A lot of people really like Michael Caine as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. For me personally, though, no one embodied the character as wonderfully as veteran character actor Michael Gough did in Tim Burton's 1989 and 1992 films. With that in mind, I was sad, but not surprised, to learn today that Gough has passed away. Sources differ about how old he was at the time of his passing on March 17th, but he was definitely well into his nineties. Probably best known in recent years from his appearances as Alfred (a role he also reprised for a BBC Radio drama), Gough had a career in film, theater and television stretching from the 1940s to the present day.
Though never really a star in his own right, Gough was a versatile actor whose worked earned him multiple nominaitons for Tony and Bafta Awards as was always a pleasure to watch. His first major film was a supporting part in the 1948 adaptation of Anna Karenina starring Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richardson, which was preceded by a 1946 BBC production of George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion. Though he continued to appear in literary adaptations, some of his most popular work was in action-oriented series like The Avengers and Doctor Who as well as a variety of movies for horror movie icons Hammer Films including their 1958 version of Dracula (aka The Horror of Dracula) with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. He worked very steadily well into the 1990s and had largely retired by the turn of the century, mainly performing just the occasional voice-over, as in last year’s Alice in Wonderland (again for Tim Burton). His noteworthy roles are almost too numerous to mention but include Martin Scorsese’s film of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and two of the most acclaimed British miniseries to air on PBS, Smiley’s People and Brideshead Revisited.
He also featured in the one of the most underrated presentations in the history of Masterpiece Theatre, 1991’s Sleepers, a satirical drama about two Soviet sleeper agents who’ve been forgotten by their superiors and lived in England so long that they don't want to return to the USSR. When the current agency chiefs learn about their existence, they try to bring the pair home leading to complications involving no less than three "Intelligence" agencies. Produced by Doctor Who's very first producer, the late Verity Lambert, this amusing twist on the espionage thriller is just one of many highlights from an all together amazing career.
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