagner. Filmed on location in Munich, Cushing played Otto Wesendonck, the husband of poet Mathilde Wesendonck, who in the film is portrayed as having an affair with Wagner.

Hammer fame: Frankenstein & Dracula
During a brief quiet period following Cushing's television success, he read in the trade publications about Hammer Studios, a low-budget independent production company seeking to adapt Mary Shelly's monster story Frankenstein into a new film. Cushing, who enjoyed the tale as a child, dispatched his agent John Redway to inform the company of Cushing's interest in playing the protagonist, Baron Victor Frankenstein. The studio executives were anxious to have Cushing; in fact, Hammer co-founder James Carreras had been unsuccessfully courting Cushing for film roles in other projects even before his major success with Nineteen Eighty-Four. Cushing was cast in the role, although the actor was about 20 years older than Baron Frankenstein as he appeared in the original novel. Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster wrote the protagonist as a prideful, ambitious, arrogant and coldly intellectual scientist who was disdainful of his contemporaries. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) also starred Cushing's old Hamlet co-star Christopher Lee, who played Frankenstein's monster. Cushing and Lee became extremely close friends, and would remain so for the rest of Cushing's life. When they first met, Lee was still wearing the monster make-up prepared by Phil Leakey. Hammer Studios' publicity department put out a story that when Cushing first encountered Lee without the make-up on, he screamed in terror.

Cushing so valued preparation for his role that he insisted on being trained by a surgeon to learn how to wield a scalpel authentically. Shot in dynamic color with a meager £65,000-budget, the film was noted for its heavy usage of gore and sexual content. As a result, while the film did well with its target audience, the film drew mixed to negative reviews from professional critics. Most, however, were complimentary of Cushing's performance, which many felt helped create the archetypical mad scientist character. Picturegoer writer Margaret Hinxman, who was less complimentary of Lee's performance, praised Cushing and wrote of the film: "Although this shocker may not have created much of a monster, it may well have created something more lasting: a star!" 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 Dr. Frankenstein, which helped add a layer of likability to the character.

The Curse of Frankenstein was an overnight success, launching both Cushing and Lee into a level of world-wide fame they had never previously known. The two men would continue to work together in many films at Hammer Studios, and their names would go on to become synonymous with the company. Cushing reprised the role of Baron Victor Frankenstein in five sequels, In The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), his protagonist is sentence to death by guillotine, but he flees and hides under the alias Dr. Stein. He returned for The Evil of Frankenstien (1963) and Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), in which the Frankenstein's monster was reincarnated as a woman played by Playboy magazine centerfold model Susan Denberg. Cushing played the lead role twice more in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1970), In the latter film, Cushing portrayed the Frankenstein doctor as completely mad, a departure from the previous movies. Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell featured David Prowse as the monster; the actor would later go on to play Darth Vader alongside Cushing in Star Wars (1977).

When Hammer Studios sought to adapt Bram Stocker's classic vampire character Count Dracula to film, they cast Cushing to play the vampire's arch-nemesis Dr. Van Helsing. Cushing envisioned the character as an idealist warrior for the greater good, and sought to infuse the common decency and good-naturedness he tried to practice in his personal life into the role. Cushing said one of the biggest challenges during filming was not missing when he struck a prop stake with a mallet and drove it into a vampire's heart. Dracula was released in 1958, with Cushing once again starring opposite Lee, who played the title character, although Cushing was given top billing. During filming, Cushing himself suggested the staging for the final confrontation scene, in which Van Helsing leaps onto a large dining room table, opens window curtains to weaken Dracula with sunlight, then uses two candlesticks as a makeshift crucifix to hold the vampire off until he died.

He reprised the role of Dr. Van Helsing in the 1960 sequel, The Brides of Dracula. He was approached to star in the 1966 sequel, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, but turned it down due to other commitments. However, Cushing granted permission for his image to be used in the opening scene, which included archived footage from the first Dracula film. In exchange, Hammer Studios surprised Cushing by paying for extensive roofing repair work that had recently been done on Cushing's newly purchased London home. In 1972, Cushing appeared Dracula A.D. 1972, a Hammer modernization of the Dracula story set in a then-present day 1970s setting. Lee once again starred as Dracula. In the opening scene, Dracula played the Dr. Van Helsing character, who was killed after a fight with Dracula. The rest of the film jumps forward in time, where Cushing plays the original character's descendant, Lorrimer Van Helsing. Cushing and Lee both reprised their respective Dracula roles in the 1974 sequel The Satanic Rites of Dracula, which was known in the United States as Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride. Also that year, Cushing played Lawrence Van Helsing in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, a co-production between Hammer Studios and the Shaw Brothers Studio, which brought Chinese martial arts into the Dracula story.

Hammer Studios: Other roles
Although most well-known for his roles in the Frankenstein and Dracula films, Cushing appeared in a wide variety of other Hammer Studios productions during this time. Both he and his wife feared he could become typecast into horror roles, but he continued to take them because he needed the money for Helen, who was in a constant state of poor health and required much medical attention. He appeared in the 1957 horror film The Abominable Snowman, a Hammer Studios adaptation of a BBC Sunday Night Theatre television play from 1955, which Cushing had also starred in. He portrayed an English anthropologist searching the Himalayas searching for the legendary Yeti. In 1959, Cushing and Lee appeared in the Hammer Studios horror film The Mummy, with Cushing as the archeologist John Banning and Lee as the antagonist Kharis.

Also in 1959, he portrayed the famous detective Sherlock Holmes in the company's production of The Hound of the Baskervilles, an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name. He once again co-starred opposite Christopher Lee, who portrayed Sir Henry Baskerville in the film. Cushing was an ardent fan of Sherlock Holmes and was highly anxious to play the character. Hammer Studios decided to heighten the source novel's horror elements, which upset the estate of Conan Doyle, but Cushing himself voiced no objection to the creative license because he felt the character of Holmes himself remained intact. However, when producer Anthony Hinds proposed removing the character's deerstalker, Cushing insisted they remain because audiences associated Holmes with his headgear and pipes. Cushing prepared extensively for the role, studying the novel and taking notes in his script. He scrutinized over the costumes and scoured over screenwriter Peter Bryan's script, often amending words or phrases. In later years, he considered his Holmes performance one of the proudest accomplishments of his career. Cushing drew generally mixed reviews: Film Daily called it a "tantalising performance" and Time Out's David Pirie called it "one of his very best performances", while the Monthly Film Bulletin called him "tiresomely mannered and too lightweight" and BBC Television's Barry Norman said he "didn't quite capture the air of know-all arrogance that was the great detective's hallmark".

Immediately upon completion of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Cushing was offered the lead role in the Hammer film The Man Who Could Cheat Death, originally conceived as a remake of the Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Cushing turned it down, in part because he felt he did not have enough time to prepare for the role, in part because he feared becoming typecast into horror films, and in part because he did not like the script by Jimmy Sangster. James Carreras, who sold the film to Paramount Pictures in part through Cushing's anticipated participation, was infuriated with the actor, and issued a legal threat to him demanding he behave with more circumspection in the future regarding role offerings. The move created a rift between Cushing and Carreras, and contributed to a slight decline in the frequency of Cushing's participation with the studio.

In 1960, Cushing played the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Hammer Studios adventure film Sword of Sherwood Forest, which starred Richard Greene as the legendary outlaw Robin Hood. It was filmed on location in County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. Cushing starred as an Ebenezer Scrooge-like bank manager in the 1961 Hammer Studios thriller film Cash on Demand. Cushing considered this among the favorites of his films, and some believed it to be among his best performances, although it was one of the least seen films from his career. In 1962, he appeared in the Hammer Studios film Captain Clegg, known in the United States as Night Creatures. Cushing starred as the local reverend of an 18th century English coastal town believed to be hiding his smuggling activities with reports of ghosts. Cushing and Lee appeared together in the studio's 1964 horror film The Gorgon, about the female snake-haired Gorgon character from Greek mythology. The next year, Cushing and Lee yet again appeared together in the Hammer film She, about a lost realm ruled by the immortal queen Ayesha, played by Ursula Andress. Cushing later appeared in The Vampire Lovers (1970), an erotic Hammer Studios horror film about lesbian vampires, adapted in part from the Sheridan Le Fanu novella Carmilla. The next year he appeared in Twins of Evil, a prequel of sorts to The Vampire Lovers, in which he played Gustav Weil, the leader of a group of religious puritans trying to stamp out witchcraft and satanism. Among his final Hammer roles was Fear in the Night (1972), where he played the one-armed school headmaster apparently terrorizing the protagonist, played by Judy Geeson.

Non-Hammer Studios work
Although widely known for his Hammer Studios performances from the late-1950s to the late-1970s, Cushing continued to work in a variety of other performances during this time, and actively sought roles outside the horror genre in order to diversify his performances. He continued to perform in stage productions on occasion, such as a staging of Robert E. MacEnroe's The Silver Whistle in Westminster's Duchess Theatre in 1956. Also that year he appeared in Alexander the Great (1956) as the Athenian General Memnon of Rhodes. The battle scenes, in which Cushing's character is slain by Richard Burton's Alexander the Great, were filmed in the Spanish Autonomous community of Andalusia. Cushing 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. In 1960, Cushing played Robert Knox in The Flesh and the Fiends, based on the true story of a doctor who purchases human corpses for research from the serial murder duo Burke and Hare. Cushing had previously stated Knox was one of his role models in developing his portrayal of Baron Frankenstein. The film was called Mania in its American release. Cushing also appeared in The Naked Edge, a 1961 British-American thriller film starring Gary Cooper and Deborah Kerr, Cushing's old co-star from The End of the Affair.

In 1965, he portrayed Dr. Who in two science-fiction films by AARU Productions based on the cult British television series, Doctor Who. Although Cushing's protagonist was based on the Doctor from that series, his character was fundamentally different, most especially in the fact that Cushing's Dr. Who was a human, whereas the original Doctor was extraterrestrial. Cushing played the role in Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. In 1968, Cushing starred in the 15-episode BBC television series Sherlock Holmes, once again reprising his role as the title detective character. Fourteen days of rehearsal was originally scheduled for each episode, but they were cut down to ten days for economic reasons. As a result of the stressful schedule, many actors turned down the role before Cushing accepted it, including Douglas Wilmer, who played the detective in a previous BBC production. Production lated from May to December, and Cushing adopted a strict regimen of training, preparation and exercise. Although the series proved popular, Cushing felt he could not give his best performance under the hecitc schedule, and he was not pleased with the final result.

Cushing was not a particular fan of science fiction, but was drawn to acting in the genre because he felt it was what his audience wanted to see. Cushing appeared in a handful of horror films by the independent Amicus Productions, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and The Skull (1965), as well as non-Amicus horror films like Island of Terror (1966), The Blood Beast Terror (1968), and Corruption (1968), which was billed as so horrific that ""no woman will be admitted alone" into theaters to see it. Cushing and Lee made cameos as their old roles of Dr. Frankenstein and the monster in the 1970 comedy One More Time, which starred Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis, Jr. The single scene took only one morning of filming, which Cushing agreed to after Davis asked him to do it as "a favor". The next year, Cushing appeared in I, Monster (1971), the latter of which was adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which featured Christopher Lee in the title dual role. During this time, Cushing's wife Helen was in extremely poor health, and Cushing ensured he could spend time with her by taking a milk-train home rather than risk getting stuck in traffic by driving the long commute.

Helen Cushing died of emphysema in 1971, Cushing was devastated by the loss, and avoided social engagements and public events for the next 11 years. He sought therapy by burying himself in his work, appearing in 32 films between 1971 and 1982, twelve of which were filmed in the first year following her death. In 1971 he contacted the Royal National Institute for the Blind and offered to provide a voice for some of their talking books. They immediately accepted, and among the works Cushing recorded was The Return of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of thirteen, all one-hour in length. The readings proved therapeutic for Cushing during this difficult period. In 1972, Cushing appeared in the horror film Bloodsuckers, and starred alongside Vincent Price in Dr. Phibes Rises Again!, a sequel to the previous year's The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Cushing continued to appear in several Amicus Productions films during this period, including The Beast Must Die (1974), Tales from the Crypt (1972) and From Beyond the Grave (1973), the latter of two were both anthology films made up of several horror segment. In 1975, Cushing starred in the horror film Land of the Minotaur as Baron Corofax, the evil leader of a Satanic cult opposed by a priest played by Donald Pleasence. Also in 1975 he starred in The Ghoul, playing a former priest hiding his cannibalistic son in the attic. That film also featured Don Henderson, who would later play General Cassio Tagge alongside Cushing in Star Wars. In 1976, Cushing appeared in the television film The Great Houdini as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character Cushing had played several times throughout his career. He also appeared in the 1977 horror film The Uncanny.

Star Wars
George Lucas approached Cushing with the hopes of casting the actor as the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi in his upcoming space fantasy film, Star Wars. When the two met, however, Lucas decided instead that he would be better suited for the role of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, one of the highest ranking villians in the evil Galactic Empire. Cushing would have preferred to play Kenobi than Tarkin, but would have been unable to because he was to be filming other movie roles when Star Wars was shooting, and Tarkin's scenes took less time to film than those of the larger Kenobi role. Cushing accepted the role because he believed his audience would love Star Wars and enjoy seeing him in the role. He joined the cast on May 1976, and his scenes were filmed at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood.

Cushing got along well with the entire cast, especially his old Hammer co-star David Prowse and Carrie Fisher, who was appearing in her first major role as Princess Leia Organa. During the scene where Tarkin and Fisher appeared together on the Death Star, Cushing worked hard to help define their characters as opposite representations good and evil, and the actor would purposely stand in the shadows so Fisher's face would be bathed in light. Fisher said she liked Cushing so much that it was difficult to act as though she hated Tarkin. Cushing had difficulty understanding some of the technical jargon in his dialogue, but worked hard to master the lines so they would sound natural. Costume designers did not have time to get him boots that fit his size 12 feet, and he was made to wear a pair that was far too small for him. He asked Lucas to film more close-up shots from the waist up, and wore slippers during the scenes where his feet were not visible.

When Star Wars was released in 1977, Cushing was extremely pleased with the final product. The film gave Cushing the highest amount of visibility of his entire career, and helped inspire younger audiences to watch his older films.

Later career and death
Toward the end of his career, after Star Wars, Cushing performed in films and roles widely considered below his talent. In 1984 he appeared in the television film The Masks of Death, marking both the last time he would play detective Sherlock Holmes, and the final performance for which he received top billing. He appeared alongside actor John Mills as Watson, and the two were noted for their strong chemistry and camaraderie. As both actors were in their seventies, screenwriter N.J. Crisp and executive producer Kevin Francis both in turn sought to portray them as two old-fashioned men in a rapidly changing world. Cushing 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".

In 1983, Cushing appeared alongisde his old co-stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in House of the Long Shadows, a horror-parody film featuring Desi Arnaz, Jr. as a writer trying to write a Wuthering Heights-like novel in a deserted Welsh mansion. The final notable roles of Cushing's career were the 1984 comedy Top Secret!, the 1984 fantasy film Sword of the Valiant and the 1986 adventure film Biggles: Adventures in Time. Cushing was diagnosed with cancer and suffered a long period of poor health. In August 1994, he entered himself into a hospice in Canterbury where he died on August 11. He was 81 years old.

Personal life
Cushing wrote two autobiographies, Peter Cushing: An Autobiography (1986) and Past Forgetting: Memoirs of the Hammer Years (1988). He was fiercely dedicated to his wife, Helen Beck, for whom he was married 30 years until her death in 1971. Cushing often said he felt his life had ended when hers did, and he was so crushed that when his second autobiography was published in 1988, it made no mention of his life after her death. Cushing was an ardent vegetarian for most of his life, and served as a patron with the Vegetarian Society, a British charity aimed at promoting understanding and respect for vegetarian lifestyles. He also had a great interest in ornithology and wildlife in general. He suffered from nyctophobia from early in his life, but healed himself in his later years by forcing himself to take outside strolls after midnight.

Peter Cushing was known among his colleagues for his gentle and gentlemanly demeanor, as well as his professionalism and rigorous preparation as an actor. Cushing once said he would learn his parts "from cover to cover" before filming began. His co-stars and colleagues often spoke of his politeness, charm, old-fashioned manners and sense of humor. He actively provided feedback and suggestions on other elements beyond his performance, such as dialogue and wardrobe. At times, this put him at odds with writers and producers; Hammer Studios producer Anthony Hines once declared him a "fusspot [and] terrible fusser about his wardrobe and everything, but never a difficult man". Although he appeared in both television and stage productions, he preferred the medium of film, which allowed his perfectionist nature to achieve the best performance possible. Cushing himself was not a particular fan of horror or science-fiction films, but he tended to chose roles not based on whether he enjoyed them, but whether he felt his audience would enjoy him in them.