Peter Copley was a British television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and stage

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

.

Biography

Copley was born in Bushey

Bushey

Bushey is a town in the Hertsmere borough of Hertfordshire in the East of England. Bushey Heath is situated to the south east of Bushey on the boundary with the London Borough of Harrow.-History:...

, Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

, son of the printmakers, John Copley and Ethel Gabain.

After changing his mind about joining the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, he studied at the Old Vic School and started out as a stage actor, in 1932. He made his first film appearance in 1934, going on to play a wide variety of characters from the villainous to the meek and mild. In 1946 he appeared on stage in "Cyrano de Bergerac" at the New Theatre in London. Away from acting, Peter Copley was called to the bar

Call to the bar

The Call to the Bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party, and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received a "call to the bar"...

 in 1963, and was a sharp-witted legal expert and part-time lawyer who successfully handled several court cases in the 1960s.

TV credits include: Thorndyke, Danger Man

Danger Man

Danger Man is a British television series that was broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the program and wrote many of the scripts...

, The Saint

The Saint (TV series)

The Saint was an ITC mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise. The character may be nicknamed The Saint because the...

, The Avengers

The Avengers (TV series)

The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...

, The Forsyte Saga

The Forsyte Saga

The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by John Galsworthy. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of an upper-middle-class British family, similar to Galsworthy's own...

, The Troubleshooters, The Champions

The Champions

The Champions is a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV during 1968–1969, produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company...

, Department S

Department S

Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King , Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst...

, Doomwatch

Doomwatch

Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC One between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist , responsible for investigating and combating various...

, Z Cars, Fall of Eagles

Fall of Eagles

Fall of Eagles is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series was created by John Elliot and produced by Stuart Burge....

, Survivors

Survivors

Survivors is a British post-apocalyptic fiction television series devised by Terry Nation and produced by Terence Dudley at the BBC from 1975 to 1977...

, Bless Me, Father (episode "A Legend Comes to Stay"), Father Brown Mysteries (episode "The Curse of the Golden Cross"), Doctor Who

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

(in the serial "Pyramids of Mars

Pyramids of Mars

Pyramids of Mars is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 25 October to 15 November 1975.-Synopsis:...

"), Sutherland's Law

Sutherland's Law

Sutherland's Law is a television series made by BBC Scotland between 1973 and 1976.The series had originated as a stand alone edition of the portmanteau programme Drama Playhouse in 1972 in which Derek Francis played Sutherland and was then commissioned as an ongoing series.Sutherland's Law dealt...

, Tales of the Unexpected

Tales of the Unexpected (TV series)

Tales of the Unexpected is a British television series originally aired between 1979 and 1988, made by Anglia Television for ITV. Filming began in 1978.The series was an anthology of different tales...

, Miss Marple

Miss Marple (TV series)

Miss Marple is a British television series based on the Miss Marple murder mystery novels by Agatha Christie. It starred Joan Hickson in the title role, and aired from 1984 to 1992. All twelve original Miss Marple Christie novels have been dramatised. The screenplays were written by T. R...

, Lovejoy

Lovejoy

Lovejoy is a TV series about the adventures of Lovejoy, a British antiques dealer and faker based in East Anglia, a less than scrupulous yet likeable rogue. The episodes were based on a series of picaresque novels by John Grant...

, The Bill

The Bill

The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...

, Cadfael

Cadfael

Brother Cadfael is the fictional main character in a series of historical murder mysteries written between 1977 and 1994 by the linguist-scholar Edith Pargeter under the name "Ellis Peters". The character of Cadfael himself is a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey, in western England,...

and One Foot in the Grave

One Foot in the Grave

One Foot in the Grave is a BBC television sitcom series written by David Renwick. The show ran for six series, including seven Christmas specials, two Comic Relief specials, over an eleven year period, from early 1990 to late 2000...

.

Filmography

Year	Title	Character
1950	The Elusive Pimpernel The Elusive Pimpernel The Elusive Pimpernel is a 1950 British period adventure film by the British-based director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. Despite having been shot in color, it was released in the United States in black and...	Tailor (uncredited)
	Golden Salamander Golden Salamander (film) Golden Salamander is a 1950 adventure film directed by Ronald Neame and starring Trevor Howard as an archaeologist in North Africa who runs afoul of a crime sydicate. It won an award at the 1950 Locarno International Film Festival...	Aribi
1952	The Promoter	Shillitoe
	The Hour of Thirteen	Cummings
1953	The Clue of the Missing Ape	(uncredited)
	The Sword and the Rose The Sword and the Rose The Sword and the Rose, is a United States family and adventure film, produced by Perce Pearce and Walt Disney and directed by Ken Annakin...	Sir Edwin Caskoden
	Saadia	Leader Mokhazenis
1956	Foreign Intrigue Foreign Intrigue (film) Foreign Intrigue is a 1956 film starring Robert Mitchum and directed by Sheldon Reynolds, who had produced a television series called Foreign Intrigue in 1951.-Cast:* Robert Mitchum ... Dave Bishop* Geneviève Page ... Dominique Danemore...	Brown
	Peril for the Guy	Ritter
1957	Just My Luck Just My Luck (1957 film) Just My Luck is a 1957 British sports comedy film directed by John Paddy Carstairs and starring Norman Wisdom as a worker in a jewellery shop.- Plot :...	Gilbert Weaver
	Time Without Pity Time Without Pity Time Without Pity is a thriller about a father trying to save his son from execution for murder.It stars Michael Redgrave, Ann Todd, and Leo McKern.-Plot:David Graham has only 24 hours to save his son, Alec, from hanging...	Prison Chaplain
	The Man without a Body	Leslie
1959	The Mystery in the Mine	Tom Abbott
1960	Follow That Horse! Follow That Horse! Follow That Horse! is a 1960 British comedy film directed by Alan Bromly from a screenplay by William Douglas-Home. It starred David Tomlinson, Cecil Parker, Richard Wattis, Mary Peach and Dora Bryan.-Cast:* David Tomlinson as Dick Lanchester...	Garrod
1961	Victim	Paul Mandrake
1964	King & Country King & Country King and Country is a 1964 British film, directed by American-born director Joseph Losey, shot in black and white, and starring Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay...	Colonel
	The Third Secret The Third Secret (film) The Third Secret is a 1964 British drama film directed by Charles Crichton. The screenplay by Robert L. Joseph focuses on an American newscaster who investigates the mysterious death of his psychoanalyst...	Dr. Leo Whitset
1965	The Knack …and How to Get It	Picture Owner
	Help! Help! (film) Help! is a 1965 film directed by Richard Lester, starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—and featuring Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, John Bluthal, Roy Kinnear and Patrick Cargill. Help! was the second feature film made by the Beatles and is a...	Jeweller
1967	Quatermass and the Pit Quatermass and the Pit (film) Quatermass and the Pit is a 1967 British science fiction horror film. Made by Hammer Film Productions it is a sequel to the earlier Hammer films The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass 2. Like its predecessors it is based on a BBC Television serial – Quatermass and the Pit – written by Nigel Kneale...	Howell
1968	The Shoes of the Fisherman The Shoes of the Fisherman The Shoes of the Fisherman is a 1963 novel by the Australian author Morris West, as well as a 1968 film based on the novel.The book reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for adult fiction on 30 June 1963, and became the #1 bestselling novel in the United States for that year, according...	English Cardinal
1969	Mosquito Squadron Mosquito Squadron #Mosquito Squadron is a 1969 British war film made by Oakmont Productions, directed by Boris Sagal and starring David McCallum, with a memorable music score , which was composed and conducted by Frank Cordell.-Plot:During a Second World War Royal Air Force attack against German V-1...	Mr. Scott
	Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is a British horror film directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Film Productions from 1969. The cast includes Peter Cushing, Freddie Jones, Veronica Carlson and Simon Ward. The film is the fifth in a series of Hammer films centering on Dr...	Principal
	Walk a Crooked Path Walk a Crooked Path Walk a Crooked Path is a 1969 British crime film directed by John Brason and starring Tenniel Evans, Faith Brook and Christopher Coll. The film is set at a boarding school where a man plans to murder his wealthy teacher wife. It is sometimes known as Twilight Man.-Cast:* Tenniel Evans ... John...	Dr. Oberon
1970	All at Sea	Mr. Gordon
1971	Jane Eyre	John
1972	What Became of Jack and Jill?	Dickson
1973	Gawain and the Green Knight Gawain and the Green Knight (1973 film) Gawain and the Green Knight is a 1973 film directed by Stephen Weeks, and starring Murray Head as Gawain and Nigel Green in his final theatrical film as the Green Knight...	Pilgrim
1974	That's Your Funeral	1st Funeral Director
1976	Shout at the Devil Shout at the Devil (film) Shout at the Devil is a British film directed by Peter R. Hunt and starring Lee Marvin and Roger Moore.The picture is a comedic adventure story set in Zanzibar and German East Africa in 1913-1915 based on a novel written by Wilbur Smith and is very loosely inspired by real events.-Plot:It tells...	Admiral Howe
1980	Little Lord Fauntleroy Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980 film) Little Lord Fauntleroy is a 1980 British family film directed by Jack Gold and starring Alec Guiness, Rick Schroder and Eric Porter. It is based on the children's novel of the same name.-Plot synopsis:...	Muldaur
1982	Witness for the Prosecution Witness for the Prosecution (1982 film) Witness for the Prosecution is a 1982 TV version of Agatha Christie's short story and play, and also a remake of the classic Billy Wilder 1957 film Witness for the Prosecution....	Dr. Harrison
1987	Empire of the Sun Empire of the Sun (film) Empire of the Sun is a 1987 American coming of age war film based on J. G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. Steven Spielberg directed the film, which stars Christian Bale, John Malkovich, Miranda Richardson, and Nigel Havers...	British Prisoner
1991	A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia	Maitland
1994	Second Best	Percy
2005	Oliver Twist Oliver Twist (2005 film) Oliver Twist is a 2005 British drama film directed by Roman Polanski. The screenplay by Ronald Harwood is based on the 1838 novel of the same title by Charles Dickens....	Dining Hall Master

External links

• Guardian Obituary