Happy Birthday Peter Cushing!

Tweet

Today would have been the birthday of the late, great actor Peter Cushing (26 May 1913-11 August 1994). What an incredible career he had, his first screen appearance being as a bit part actor in a Laurel and Hardy movie, but graduating to playing such characters as Winston Smith in the BBC version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Sherlock Holmes, Victor Frankenstein, Van Helsing in various Hammer Dracula movies, Dr Who and of course Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. This was an actor who could play a good guy or a bad guy just as easily, and with his own distinct style. Some of his films were better than others, but he never turned in a bad performance. I'm pretty sure the first film I saw him in was Dr Who and the Daleks, the first of two great big screen adaptations of the long-running TV series Doctor Who, but I think my favourite Peter Cushing character was Frankenstein (the bad guy you hate to love) in the Hammer movies. What's your favourite Cushing role or movie?