Sir Nigel Hawthorne, who died on December 26th aged 72, was a sensitive and bleakly intelligent actor whose work was insufficiently appreciated until it was rescued by a crucial part in a popular television series.
That part was the role of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the suave, guarded, ingenious and manipulative civil service permanent secretary for the rather too na∩ve minister Jim Hacker, in Yes Minister (1980). It was followed - on Hacker's unexpected advancement - by the series Yes Prime Minister (1986).
The vigilant apprehensiveness that was an uncomfortable part of Nigel Hawthorne's private character made him ideal casting for Sir Humphrey, who was often battered to a - temporary - standstill by Paul Eddington's personable but floundering Hacker. The momentary and well-concealed look of panic behind Nigel Hawthorne's eyes as he sensed his puppet wriggling from his grasp was a great delight - Margaret Thatcher's professed favourite television programme did more to open up the culture of Whitehall to public scrutiny than might be done by any number of documentaries.
After the triumph of Sir Humphrey, Nigel Hawthorne became that apparently contradictory thing, a star supporting player - as, for instance, Clarence in Ian McKellen's Richard III, modernised for cinema (1995). None the less, he did enjoy as grand a film title role as any - albeit one subject to more than slight barminess - in Alan Bennett's The Madness Of King George III (1994), which he played after starring in the stage play (1992-'94) only because of Bennett's refusal to abandon him for a name more familiar to New York bankers.
Nigel Hawthorne's family background may have explained the plain, self-torturing young man that he was before age and success soothed some of the hesitancies and agonies. He was the son of a physically small, highly self-assertive and uncultured Coventry doctor, who emigrated to South Africa when he was four.
Nigel Hawthorne disliked helping his father by holding the heads or limbs of patients as they received treatment, and the smell of methylated spirits made him feel sick. Neither was he blind to the injustices of apartheid, though any sort of campaigning on issues was not in his character.
His father was one of those Englishmen who thought that the right way to deal with his children was to ignore them as much as possible. All four - of which Nigel Hawthorne was the second - were forbidden to touch his grand piano, which he himself played with more bombast than skill. He discouraged his children from mixing outside the family.
His mother was too vague a personality to counter-balance the situation, or to persuade Nigel Hawthorne to put much emotional trust in women. It was revealing that, years later, when her son had had his great success with Sir Humphrey and had taken some video tapes over to South Africa for her to watch, she allowed the family to talk over them almost as soon as they started.
Educated in Cape Town at St George's grammar school and the Christian Brothers' College, Nigel Hawthorne dropped out of the University of Cape Town before completing a broadcasting degree course. He did some acting while a student, and made his professional dΘbut at the city's Hofmeyr Theatre in April 1950, as Archie Fellowes in Edward Percy's thriller, The Shop At Sly Corner.
In 1951, he went to Britain as an actor. In November that year he made his London dΘbut as Donald in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's You Can't Take It With You. For six years thereafter he visited London agents' offices with few successes. In 1957 he returned to South Africa.
Once he was back there, his British experience opened doors for him and he played leading roles in works by Pinter, Cocteau, O'Neill and Osborne. In 1962, he was back in London, and in October made his first West End appearance, as Fancy Dan in William Saroyan's Talking To You. He joined up with the mercurial impresario of Stratford East, Joan Littlewood, who cast him as Field Marshal Haig in the 1963 premiΦre of Oh What A Lovely War.
Authority figures with character flaws became a sort of speciality, and perhaps an echo of his father. There was the inevitable falling out with Littlewood, whose demands for improvisation in all circumstances struck him as doctrinaire and cranky, but Nigel Hawthorne played at that other bastion of progressive theatre, the Royal Court. His Prince Albert in the 1968 Edward Bond season's Early Morning was praised, as was his Commodore in Bond's Narrow Road To The Deep North.
In 1977, he was Major Flack, the CO in Peter Nichols's camp Privates On Parade, for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych. Flack, who sends a concert party troupe on a Malayan jungle mission more suited to the SAS, almost defied Nigel Hawthorne's understanding.
His splenetic Blair in Tom Stoppard's Hopgood in 1988 was not so successful, but he was already enjoying the Sir Humphrey success and had begun to mellow.
His C.S. Lewis in the stage version of William Nicholson's Shadowlands made that bachelor academic more loveable than he really was; the 1989 production at the Queen's Theatre was followed by Broadway, 1990-'91, and a Tony award for best actor.
His final stage role was King Lear with the RSC, at the Barbican, Stratford-upon-Avon and in Tokyo (1999-2000); at the age of 70, he was grateful that at least he had no need to simulate old age. Critical response was mixed.
Nigel Hawthorne was appointed CBE in 1987 and knighted in 1999. He shared his home with his companion, the scriptwriter Trevor Bentham. Though he made no secret of his homosexuality, he deemed it bad manners to "embarrass" some people by talking about it.
Nigel Barnard Hawthorne: born 1929; died, December 2001