Geoffrey Chater

Geoffrey Chater was a much in-demand character actor whose unforced poise and lightly worn haughtiness made him a natural for figures of privilege and authority - from a British consul in Brideshead Revisited and school chaplain in Lindsay Anderson's If... to doctors, military officers and peers of the realm. Those same qualities also lent him a formidable presence on stage. His father a composer for dance bands, his mother the actor Gwendoline Gwynne, Chater was born in Barnet, north London. Aged eight, he saw his mother in Merton Hodge's comedy The Wind and the Rain at the now demolished Scala Theatre and decided to become an actor. After boarding at Marlborough College, he joined the army in 1940 while still in his teens and rose to the rank of captain, spending the war in India and Burma where he became involved in morale-boosting revues. Returning home, Chater began his professional career with Windsor rep and made his West End debut in Bruce Walker's thriller Master Crook at the Comedy Theatre (now Harold Pinter Theatre) in 1952. He spent a season at London's Old Vic in 1954 and caught attention in Giles Cooper's acerbic contemporary comedy Everything in the Garden and Thomas Middleton's Jacobean tragedy Women Beware Women with Peter Hall's nascent Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts Theatre in 1962. At the Cambridge in 1965, he played Yslaev, husband to Ingrid Bergman's Natalie Petrovna, in Michael Redgrave's revival of A Month in the Country, and appeared as Lord Froth in The Double Dealer at London's Royal Court in 1969. There, he also appeared in NF Simpson's absurdist morality comedy Was He Anyone? (1972), Howard Brenton's still topical political drama Magnificence (1973), and as his second Polonius to Jonathan Pryce's Hamlet in 1980, having previously played the role opposite Ian McKellen for Prospect in 1971. Chater's belated National Theatre debut came as Dr Bradman alongside Elizabeth Spriggs' Madame Arcati in Harold Pinter's 1976 revival of Blithe Spirit. He appeared as Dr Frobisher in The Browning Version at the King's Head Theatre the same year. In 1978, he returned to the RSC for David Mercer's political satire Cousin Vladimir at the Aldwych Theatre. A constant presence on television for more than 50 years, his credits include appearances in, among many other television shows, Crying Down the Lane (1962), Callan (1967), Mapp & Lucia (1985), Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (1973), Bognor (1981), Devenish (1977), Emergency-Ward 10 (1957), Mogul (1965), Tales of the Unexpected (1979), Nanny (1981), Play for Today (1970), Blott on the Landscape (1985), Rumpole of the Bailey (1978), One Foot in the Grave (1990), The Thin Blue Line (1995), The Cleopatras (1983), and Midsomer Murders (1997). The very image of the Establishment, he played ministers, lawyers, bankers and doctors from the early 1950s until 2005. His film credits included impressive entries such as Gandhi (1982), Endless Night (1972), If.... (1968), Barry Lyndon (1975), and O Lucky Man! (1973), as well as such unlikely miscellany as Reg Varney's drag-act monstrosity, The Best Pair of Legs in the Business (1973). Chater memorably played Christmas Humphreys, the QC who wrongly convicted Timothy Evans (played by John Hurt), absolving John Christie (Richard Attenborough) of murder, in 10 Rillington Place (1971). Geoffrey Michael Chater Robinson was died on October 16 2021, aged 100. He was survived by his wife Jennifer Hill, their daughter and two sons.