Veteran British character actor Peter Vaughan, who played the enigmatic Maester Aemon in Game of Thrones, has died aged 93.
Vaughan's agent Sally Long-Innes says he died on Tuesday, surrounded by his family. Vaughan's face – if not his name – was familiar to generations of television viewers in Britain and around the world. His best-known roles included criminal Harry Grout in 1970s prison sitcom Porridge.
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Like many British actors, he gained wider fame through HBO's Game of Thrones. Vaughan played blind scholar and member of the Night's Watch, Maester Aemon Targaryen, on the hit fantasy series for its first five seasons.
The actor told the Sunday Post earlier this year how much he enjoyed working on the show, and that he received fan mail from all over the world.
![Peter Bradshaw as Maester Aemon in Game of Thrones.](/web/20161208111824im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/5/g/l/z/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt5gl0.png/1481080163477.jpg)
"It's been an absolute privilege to have worked on it for the past five years at my time of life because it's absolutely first-class," he said.
As Maester Aemon, he forsakes his royal heritage, giving up the chance to rule the seven kingdoms of Westeros to serve in the Night's Watch, a group of warriors and criminals tasked with defending a colossal wall to protect lands to the south from invaders from the north.
Maester Aemon was a fatherly figure to Jon Snow, who becomes the Watch's leader, and unlike many in Martin's treacherous, violent world, Maester Aemon dies of old age in Season 5, in 2015.
Vaughan also played a manipulative British spy in The Naked Runner (1967), with Frank Sinatra; one of the English villagers who harass Dustin Hoffman and Susan George in Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971); and a bureaucrat in Terry Gilliam's dystopian satire Brazil (1985), which starred Jonathan Pryce and featured Robert De Niro.
![British actor Peter Vaughan, best known for roles in Game of Thrones and Porridge, has died at the age of 93.](/web/20161208111824im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/5/o/n/z/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt5gl0.png/1481080163477.jpg)
He played other elderly figures, including Anthony Hopkins' ailing father in James Ivory's film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1993) and a cantankerous old man in the farce Death at a Funeral (2007), which also featured his Game of Thrones co-star Peter Dinklage.
He was born Peter Olm on April 4, 1923, in Wem, Shropshire, England. He joined a repertory company at 16 but was drafted into the military in 1942.
![1998: Actress Joanna Lumley and actor Peter Vaughan in London.](/web/20161208111824im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/5/g/l/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gt5gl0.png/1481080163477.jpg)
He continued his stage acting career in England after the war, and during the 1950s he met and married actress Billie Whitelaw, who became known for her work with Samuel Beckett. They divorced in the 1960s.
On television he appeared in several BBC miniseries based on Charles Dickens novels, including Oliver Twist (1962) and Bleak House (1985), and in an adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible in 1980. He went on to appear in the 1996 film version of that play, which starred Winona Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis.
Vaughan later married actress Lillias Walker, who survives him. Other survivors include a son, David; two stepdaughters, Alex and Vikki; and four grandchildren.
Vaughan, whose last credited television role was as Maester Aemon, said he was grateful that he had chosen a profession that allowed him to work well into old age.
"It's not the sort of career where you have to retire at a given age," he told Shropshire magazine in 2007. "I compare it to being a painter or a professional musician – as long as you're fit and healthy to carry on, and the offers come in, you just keep going."
AP, with New York Times